The Battle of Algiers is back — along with The Battle of Algiers scenario. At a time when Gillo Pontecorvo’s documentary-style account of a bloody, anti-colonialist urban uprising has been used by commentators from Tariq Ali to Zbigniew Brzezinski to describe the situation in occupied Iraq, and only months after a well-publicized screening at the […]
Books, Culture & the Arts
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Up from Weequahic
New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture and the Class of ’58 By Sherry B. Ortner, Duke University Press, 334 PAGES, $29.95 Sometimes the announcement of a book just leaps out of a publisher’s catalog and grabs you by the throat, and such was the case with this study by Sherry Ortner, a MacArthur Prize- […]
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End of the Line
Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market By Pierre Bourdieu, Translated by Loïc Wacquant, New Press, 112 PAGES, $14.95 At the time of Pierre Bourdieu’s death in January 2002, he stood as the dominant intellectual in France, if not in Europe. Only Jürgen Habermas in Germany, now age 74, is of the […]
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It Wasn’t Deficit Reduction
The Roaring Nineties By Joseph E. Stiglitz, W.W. Norton and Company, 379 pages, $25.95 Like many academic economists, Joseph E. Stiglitz went into government hoping to tutor as well as to serve. Unlike most, Stiglitz has significant doubts about whether markets usually work as advertised. His research in this genre won him the […]
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The Life of the Parties
Party of the People: A History of the Democrats By Jules Witcover, Random House, 758 pages, $35.00 Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans By Lewis L. Gould, Random House, 588 pages, $35.00 Few institutions of any sort in American life have remained relevant for as long as the two national […]
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Unsolved Mysteries: The Tocqueville Files II
I n their search for new ideas, intellectuals and policymakers across the political spectrum have recently become enchanted with the concept of social capital. Liberals and conservatives alike now celebrate social capital as the key to success in a myriad of domestic issues-from public education, aging, and mental health to the battle against inner-city crime […]
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Honey, I Sold the Kids
In her new book, Consuming Kids, ventriloquist-turned-child-psychologist Susan Linn tries to build a movement to regulate marketing to children. You say there has been an explosion of marketing to children. What do you mean? The proliferation of electronic media that happened in the ‘80s and the early ‘90s has made kids more vulnerable then ever. […]
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State of the Debate: The White Rage
Why has extremist violence exploded on the right? A historical look at the evolution of populist rage.
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Controversy: The Virtues of Humiliation
Continuing the debate from “The Shaming Sham,” by Carl F. Horowitz (March-April 1997).
