WQCovSum07.Sub.Fin 6/14/07 9:54 AM Page 1 The Mending Brazil’s Megacity By Norman Gall WILSON 100 Years of Pragmatism By Theo Anderson Rerunning Film Noir The WILSON QUARTERLY By Richard Schickel SURVEYING THE WORLD OF IDEAS QUARTERLY Coasting By James Morris WOMEN IN CHARGE

Women in Charge Judith M. Havemann • Holly Yeager • Sara Sklaroff Summer 2007, Vol. 31, No.3

SUMMER 2007 $6.95 ($9.95 CAN)

The WILSON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2007 volume xxxi, number 3

The Wilson Quarterly Published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars www.wilsonquarterly.com

DEPARTMENTS

EDITOR’S COMMENT FEATURES 2

4 LETTERS 14 Brazil’s Impossible City | By Norman Gall The immense, chaotic metropolis of São Paulo is yielding surprisingly 10 FINDINGS hopeful portents for the developing world’s megacities. The Great Pretenders Movin’ on Down 22 Coasting | By James Morris Touchy Shoppers Life’s hard lessons and simple pleasures are learned where the land meets the sea. A Kick to Cocaine

67 In ESSENCE 27 One Hundred Years of Pragmatism | By Theo Anderson Living on $1 a Day William James grappled with the great question of modern times: How is it possible to believe? A century later, his answers are still Let Them Sue fresher and more relevant than most. Three Philosophers Walk Into a Bar - 36 Rerunning Film Noir | By Richard Schickel Who Is Sakamoto Ryoma? After World War II, moviegoers couldn’t get enough of film noir’s shady characters and dark city streets. Yet America was brimming 89 CURRENT BOOKS with optimism. Our critic is on the case. Rajiv Chandrasekaran on Ryszard Kapuscinski´ ´ Martin Walker on Nixon and 45 WOMEN IN CHARGE Kissinger For three decades, women have been moving up in the world. They run corporations, colleges, even countries. So what has Florence King on Abe Lincoln mania changed? What's different about female leaders? Brief Reviews: Russ Great Expectations | By Judith M. Havemann McDonald, Aaron Mesh, Emily Bernard, Andrew Soldiering Ahead | By Holly Yeager Burstein, Ruth Levy Guyer, A Woman’s World | By Sara Sklaroff David Lindley, Claude R. Marx, and others

ON THE COVER: Illustration by Dan Craig. Design by David Herbick. 112 PORTRAIT

The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Paleofuturism

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 1 The WILSON QUARTERLY EDITOR’S COMMENT

A Prisoner in Iran

Of all the memorable people I’ve met at the Wilson Center, none have EDITOR Steven Lagerfeld made a more powerful impression on me than those whose convictions MANAGING EDITOR James H. Carman and commitments have brought them harassment, exile, or prison. It is SENIOR EDITOR Judith M. Havemann humbling simply to be in the presence of a man like Saad Eddin Ibra- LITERARY EDITOR Sarah L. Courteau him, whose persistent advocacy of democracy and human rights cost ASSISTANT EDITOR Rebecca J. Rosen EDITORS AT LARGE Ann Hulbert, James Morris, him more than a year in an Egyptian jail. But Saad and others have Jay Tolson come to the Center as visiting fellows from abroad. Never in my wildest COPY EDITOR Vincent Ercolano imaginings did I think that a member of the Center’s staff, a colleague CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Daniel Akst, Stephen Bates, Martha Bayles, Linda Colley, Denis Donoghue, and friend, would endure a similar travail. Yet that is exactly what has Max Holland, Stephen Miller, Walter Reich, Alan Ryan, Amy E. Schwartz, Edward Tenner, Charles befallen Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Center’s Middle East Program. Townshend, Alan Wolfe, Bertram Wyatt-Brown BOARD OF EDITORIAL ADVISERS As I write, Haleh has spent a month and a half in an Iranian K. Anthony Appiah, Cynthia Arnson, Amy Chua, prison, after more than four months of virtual house arrest during Robert Darnton, Nathan Glazer, Harry Harding, Robert Hathaway, Elizabeth Johns, Jackson which she was prevented from leaving the country and subjected to Lears, Robert Litwak, Wilfred M. McClay, Blair Ruble, Peter Skerry, Martin Sletzinger, interrogations by Iranian authorities. Haleh was in her native coun- S. Frederick Starr, Philippa Strum, Martin Walker try for the purely personal purpose of visiting her aged mother, but FOUNDING EDITOR Peter Braestrup (1929–1997) apparently her role as director of the Middle East Program made her BUSINESS DIRECTOR Suzanne Napper a target and led to her arrest as an alleged threat to Iranian national CIRCULATION Cary Zel, ProCirc, Miami, Fla. The Wilson Quarterly security. The charges are, of course, ridiculously transparent lies. (ISSN-0363-3276) is published in January (Winter), April (Spring), July (Summer), and One of the remarkable things about Haleh, reflected in the program October (Autumn) by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 she leads, is her steely commitment to scholarly values: dispassion- Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20004–3027. Complete article index available online at ate inquiry, concern for facts, and free and open debate. Her own www.wilsonquarterly.com. Subscriptions: one year, $24; scholarship is measured (see her article “The Woman Question” in two years, $43. Air mail outside U.S.: one year, $39; two years, $73. Single copies mailed upon request: our Spring 2004 issue), and the highly regarded program she dir- $8; outside U.S. and possessions, $10; selected back issues: $8, including postage and handling; outside ects, in a field charred by partisan passions, has provided the rare U.S., $10. Periodical postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. All unsolicited patch of common ground where people with very different views can manuscripts should be accompanied by a self- comfortably meet and debate. addressed stamped envelope. MEMBERS: Send changes of address and all subscrip- It pains all of us at the Wilson Center to imagine this small-framed, tion correspondence with The Wilson Quarterly mailing label to Subscriber Service, The Wilson large-spirited woman we admire in such awful circumstances, and to Quarterly, P.O. Box 420406, Palm Coast, FL share the suffering of her family. Yet we also know her to be cour- 32142–0406. SUBSCRIBER HOT LINE: 1-800-829-5108 ageous and strong, and we believe that the international effort on her POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to The Wilson Quarterly, P.O. Box 420406, behalf (see the website www.freehaleh.org) will lead to her safe re- Palm Coast, FL 32142–0406. Microfilm copies are available from Bell & Howell In- turn. I can’t help thinking how pleased she will be to see this issue’s formation and Learning, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. U.S. newsstand distribution through Disticor articles on women’s leadership, and how amazing it is that a genera- Magazine Distribution Services. For more information tion ago we likely would have been deprived of the leadership of call (631) 587-1160 or fax (631) 587-1195 or e-mail: [email protected]. women like Haleh Esfandiari. ADVERTISING: Brett Goldfine, Leonard Media Group. Tel.: (215) 675-9133, Ext. 226 Fax: (215) 675-9376 —Steven Lagerfeld E-mail: [email protected].

2 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007

LETTERS

CLIMATE CONTROL Right now, the world is like a one- roots—incoming sunlight now, carbon James R. Fleming is certain- legged driver in a car going downhill, dioxide later. Given the magnitude of the ly right: Those of us interested in the with a cramp causing that foot to push warming threat to all societies, such potential of geoengineering must be harder and harder on the accelerator, preparations are merely prudent, not careful not to underestimate the limits heading toward catastrophe. We don’t radical. Having only one slow-acting of our knowledge [“The Climate Engi- know if we can stop the car by pulling on tactic—emissions reduction—is a huge neers,” WQ, Spring ’07]. However, in an untested hand brake, but we might gamble. contrast to the scientists of the past be able to slow or stop it while also hop- We can study approaches to block- whom Fleming examines, today we ing to alleviate the leg cramp. True, we ing sunlight now when costs seem low— must work with the knowledge that may swerve a bit, even dangerously, as perhaps a few hundred million dollars human activities already are changing we try to slow down, but should we not for an Arctic experiment. The idea is to the climate. try to do something? The real question learn from small perturbations how the In Fleming’s historical examples, is whether the risk of geoengineering is natural system responds. Both science the early proponents of geoengineering worse than the risk of global warming. and engineering progress this way when tried to create new types of changes— Michael MacCracken dealing with complex, interactive changes that humans had not been Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs systems. shown to be capable of making. Today’s Climate Institute But it’s not as though we don’t “climate engineers” are instead trying Washington, D.C. already know what high-altitude to undo the inadvertent but very real aerosols do. Volcanoes have cooled our climatic changes caused by humans’ James R. Fleming is wrong world repeatedly, notably after the Mt. burning of fossil fuels. when he says of me in his account of the Pinatubo eruption in 1991. That event We would all prefer that there was NASA conference we both attended, ejected enough aerosols into the strato- a simple way to stop global warming. “He, like his fellow geoengineers, was sphere to reduce temperatures in the But fossil fuel energy has become so largely silent on the possible unintended Northern Hemisphere by several tenths important to human survival and soci- consequences of his plan.” I simply point of a degree Celsius for years. etal well-being that it would be irre- readers to the workshop’s final report, When we get into trouble with an sponsible not to explore potential which they can find online at ever-warming climate, we will need to approaches to counterbalancing the cli- http://amesevents.arc.nasa.gov/main/ act. The time to do the research is now. matic effects of fossil fuel combustion. index.php?fuseaction=home.reports. As Washington Post columnist Robert We can only advance our under- Fleming is also wrong to conflate Samuelson recently wrote in a differ- standing if we do some careful research, early rainmaking and meteorology with ent context, “The trouble with the global at first primarily with numerical mod- trying to offset global warming by warming debate is that it has become a els and then, possibly, with very limited reflecting sunlight. The science and the moral crusade when it’s really an engi- field projects, all much less substantial situation are both very different. neering problem. The inconvenient in their impact on the climate than a vol- The bottom line here is to carefully truth is that if we don’t solve the engi- canic eruption. use our ability to attack warming at its neering problem, we’re helpless.” Gregory Benford LETTERS may be mailed to The Wilson Quarterly, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. Professor of Physics 20004–3027, or sent via facsimile, to (202) 691-4036, or e-mail, to [email protected]. The writer’s telephone number and postal address should be included. For reasons of space, letters are usually edited for University of California, Irvine publication. Some letters are received in response to the editors’ requests for comment. Irvine, Calif.

4 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 LETTERS

How ironic that after years in which scientific uncertainty was invoked as justification for inaction on greenhouse-gas emissions, uncertainty about the unintended consequences of geoengineering is now blithely swept aside by technophiles. Now that the reality of global warm- ing has become indisputable, we see proposals to address it through com- pensatory action, such as blocking the sun’s rays. Yet these ideas are in some ways an extension of the denial mode. They deny the overwhelming historical and sociological evidence that techno- logical interventions typically have unanticipated consequences. They deny the importance of plant and animal species that will be affected by a reduc- tion of sunlight. And they implicitly deny the rights of other nations to have a say in the future of our planet—as we (Americans) assert that a milky-white sky, filled with reflective particles, is “acceptable.” It may well be possible to block incoming sunlight. It may even be affordable. But the world produced will not be the same as the one that humans have lived in and loved for more than 100,000 years. Person- ally, I would like to see a future in which the sky is still blue. Naomi Oreskes Professor of History and Science Studies University of California, San Diego San Diego, Calif.

Why are so many brilliant scientists ultimately so unimaginative when it comes to the social and political consequences of their ideas? Today’s theoretical climate engineering seems like a macho sport in which the boy who comes up with the most splendid and daring idea wins. [ Continued on Page 7 ]

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 5 FROM THE CENTER

THE ORDEAL OF HALEH ESFANDIARI

Since May 8, our colleague and friend again invited to “cooperate”—which we believe meant, in Haleh Esfandiari has been held in Tehran’s notorious effect, to make a confession. She refused. She was sum- Evin Prison on utterly unfounded and outrageous moned to the Ministry of Intelligence once again, and charges. Haleh, director of the Wilson Center’s Middle when she arrived the next day, May 8, she was taken to East Program, has been accused of espionage and Evin Prison. Reportedly she is being held in Section 209, attempting to subvert Iran’s government. As The Wilson a shadowy wing of the prison that strikes particular fear Quarterly goes to press, there is reason to be hopeful that in the hearts of Iranians because it is where political pris- this gross injustice will be reversed, but Haleh has already oners are subjected to interrogation, solitary confine- endured 46 days of imprisonment. ment, and perhaps harsher treatment. In her work at the Wilson Center, Haleh has gained Since her incarceration, Haleh has been allowed international respect for her scholarship, her balanced only very brief phone calls to her mother. She has judgment, and her determined attempts to foster under- been denied access to her family, Swiss officials rep- standing between Iran, where she was resenting the U.S. government, and born, and the United States, which has others. Her lawyers’ attempts to meet been her home for the past quarter-cen- with her have been repeatedly rebuffed. tury. At the Center, she has sponsored At the end of May, Iran’s judiciary free and open dialogue on a wide variety spokesman issued a statement declaring of Middle Eastern issues and has con- that the Ministry of Intelligence had vened meetings notable for including par- charged Haleh with espionage, actions ticipants and attendees whose perspec- against national security, and propaganda tives span a broad spectrum of views. against the Islamic Republic. Three other Haleh’s ordeal began months before Iranian-Americans, two of whom are also her imprisonment. A diminutive, soft-spoken woman, a imprisoned, are said to face similar charges. mother and grandmother, Haleh was returning to Tehran’s Haleh is a scholar, not a spy. She has never sought to airport on December 30, 2006, after a visit to her 93-year- undermine the Iranian government or any other; the old mother, when her taxi was stopped by three masked, Wilson Center does not engage in such activities. The knife-wielding men who robbed her of her belongings, Center receives no funding from the U.S. government’s including her Iranian and American passports. When fund to promote democracy in Iran. Haleh’s detention has she applied for replacement documents, Haleh was invited no legal basis, and violates any international standard of to an “interview” by a man who turned out to represent justice and human rights. Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence. A series of interrogations Haleh’s ordeal has been a tremendous strain on her followed that stretched over the next six weeks and some- family and on all of us who know and admire her. The times lasted as long as eight hours a day. numerous efforts by many countries, organizations, It is our understanding that the questioning focused and individuals on Haleh’s behalf—quiet and diplo- almost entirely on the activities and programs of the Mid- matic at first, then, when that failed, full-throated— dle East Program at the Wilson Center, which are a mat- are heartening. More information on her case can be ter of public record. Her interrogators could have obtained found at the Center’s website, www.wilsoncenter.org, almost everything they wanted to know from the Center’s and at the independent website www.freehaleh.org. website and publications. We have one message: Let Haleh go. Haleh’s lengthy interrogations stopped on February 14. Joseph B. Gildenhorn Lee H. Hamilton In early May, she received another phone call and was Chair Director

6 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 LETTERS

[ Continued from page 5] James R. Fleming The scientific debate around Paul J. Lee H. Hamilton, Director invokes history to show how climate Crutzen’s proposal to use reflective BOARD OF TRUSTEES engineers utterly fail once they try out aerosols to thwart the sun’s rays has Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Chair David A. Metzner, Vice Chair their ideas, due in part to their total dis- focused on what would happen in the EX OFFICIO MEMBERS: James H. Billington, regard for the unintended consequences upper atmosphere, but no one seems to Librarian of Congress, Bruce Cole, Chair, National Endowment for the Humanities, Michael of their actions. A few intelligent people have considered the amount of air pol- O. Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, Cristián should not be allowed even the illusion lution produced here on the surface by Samper, Acting Secretary, Smithsonian Institution, of imposing their ideas globally, so eas- using artillery to launch the particles. Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education, Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States. Designated ily dispensing with the imperatives of Ironically, Crutzen built his career Appointee of the President from Within the Federal Government: Tami Longaberger fraternity and democracy. as an atmospheric chemist in the PRIVATE CITIZEN MEMBERS: Robin B. Cook, However, I am not as sure as Flem- 1970s by demonstrating how nitro- Donald E. Garcia, Bruce S. Gelb, Sander R. Gerber, Charles L. Glazer, Susan Hutchison, Ignacio E. Sanchez ing is that history provides the best gen oxides contribute to the forma- THE WILSON COUNCIL lessons for how we should handle mat- tion of photochemical smog. Thus, the Sam Donaldson, President ters today and in the future. Future world’s best-known advocate of geo- Elias F. Aburdene, Jennifer C. Acker, Weston Adams, Martin K. Alloy, Russell L. Anmuth, Cyrus A. Ansary, challenges may require bold ap- engineering has not considered the David Apatoff, David H. Bass, Lawrence E. Bathgate, Theresa E. Behrendt, John B. Beinecke, Joseph C. Bell, proaches, and engineering projects most basic environmental ramifica- Stuart A. Bernstein, James D. Bindenagel, Rudy unthinkable in one age have been suc- tions of his proposal in his own area of Boschwitz, A. Oakley Brooks, Donald E. Brown, Melva Bucksbaum, Amelia Caiola Ross, Joseph A. Cari, Carol cessfully carried out at a later time. expertise. This is symbolic of the A. Cartwright, Mark Chandler, Peter B. Clark, William T. Coleman, Dale Coudert, Mac Donley, Elizabeth Nevertheless, historians’ hindsight myopia of the geoengineers’ plans to Dubin, F. Samuel Eberts, Mark Epstein, Melvyn J. certainly exposes the limitations of create “a planetary thermostat.” Estrin, Susan R. Farber, A. Huda Farouki, Michael Fleming, Joseph H. Flom, Charles Fox, Barbara simplistic technocratic approaches to Gregory T. Cushman Hackman Franklin, Norman Freidkin, John H. French, Morton Funger, Alma Gildenhorn, Michael Glosserman, weather and climate control, as with so Assistant Professor of International Roy M. Goodman, Raymond A. Guenter, Kathryn Walt Hall, Edward L. Hardin, Marilyn A. Harris, Patricia many other public questions. Environmental History Hassett, Gail Hilson, Laurence Hirsch, John L. Howard, Our ultimate courses of action University of Kansas Osagie Imasogie, Darrell E. Issa, Benjamin Jacobs, Miguel Jauregui Rojas, Sheldon Kamins, James should arise from the broadest con- Lawrence, Kans. Kaufman, Edward W. Kelley, Christopher J. Kennan, Joan Kirkpatrick, Willem Kooyker, Steven Kotler, sensus possible, taking into account Markos Kounalakis, Richard L. Kramer, William H. In The Revenge of Gaia Kremer, Daniel L. Lamaute, James C. Langdon, the multiple and often conflicting (2006), Raymond Learsy, Francine Gordon Levinson, Harold O. interests of stakeholders around the scientist James Lovelock gives a more Levy, Frederic V. Malek, David S. Mandel, Anastasia K. Mann, Jeffrey A. Marcus, Thierry Marnay, John J. world. Beyond think tanks and small sympathetic portrait of some of the cli- Mason, Jay Mazur, Stephen G. McConahey, Thomas F. McLarty, Donald F. McLellan, Alan Meltzer, John scientific communities, the real world mate engineers criticized by James R. Kenneth Menges, Tobia G. Mercuro, Kathryn Mosbacher, Jeremiah L. Murphy, Martha T. Muse, is muddy, and scientists cannot pre- Fleming, which may interest readers Stuart H. Newberger, John E. Osborn, Paul Hae Park, tend to be above multifaceted debates, as a comparison. Lovelock’s view—one Jeanne L. Phillips, Michael J. Polenske, Rob Quartel, Thomas R. Reedy, Edwin Robbins, Nina Rosenwald, dirty national and international poli- Fleming shares—is that scientific dis- Juan Sabater, Anthony Scaramucci, Steven E. Schmidt, Patricia Schramm, Timothy R. Scully, Thomas H. tics, and general mudslinging. cussions can veer off into fantastic sce- Shuler, George P. Shultz, Raja W. Sidawi, John Sitilides, Matthias Dörries narios unless grounded by informed William A. Slaughter, James H. Small, Shawn Smeallie, Jennifer Smith, Thomas F. Stephenson, Robert A. Professor of History of Science criticism. One hopes that historians like Stewart, Peggy Styer, Peter Terpeluk, Norma Kline Tiefel, Timothy Towell, Mark C. Treanor, Anthony G. Université Louis Pasteur Fleming, as well as scholars from other Viscogliosi, Marc R. Viscogliosi, Christine Warnke, Peter S. Watson, Pete Wilson, Deborah Wince-Smith, Herbert Strasbourg, France disciplines, will continue to be invited to S. Winokur, Diane R. Wolf, Paul M. Wolff, Joseph scientific meetings to raise these con- Zappala, Richard S. Ziman, Nancy M. Zirkin James R. Fleming rightly cerns and to place scientific debates in a The Wilson Center is the nation’s living memori- emphasizes the uncertain ramifications broader context. al to Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. It is located at One Woodrow of “declaring war on the stratosphere” Sharon Kingsland Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20004–3027. Created by law in in order to combat global warming. But Chair, Department of History of 1968, the Center is Washington’s only independent, Science and Technology wide-ranging institute for advanced study where there are a few things that we can be vital cultural issues and their deep historical back- sure of if one of the best-known geo- Johns Hopkins University ground are explored through research and dialogue. Visit the Center at http://www.wilsoncenter.org. engineering scenarios comes to pass. Baltimore, Md.

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 7 LETTERS

HOMELAND SECURITY return.” As of last fall, 100 percent of at least a year in effective operations. AND ITS DISCONTENTS illegal aliens caught entering the United Now is the time for DHS to be allowed Paul C. Light’s article “The States at the southern border were to settle in, develop its internal structure, Homeland Security Hash” [WQ, Spring returned to their country of origin. and work to make America safer. ’07] offers the wrong answer to the But most seriously, Light simply Paul Rosenzweig wrong problem at the wrong time. It is doesn’t see or appreciate the synergies Counselor to the Assistant Secretary for Policy outdated and inaccurate, and, at bot- that have arisen from the creation of Department of Homeland Security tom, fundamentally misconceives the the department. If he could sit in one of Washington, D.C. nature of homeland security today. the weekly “gang of seven” meetings of Light calls for the Department of DHS’s major component heads, he Paul Light replies: Paul Rosenzweig is Homeland Security (DHS) to be given would observe the intrinsic coordination correct that Congress recently moved the authority to regulate the chemical that the merger has created—coordi- the Fire Administration into FEMA. industry. It already does this. After many nation which will only grow stronger However, instead of merging the Fire years of effort by the Bush administra- with the passage of time. Administration’s major units into their tion, on October 4, 2006, Congress Light’s prescriptions for change are appropriate FEMA counterparts, the granted DHS the authority to regulate almost laughable. Most shockingly, he change left the Fire Administration high-risk chemical facilities. would undo the single greatest success standing as a quasi-independent sub- Light condemns the lack of person- of the merger—our ability to provide a sidiary of what the department has nel to reduce the immigration caseload unified approach to border security. called the “new FEMA.” backlog, but the backlog for the immi- Prior to the creation of DHS, the United Congress also gave DHS limited gration benefits that are within our con- States had multiple faces at the border— authority to regulate chemical plants, trol, such as the allocation of green cards, border patrol, customs, agricultural pro- but it set aside a much stronger meas- was reduced last September. tection, and maritime border control. ure, which, among other things, would He calls for the Federal Emergency Light would break up that unity of effort have given DHS the power to require Management Agency (FEMA) to by removing the agricultural and mar- plants to replace highly toxic chemicals rebuild and to absorb the Fire Admin- itime pieces. with much safer alternatives. istration, the preparedness bureaucracy, Little could be more damaging to These examples only serve to illus- and the state and local grants programs. homeland security. But perhaps most trate that much remains to be done in Congress mandated that reorganiza- remarkable of all, Light, perceived by order to create the strongest and most tion in the same bill that granted chem- some as an expert in governmental effective possible defense of the Ameri- ical security authority, and the work was organization issues, fails to understand can homeland. completed on March 31, 2007. the damage that following his advice It’s a calumny for Light to condemn would cause, or the inconsistency at the Paul C. Light analyzes a num- DHS for a lack of agility or adaptability. core of his analysis. At one point he ber of structural problems with the When the London transatlantic bomb argues, correctly in my view, that the large conglomerate (or holding com- plot was discovered last August, the department’s components suffered a pany) that constitutes the Department Transportation Security Administration loss of productivity because of the of Homeland Security. He points out and U.S. Customs and Border Protec- “churn” of reorganization. That loss of that some of the flaws are due to the tion changed their operational systems productivity has continued through two department’s initial design by five iso- within a matter of hours. additional substantial reorganizations— lated and inexperienced staffers in the And what Light sees as stasis at the nearly three wholesale changes in White House basement. I would add border is anything but. In less than two bureaucratic structure over four years. that this genesis also led to flaws in the years, we have completely reworked the And what is Light’s remedy for the personnel provisions enabled by the detention and removal process, chang- inefficiencies caused by reorganization? DHS bill. The department’s architects ing the old practice of “catch and Yet another reorganization! As experi- had no experience in personnel, and release” to the new rule of “catch and ence has shown, every change costs us the director of the federal govern-

8 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 LETTERS

ment’s Office of Personnel Manage- did some probing, and his account tance. Top-down efforts include ment was not even notified of the bill’s rings true. It is particularly telling on changes in government policies and provisions in this area until the day the differences between “micro” business practices to promote and sup- before they were announced. The approaches to economic develop- port the flow of resources. Bottom-up results were unfortunate. ment and “macro” approaches like programs include those that teach Embedded in the DHS bill was a Jeffrey Sachs’s. As one of Rich’s sub- practical skills for adults and children revolutionary provision allowing the jects says in the article, change must and provide sufficient resources to administration to modify the regula- be led by local people themselves— kick-start the production of food or tions that govern the federal personnel “only the wearer knows where the the ability to earn a living. system. The new rules gave DHS shoe pinches.” Rich neglects only one The Sauri experience as Rich managers much more latitude than key area: the importance of simply describes it is Africa in microcosm: polit- executives elsewhere in the federal gov- keeping bellies full. People freed of ical confusion, bureaucracy, corruption, ernment to hire, fire, and transfer per- hunger are liberated from lethargy, ethnic conflict, farming practices that sonnel. Congress and employee labor disease, and the time-consuming continue to deplete the soil, inadequate unions had blocked such personnel quest for their next meal; the incen- roads, no electricity, poor distribution measures each time they were intro- tive for crime is reduced. and communication. What happens duced in previous years, but the 9/11 My own experiences working with when Sauri leaves the Millennium Vil- crisis provided the necessary momen- several villages in rural South Africa have lages Project nest in 2009? Will the tum for their approval. led me to several observations that com- Kenyan government take over? It seems The problem was that the resulting plement Rich’s. Westerners often unre- unlikely. The same underlying issues, regulations eliminated some of the pro- alistically want fast solutions to prob- from poor infrastructure to local (and tections against arbitrary personnel lems that have in some cases existed for Western) cultural complications, will actions that had been won in hard bar- centuries. We are perpetually impatient still be there. gaining over the years by public with the pace of change. In a similar Ed Jesteadt employee unions. Predictably, the vein, throwing money at a problem does Chairman, Mission at the Eastward/ unions went to court to challenge several not fix it. Giving poor people valuable Macfarlan South Africa Partnership of the changes, and won decisions in assets without their having done any- Farmington, Maine their favor. This forced the Bush admin- thing to earn them does not make a istration to conduct negotiations after viable program. People must earn what the fact in a more contentious and dif- they receive. A microloan program that CORRECTIONS ficult atmosphere than it would have requires payback, for example, gives peo- The map of “the Shia world” on page 17 faced if it had bargained earlier. ple dignity and self-respect and empow- of the Autumn ’06 WQ should have As Light concludes, fixing some of ers them to take control of their own included Yemen, whose population is these problems is possible, but it will destinies. And donated assets such as approximately one-half Shia Muslim. not be easy. equipment, vehicles, and buildings often In “Lines in the Sand” [WQ, Winter James P. Pfiffner go to waste because poor people lack ’07], the year of Baghdad’s founding Professor of Public Policy the resources to maintain them. Or was incorrectly stated as 762 bc rather George Mason School of Public Policy worse, they will trade goods they are than ad 762. Also, the T. E. Lawrence Fairfax, Va. given for something else they would article quoted on page 62 originally rather have—sometimes food, other appeared in The Sunday Times, not times alcohol or drugs. The Times. ENDING POVERTY, ONE In any development effort, there In “Scatteration” [WQ, Spring ’07], VILLAGE AT A TIME must be top-down and bottom-up pro- “low suburban density” should have Sam Rich’s article “Africa’s grams in place at the same time, and been defined as one family per half-acre, Village of Dreams” [WQ, Spring ’07] they need to be implemented at a pace not one family per acre. is short on hard data, but he clearly set by the people receiving the assis- We regret the errors.

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 9 FINDINGS brief notes of interest on all topics

The Great Pretenders Johnny Depp. Leaning against a and started performing, first with Night of a thousand stars wall, Godfather Marlon Brando the Elvis and a Frank Sinatra glowered. impersonator, then solo. At a pro- As if gravitationally drawn In late May, one of Las Vegas’s ducer’s urging, she hired a Mardi together, Marilyn Monroe and tattier hotel-casinos hosted the Gras drag queen to refine the Sophia Loren joined Dolly Par- 16th annual ceremony honoring makeup. “I’m a blue-eyed ton, who fiddled with her low-cut celebrity impersonators, the Reel blonde—nothing like Cher except dress and twittered, “They’re Awards. Winner of the Lifetime for her cheekbones,” she said. hangin’ in there—literally!” Don Achievement Award was Jay “Doing the makeup takes two Knotts snapped photos of Roy Koch, a Ronald Reagan imper- hours. I blank out my face and Orbison. Bing Crosby and George sonator who in 2006 performed draw her face over it, change the Burns got caught up, as did John the ultimate act of mimicry. shape of my eyes, everything.” Belushi and Anna Nicole Smith “We’re presenting it,” explained a Irion polished her act by doing (hey, something new in common). George W. Bush look-alike, “post- fundraisers for community Edward Scissorhands Johnny humorously.” theaters all over Louisiana. Depp towered over the room and The Rising Star Award went to Now, having spent more than looked for someone to talk to, Lisa Irion, 47, an eerily spot-on $15,000 on costumes and wigs, perhaps envying the crowd Cher. Later, still in her Cher get-up, she performs at two or three cor- around Pirates of the Caribbean she waved away a stream of photo porate conventions and parties a implorers—“You get a sense of what it must be like to be the real one, just to have everyone feel they have access to you”—and recounted her rise to Cherdom. In 2003, after Irion had devoted 20 years to community theater in Abbeville, Louisiana, “middle of Cajun country,” an Elvis impersonator—“he made pretty good money, just in our area”—urged her to try Cher. Her first critic, her four-year-old son, saw her in wig and makeup and squawked, “You look like an alien!” Irion studied Cher’s videos and Moonstruck: Rising star Lisa Irion as Cher ... interviews, rehearsed intensively, . . . and au naturel.

10 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 FINDINGS

month, mixing singing and men and 5'5" for women—whereas Atlantic before delivery, as if comedy—a sheepish audience folks in parts of Europe have kept madly collecting frequent-flyer member always ends up in Sonny growing. In the Netherlands, miles. Bono wig and moustache for a relative to Americans of the same duet of “I Got You, Babe.” Book- sex, men are now almost 2 inches Slow and Slower 1 ers find her through her website, taller and women nearly 2/2 inches www.lisaascher.com. Charging up taller. “Native-born U.S. white men The life and death aquatic to $3,000 plus expenses for each are shorter than their counterparts En route to their summer feeding appearance, Irion makes nearly in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the grounds in the Antarctic, most as much as her lawyer husband. Czech Republic, Belgium, and Ger- humpback whales swim about 2.5 Money, yes; respect, no. “Peo- many, and black men are even miles per hour, but a few males ple think we’re a bunch of freaks shorter than that,” the authors write. amble at a stately 1.5 mph and sing. who believe we’re really the As possible causes of the height gap, Why? Michael Noad and colleagues artists we impersonate,” she said. they cite nutrition and health care. at the University of Sydney think “I am a housewife, a mother—I Whatever the reasons, some Euro- they have the answer, New Scien- have no desire whatsoever to be peans are looking down on Ameri- tist’s website reported in May: At Cher. I respect her but I don’t cans in more ways than one. the twilight of mating season, the idolize her. Or else they think it’s male humpbacks are looking for singing telegrams and glorified The Shipping News one last hookup. They dawdle, at karaoke. It’s not that at all. We the risk of arriving late for the buf- spend years and thousands of dol- Getting there first—or at all fet, so that more females can hear lars studying someone else’s look, Since 2003, John Bartholdi their serenades. voice, mannerisms, the whole and his logistics students at the Meanwhile, melancholy persona.” Georgia Institute of Technology news for the manatee. On After a pause, she added, “It is have put UPS, DHL, and Federal the list of endangered kind of weird. But if you think Express to the test. The school species since 1967, about it, I am an entertainer, pro- sends identical parcels to espe- manatees are oft offed viding a service to the corporate cially challenging addresses. by boats and other fast- market. It’s a profession. It may This year’s included Yangon, moving watercraft. In not be a conventional profession, Myanmar; Tikrit, Iraq; Harare, Coastal Management but it’s a profession.” Zimbabwe; Apia, Samoa; and (April–June 2007), the island of Florianopolis, Michael Sorice Movin’ on Down Brazil. DHL is 2007’s big win- and two col- ner, reaching all five sites, three leagues from Stature stops here of them first and the other two the Florida The menaced manatee In the 18th and 19th centuries, second. FedEx reached three Fish and Wildlife Americans were the tallest people locations, and UPS two. The re- Conservation Commission summa- on earth. Not anymore, according to maining packages were returned rize an attempt at manatee salva- a Social Science Quarterly article as undeliverable or, in one case, tion. They tested the speed of (June 2007) by John Komlos, of the lost. watercraft in a manatee-heavy University of Munich, and Ben- Results vary from year to year, zone, then erected six signs jamin Lauderdale, of Princeton. according to a Georgia Tech news cautioning “Watch Your Speed/ American height has remained rela- release. In the past, one shipper Max Fine $500,” with a sketch of tively stable since 1950—for the lat- insisted that a particular country an oblivious-looking manatee, that, est cohort, those now aged 24 to 27, didn’t exist, and a parcel made they write, enhances the sign’s 1 average heights are about 5'10/2" for nine roundtrips across the “attractiveness and thus the proba-

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 11 FINDINGS

bility of its being read.” we leave behind? found, the less socially involved they The results? Watercraft sped up. According to are—especially women. The other “Blatant noncompliance increased Weisman, a jour- study, by communication professor from eight percent to 14 percent,” nalism professor Quingwen Dong of the University the authors observe glumly. Gaines- at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Cali- ville-based ThreadPit sells a T-shirt of Arizona, a fornia, and two graduate stu- that may encapsulate the boaters’ few human dents, quizzed 240 MySpace attitude: “The Manatee—Nature’s creations could members. Users seeking Speed Bump.” last millions of romance online, Dong et al. years. One is report, tend to Touchy Shoppers Mount Rush- lack self-esteem. more, carved “Only con- Contagion in the cart in granite that nect!” admonishes Another kind of product place- erodes only an a character in E. M. ment can affect consumers’ deci- inch every Forster’s Howard’s End sions, according to Andrea Mor- 10,000 years. Survivor (1910). For some of us today, ales and Gavan Fitzsimons. In the Other objects human connection may first Journal of Marketing Research would survive for millennia, require electronic disconnection. (May 2007), Morales, of Arizona though wind, rain, and geological State University, and Fitzsimons, shifts would bury many of them: Coke Heads of Duke University, relate several tires, fire hydrants, and anything experiments involving products copper or bronze. Big names, but not the biggest resting in carts. In one test, Scanning the onetime United Not long after its creation in 1886, participants expressed less inter- States, an extraterrestrial tourist Coca-Cola called itself the “Intellec- est in trying a cookie if its package would find giant visages of tual Beverage.” An early Coke ad, was touching a box of feminine George Washington, Thomas Jef- reprinted in Fred Basten’s Great napkins. In a second experiment, ferson, Abraham Lincoln, and American Billboards (Ten-Speed participants estimated a higher fat Theodore Roosevelt, plus, some Press), features Lillian Nordica, content for rice cakes if the trans- 1,500 miles away, the bronze diva of the Metropolitan Opera. parent package was resting Statue of Liberty. All in all, not Coke’s more recent celebrity against a container of lard. The bad relics. endorsers include actress Cour- authors recommend making teney Cox Arquette, Washington shopping carts with dividers and Your Space or Mine? Redskin Clinton Portis, and hip- compartments. Making shoppers hop singer Common, but not, so far rational, it seems, isn’t an option. Geek love as we can tell, a single opera star. Membership in MySpace and other Coke recently declined a gratis Remains of the Day social-networking websites has endorsement from a one-of-a-kind soared. Two new studies suggest celebrity. In the first cut of the Ital- A lost species speaks that, perhaps unsurprisingly, such ian film 7 Km da Gerusalemme In The World Without Us (St. Mar- sites may especially appeal to the (Seven Kilometers From Jerusalem), tin’s), Alan Weisman ponders a socially maladroit. In the first study, a modern-day Jesus quaffs a Coke, macabre but improbable scenario: Rob Nyland and two fellow graduate and an ad executive exults, “My God, the sudden disappearance of Homo students at Brigham Young Univer- what a testimonial!” But Coca-Cola sapiens, perhaps wiped out by a sity surveyed 146 members of net- objected, and the film was released pandemic. Stonehenge has lasted an working sites. The more time users sans Coke scene. A company repre- estimated 5,000 years. What would spend on the sites, the researchers sentative told Variety, “We are not

12 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 FINDINGS

interested in this kind of product does,” Redux partner Clegg Ivey told earlier plan flopped, when it turned placement.” the Associated Press. Elsewhere he out that a Florida company had maintained that the drink’s target already trademarked Censorship as a A Kick to Cocaine demographic, people in their twen- brand name for energy drinks. Mis- ties, “love our sense of humor, our fortune redux. Just say no attitude.” In September 2006, Nevada-based But humorless officialdom Techno Tête-à-tête Redux Beverages started selling a prevailed, and Redux pulled Cocaine cherry-flavored energy beverage from the shelves in May. “We tried to A chatroom of one’s own called Cocaine. Each eight-ounce contact Yves Saint Laurent to warn Alan Turing famously said that a drink had 280 milligrams of caf- them that Opium perfume could be computer can be said to “think” feine—more than three Red Bulls, next, but they were too busy enjoying when people using a keyboard to though less than a Starbucks the freedom of expression guaran- communicate can’t tell whether “grande” coffee. Cocaine cans fea- teed by the U.S. Constitution,” there’s a machine or a person on the tured the name in powdery-looking groused Redux’s Jamey Kirby. other end. Two widely regarded “chatbots” today are ALICE (Artifi- cial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), the work of Richard Wal- lace, and Jabberwacky, created by Rollo Carpenter. Wallace gave ALICE “thousands of possible con- versational gambits,” according to Discover’s special issue on the brain (Spring 2007), whereas Jabber- wacky “keeps track of everything people have said to it, and tries to reuse those statements.” Discover had the bots converse with each other. None of the inter- change would have satisfied Turing, but bits of it might have appealed to Samuel Beckett. Hyper-caffeinated Cocaine OD’d on its name—so now it doesn’t have one. ALICE: What is conscious- ness? letters against a red backdrop, and, Cocaine has since become a col- Jabberwacky: It is the great in smaller print, “The Legal Alter- lectors’ item—the street price has immaterial thing, the mystery at native.” The outré name made the tripled. the heart of each of us. drink a hit with consumers, as sales While continuing its legal battles A: I’ve heard of it before. topped $1.5 million in three to redeem the name Cocaine, Redux J: Where are you from? months, and a provocation to pols. came up with an interim strategy. A: I am originally from Beth- Attorneys general in Texas, Con- “The new concept is to use no name lehem, Pennsylvania. Now I live necticut, and Illinois banned the bev- at all,” Kirby told us. “When a in Oakland, California. Where erage, and the Food and Drug customer purchases a can, they can are you? Administration sent a warning letter. select from a series of names on J: We have some unsettled “Our product doesn’t have any stickers, or they can use a marker and business, my friend. cocaine in it. No one thinks that it write in their own name.” Redux’s –Stephen Bates

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 13 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Brazil’s Impossible City

For the first time in history, a majority of the world’s popula- tion now lives in cities. In the developing world, the names of vast new megacities— Dhaka, Lagos, Calcutta, Jakarta—are synonymous with human misery. But São Paulo is seeking to show that a megacity can work.

BY NORMAN GALL

São Paulo is a great city, but not a beautiful regularly shocked by corruption, prison revolts, failing city. The soot-darkened buildings of its old business public education, truck hijackings, armed robberies, center resist all claims of glamour or novelty. Its periph- and murders at traffic lights. The author-journalist ery is an oceanic sprawl, bursting with gaudy commerce Roberto Pompeu de Toledo described São Paulo as and neighborhoods where many thousands of shacks “frightening, giddy, tentacular. São Paulo does not inspire have become, within a generation, sturdy but nonde- admiration in a benign or gentle way. It provokes amaze- script houses of brick and concrete. Its residents are ment in a way that admiration becomes fear, a conse- quence of its enormity, its omnipresent sense of urgency, Norman Gall is executive director of the Fernand Braudel Institute of its disturbing awareness of being in an urban labyrinth World Economics in São Paulo. He has done research and reporting on Latin America since 1961. that reaches toward the infinite.”

14 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Aviewof central São Paulo,a vast area around the old downtown and one of several districts where skyscrapers have sprouted in the past fewdecades.

Yet for all that, São Paulo is a complicated, qualified suc- named for the national unit of currency); and a reduction cess. Because of the dynamism and diversity of its economy, in the influx of uneducated rural migrants. São Paulo has and despite its many contradictions, it now may be the made strides toward subduing crime, easing poverty, and most successful “megacity” in the developing world. creating opportunities for its people. But now the city The city has benefitted enormously from positive has reached a point where it must learn to govern itself if changes in Brazil as a whole for which it can claim little it is to move ahead. Even its blessings—its vitality and responsibility: the consolidation of Brazilian democracy dynamism—threaten to become curses. since 1985; the country’s subsequent opening to the world In recent decades São Paulo has become a multicen- economy; the end of decades of chronic inflation under the tered metropolis, akin to Los Angeles, Houston, and Brazilian government’s Real Plan, launched in 1994 (and Atlanta, with new hubs independent of the old business

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 15 São Paulo core and a new generation of spectacular office towers, lux- The population of Greater São Paulo, which now ury apartment buildings, and shopping malls. The frantic embraces 39 municipalities, has mushroomed from only paving of streets, the opening of new traffic arteries, and the 31,000 in 1870 to some 20 million today, growing by 4.8 continuous addition of tunnels and cloverleafs cannot percent yearly, perhaps the fastest long-term rate of big-city keep up with the proliferation of motor vehicles, whose growth in human experience. According to United Nations number has soared from one million in 1980 to nearly six estimates, São Paulo is virtually tied with New York, Mex- million today. Some 20,000 new cars, trucks, buses, and ico City, Seoul, and Mumbai (Bombay) for second place in motorcycles are licensed every month. Because there are population among the world’s giant cities, the five of them few maps of the city’s underground infrastructure, work far behind Tokyo, with its 35 million people. The global total gangs frequently drill into gas, power, sewage, and water of “megacities,” defined as cities with populations of 10 mil- lines, causing poisonous gas leaks, blackouts, explosions, lion or more, grew from two (Tokyo and New York) in 1950 and flooding. On the periphery of the metropolis, where to 20 in 2005. As a result of rapid urbanization in the late poor migrants from the countryside swarmed in the 20th century, more than half of the world’s 20 biggest decades after 1950, acres of precarious shacks, erected on cities now lie in poorer countries, with more sure to come. the banks of reservoirs and on other land supposedly pro- Their progress and consolidation are being severely tested, tected by environmental laws, have evolved into vibrant if just as in the fast-growing cities of the past. amorphous communities, studded with supermarkets, Some historical perspective is helpful. Between 1700 schools, bus terminals, and hospitals, as well as thousands and 1800, London’s population doubled, from 550,000 to of small businesses, linked to the city’s core by crowded 1.1 million, causing surges of crime and chaos in local gov- motorways. ernment. London’s growth rate was a fraction of what São

Guns drawn,two military policemen patrol one of São Paulo’s sprawling slums.Law enforcement is marginal in many areas,and is hampered by the fact that São Paulo has two separate police forces. But, like New Yorkers in the 1990s, many Paulistanos have become fed up with crime and are demanding change.

16 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 São Paulo

Paulo and other megacities in the developing world have thatched huts underwent a series of metamorphoses. experienced. Government corruption in 18th-century Lon- The village became a town, the town became a city, and don was at least as rampant as what one sees in São Paulo the city became a metropolis. today. Crime was widespread and law enforcement and São Paulo remained a primitive place until the cof- other essential municipal services were painfully slow to fee boom of the late 19th century, when it became the develop. London was swept by terrifying epidemics of main supply and trading center and railroad hub serv- smallpox and other diseases, a fate spared São Paulo by bet- ing the expanding plantations of the interior. In the ter nutrition and public health efforts. 20th century, it developed into an industrial power- São Paulo’s population growth has been fed by migrants house. Its rise began during World War I and the years from all over the world: Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, soon after, with immigrant manufacturers, mainly Japanese, Poles, Germans, Russians, Ukrainians, Leb- anese, Koreans, Bolivians, and Chinese, as well as THE POPULATION OF GREATER São waves of poorly educated but ambitious people from Paulo has mushroomed from 31,000 in backward regions of Brazil and other Latin American 1870 to nearly 20 million today. countries. Generally speak- ing, the foreign-born new- comers have quickly learned Portuguese and avoided eth- Italians, producing bulk and consumption goods too nic frictions, though they remain vulnerable to lure of unwieldy and expensive to import: tiles, cement, nails, criminality and other snares of poverty. lumber, plate glass, beer and soft drinks and their bot- São Paulo is now often classified by urban specialists as tles, shoes, boilers, coarse textiles, flour, pots and pans, a “world city” or “global city,” linked to a handful of others etc. In the 1950s, when the Brazilian government in Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa in what the implemented a policy of import substitution, promot- Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop- ing industrialization in order to curb dependence on ment has called “a common market of metropolitan foreign goods, São Paulo became the center of a new economies” that transcends national borders. Trade, finan- auto industry, as Volkswagen, General Motors, and cial flows, and connectivity are important, but most “world Ford, as well as many parts manufacturers, built plants. cities” are shaped by peculiar historical forces. All must Building upon its existing industrial base, São manage a legacy of poverty and inequity, and São Paulo has Paulo has since expanded its range of specialized and fared better than most. Its history as an industrial city creative strengths to become South America’s leading goes back more than a century, but unlike Detroit, Gdansk, center of corporate management, engineering, legal and other depressed cities it has held on to most of its indus- and financial services, trading and logistics, market- tries while diversifying its economy. ing, publishing, design, advertising, and software pro- duction. The worldwide ethanol boom is adding to the city’s winnings, enlarging its role as the entrepre- he village of São Paulo de Piratininga was neurial hub of a vast hinterland of agribusinesses— founded in 1554 by Jesuit missionaries seeking producing sugar, soybeans, oranges, corn, cotton, cat- T to convert Indians to the Roman Catholic faith. tle, and other commodities—that makes Brazil the The village lay at the rim of Brazil’s great Central world leader in ethanol development. São Paulo serves Plateau beside the Tietê River, which Portuguese ban- as South American headquarters for most blue-chip deirantes used as a route to penetrate the continental U.S. and European multinationals and as the decision- interior in their hunt for gold and native slaves. Over making center for 40 percent of the 500 biggest the course of five centuries, the flood-prone village of Brazilian companies, as well as most of Brazil’s largest

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 17 São Paulo banks. São Paulo’s stock exchange, the Bovespa, once criminal network reaching into the slums. The derided as a casino for insiders, has cleaned up its act PCC reacted to a sudden transfer of its imprisoned lead- and now attracts huge volumes of foreign money. ers to a more secure jail by ordering a revolt by inmates Share prices have quadrupled since 2002, corrected in 73 prisons in tandem with an urban guerrilla offen- for inflation, rising twice as fast as those of the Shang- sive. Its members in the metropolis responded by burn- hai stock exchange. Yale economist Robert J. Shiller, ing buses, banks, and public buildings and murdering policemen in hit-and-run attacks. The police re- sponded by killing more THE RICH, AND MANY others, fear than 100 people, several of them found later to be violence, but it is mainly the poor who innocent. Obscured by horror suffer its effects. stories such as the PCC attack is São Paulo’s prog- ress in reducing crime. In author of the best-selling Irrational Exuberance the first half of the 1990s, homicide was the main (2000), wrote after a recent visit to São Paulo that cause of death of children between ages 10 and 14. “there are reasons to believe that Brazilians might be São Paulo’s periphery was known as a kind of Wild rationally exuberant.” West, a squatters’ zone where everything was up for São Paulo added to its economic preeminence a grabs and government authority was ineffective or new role as Brazil’s cultural capital beginning in the simply absent. The murder rate was a cocktail brewed 1960s, when the federal government departed from Rio by population density, drugs, alcohol, short tempers, de Janeiro to the new inland capital of Brasília, sapping and widespread possession of firearms. Since 1999, the great port city of vitality. São Paulo today is a city however, the number of killings has dropped by more of theaters, art galleries, museums, and nightspots for than 50 percent, to levels still above what may be jazz and Brazilian popular music. An elegant old rail- called civilized but nevertheless following the dra- road station was remodeled during the late 1990s into matic downward curve in murders experienced by the Sala São Paulo, which houses an excellent sym- New York City during the 1990s. phony orchestra and is acclaimed as one of the world’s Organized social movements, an aroused public finest concert halls. fed up with violence, and action by city authorities São Paulo’s rich entertain themselves at the city’s account for a good share of the improvement. But multiplying world-class restaurants, galleries, and bou- longer-term trends working in favor of the poor made tiques. Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, and other high-end ven- a significant difference. As the benefits of democratic dors have opened shops in order to capitalize on a lux- stability and low inflation gradually emerged, public ury goods market that grew by 32 percent in 2006. But investment flowed into schools, health posts, water- the wealthy seek refuge from the city’s perils and incon- works, the electricity infrastructure, and sewage treat- veniences in an expensive infrastructure of armored ment. Few streets on São Paulo’s periphery today cars, bodyguards, and protected condominiums. The lack paving and lighting. Primitivism and violence in very rich take to the air—São Paulo has the world’s outlying areas are giving way to rising living stan- second-largest fleet of helicopters, outdone only by dards and to consolidation of communities and New York. The rich, and many others, fear violence, but institutions. it is mainly the poor who suffer its effects. Cash incomes of poorer people have risen, aided by Last year on a weekend in May, the entire city was the reduction of inflation after 1994, which has made stricken with fear by a powerful prison gang called life more predictable, stopped the erosion of salaries, Primeiro Comando da Capital, which controls a vast and made possible the accumulation of savings. Those

18 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 São Paulo savings can be invested in improving homes and open- murders dropped by 80 percent over the next seven ing small shops. The official unemployment rate is 11 years. More and better policing and greater efforts to percent, but that number doesn’t capture the complex confiscate unregistered weapons partly explain the reality of a city in which roughly half of all workers big decline in violence. But there were deeper causes remain in the informal economy. as well. One was a rise in incomes and the expansion As an indicator of the improvement in human wel- of commerce at all levels, seen in the blossoming of fare, the infant mortality rate in São Paulo has plunged new supermarkets, street vending, small neighbor- from 51 per 1,000 live births in 1980 to 12 today. Since hood repair shops, and even home-based bakeries the late 1970s, the share of population served by piped where women sold candy and cake. The people who water has expanded from 50 percent to 99 percent, capitalized on these economic opportunities became while the sewage network has grown to reach 88 per- stakeholders in the cause of peace and stability. The cent of homes, against only 39 percent in 1978. Nearly fact that more young people between ages 15 and 25 all families now have refrigerators and televisions, and are in school and off the streets, notwithstanding the more than 60 percent of homes have washing poor quality of teaching, also helps to explain the machines, compared with 46 percent in 1992. decline in homicides (as well as teenage pregnancies). One of the success stories belongs to Reni Adriano Batista, 25, who came to Diadema with his family uch of São Paulo’s story can be seen in from the rural state of Minas Gerais in 1990. “I didn’t microcosm in the suburban municipality of know what ...a city was. I thought São Paulo was a MDiadema, where my organization, the Fer- place for rich people where I could study beyond the nand Braudel Institute of World Economics, recently fourth grade and where we could have TVs, fridges, conducted monthly forums on public security with cit- and cars,” he says. “We plunged immediately into a izens’ groups, local officials, and police chiefs. Between struggle for survival. We lived in a noisy shack that was 1950 and 1980, Diadema’s population grew at an aver- so crowded that I had no place to study, so I read by age annual rate of 16 percent, three times as fast as the light of our kitchen stove while the family was that of metropolitan São Paulo, thanks to the migra- asleep. For me and my friends, São Paulo was a place tion of poor people from all over Brazil, lured by jobs to dream of new professions: doctors, journalists, in the auto industry and related businesses. One of the engineers. For some of us, this is beginning to happen.” migrants was Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Batista is now a philosophy student at São Paulo’s Lula da Silva, whose left-wing Workers Party won its Catholic University. first election in Diadema in 1982 and has subsequently run the local government most of the time since. The three decades after 1950 brought fevered con- ne should not exaggerate the progress in struction and disorder on São Paulo’s outskirts. Diadema. Its broad and prosperous-seeming Wooden shacks and crude houses of hollow brick Ocentral avenues, with bus terminals, super- formed a densely packed jumble on Diadema’s hilly markets, fast-food restaurants, and automobile dis- terrain, where conflicts constantly erupted, often set- tributorships, mask continuing poverty. The average tled by hired killers called justiçeiros. At the entrance monthly income of heads of households in Diadema to two bakeries in an area called Jardim Campanário, in 2000 was half the average for the municipality of macabre lists were scrawled on rough signs that São Paulo. Yet Diadema’s example shows that serious announced the names of those to be murdered in crime can be reduced fairly quickly when new com- coming days. Graffiti bearing the names of those munity interests combine with more effective action marked for murder also appeared on walls along by local authorities. In Diadema, poor people devel- Jardim Campanário’s streets. oped a stake in stability through a more accessible In 1999 Diadema recorded one of the world’s high- political structure, stronger public institutions, and est homicide rates, 141 per 100,000 population. But the expansion of commerce, which denied space to

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 19 São Paulo

Street vendors and small shops have multiplied thanks to Brazil’s growing economy,creating a newgeneration of entrepreneurs with a stake in stability. criminal activity. Four decades after the start of the cation in almost all of Latin America. In 1980, only 38 migratory surge, Diadema no longer is a city trapped percent of children in Diadema finished four years of in a downward spiral of apparently insoluble crises. schooling, and only eight percent completed eight Instead, it is showing the strength of democracy and years. Today primary schooling is nearly universal, as is engaged in the process of civilization. in the rest of Brazil. Secondary education has In Brazil, as in many other countries, public edu- expanded rapidly, but one-third of adolescents still cation is the main instrument for achieving social remain outside the classroom. The main problem, justice. But São Paulo has a long history of educational however, is the low quality of teaching. Until recently, neglect. “Differences will widen if there’s no improve- there was little popular pressure to improve public ment in education,” says Francisco Vidal Luna, an education and a general indifference to the issue on economic historian who is São Paulo’s planning sec- the part of the political class. The system has not col- retary. “Hunger here is no longer an issue, but poor lapsed entirely because the public demands some kind people lack opportunities, and there are few oppor- of schooling and because the education system pro- tunities without better schools. São Paulo operates one vides an abundant source of jobs and pensions for of the world’s largest school systems, but we don’t teachers and administrators, who in turn provide a even have a uniform curriculum, so there’s little coher- useful bloc of votes for political elites. ent teaching, and teachers are absent much of the But now there are opportunities for change. They time. It’s no wonder we do so badly on standard tests.” have been created because school enrollments are no Despite impressive growth in enrollments in the longer expanding rapidly, thanks mainly to declining recent past, the public schools of São Paulo operate fertility rates and lower rates of migration to São within a culture of failure that pervades public edu- Paulo. In March, Brazil’s federal government an-

20 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 São Paulo nounced a broad program of reforms in public edu- there is little prospect for change in the near future. cation, including literacy testing for young children Confused and overlapping lines of political and minimum salaries for teachers, but much still authority and inadequate resources also contribute to depends on whether the political system can actually the city’s failures. São Paulo differs from most of the produce and implement such badly needed reform world’s other giant cities in that it is neither an impe- policies. rial nor a national capital. Tokyo and Mexico City, for example, are national capitals with status as self- contained states within their countries’ political struc- espite its successes and great vitality, São ture. Both those cities receive generous transfers of Paulo is being challenged as never before funds from their national governments, while São D by problems of scale and political disorgan- Paulo transfers money to the federal treasury to sup- ization. Demands for social justice—job opportuni- port Brazil’s poorer regions. The 11 million people of ties, better schools, improved mass transportation, the municipality of São Paulo, less than six percent of and other public services—are aggravating problems Brazil’s population, pay 28 percent of all Brazil’s of scale and increasing pressure on the city’s weak political institu- tions. Here, as in other SÃO PAULO, A BENEFICIARY of good megacities in the devel- oping world, governance fortune, must seize control of its destiny if it is a key issue. São Paulo’s colossal is to avoid decay and disintegration. growth during the 20th century overwhelmed the city’s capacity for institutional development and bred taxes. Even as the city sends a huge share of revenue political disorganization and corruption. Paulo Maluf, to the state and federal governments, it also has the twice mayor and once governor of the state of São third-largest public budget in Brazil, smaller only Paulo, was indicted earlier this year for allegedly than those of the federal government and the state of stealing $11.6 million from a construction project. São Paulo. But local taxes are low for a metropolis of Maluf could not explain how he came to possess some its size and unmet needs. São Paulo collects 2.5 per- $900 million in offshore deposits in Switzerland and cent of its gross product in municipal taxes, against other financial havens. the 5 percent that local governments in New York City Political representation in the city is as badly dis- and Tokyo take in. Because of low local taxation and torted as income distribution. All 55 members of the meager transfers from the federal government, São São Paulo City Council are elected at large, leaving Paulo lacks the public investment that usually bene- each of them responsible not to specific local elec- fits a political center. It depends, more and more, on torates but to the whole city of 11 million people. There its own skills and economic vitality. is little incentive for them to deal in depth with the Great cities have always been hard to manage. problems of specific neighborhoods and organizations. Like other complex systems, they grow spontaneously Between quadrennial elections, most council mem- but then demand more management and investment bers concern themselves chiefly with raising money to if they are to avoid decay and disintegration. A time finance their next citywide election campaign and comes in the lives of big cities when the need for reg- wrestling for power within the incestuous political ulation and rational allocation of space, money, and class. The system deters educated people, more capa- other resources prevails over impulsive processes. ble of managing a complex metropolis, from entering For São Paulo, the beneficiary of so much good for- politics at all. The problem is widely discussed, but tune, that time is now. ■

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 21 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Coasting

Why do we flock to the beach? For some fun, a break from the heat, an escape from familiar routine. But “it’s always ourselves we find in the sea,” E. E. Cummings observed.

BY JAMES MORRIS

How long till American beaches, like American cigarette packs, carry a government warning label? “Danger: Exposure to the sun may cause skin cancer. Sand in amounts sufficient to block breathing passages will cause asphyxiation. Prolonged submer- sion beneath the surface of water without countervail- ing apparatus causes death. The one-hot-dog limit is enforced by radar.” The innocence is off the excursion. Remember when a day at the beach was something to look forward to, an occasion for the family to participate in a ritual as fixed as any in a house of worship, or for teenagers to gather in pairs to confirm a passion or shift its allegiance? Now the immortalitarians have had their say: A sunny after- noon at the beach—heck, a bright hour—is pretty much a crapshoot with death, as alarming as trans fats or Dr. Phil. The blithe old song might as well have been advis- ing seppuku: “Just direct your feet/To the sunny side of the street.” Sure, you can coat yourself in lotions with SPF numbers approaching triple digits and names like

James Morris is an editor at large of The Wilson Quarterly.

22 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 23 Coasting

Mummy and Burka, but can you be absolutely certain of land and its beginning, at the beginning of water and you haven’t left a fleshy chink in the chemical armor? its end. But the division—land here, water there—is On the other hand, as in response to so much other always under negotiation, resulting in a sometimes good advice—vote; learn to tell the difference between unpredictable mingling of the two. In that damp con- Kurdistan and Kyrgyzstan; come to terms once and for junction, somewhere, surely, there’s a lesson for life. all with the Brussels sprout; adopt a glacier—we may It may be time to go indoors. choose instead to follow our wayward hearts. And pack the cooler and grab the blanket and folded lounge chairs and iPod and indispensable little phone unit, and make ou may not think of beaches when you think of straight for the sand. New York City, but you should. Manhattan and But don’t take a poet. Beaches cause poets to inflate Y Staten are islands, after all, and Brooklyn and like vatic bullfrogs. Matthew Arnold, for instance, star- Queens sit on the western end of Long Island. The ing at the pebbly, moonlit beach in Dover, saw the “naked southern edge of that island, starting in Brooklyn and shingles of the world,” and heard “the eternal note of sad- extending far beyond the city limits toward the El ness” and the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the Dorado of the Hamptons, is strung with Atlantic Sea of Faith, and imagined a world where there was “nei- beaches. Within the city’s bounds are Coney Island ther joy, nor love, nor light,/Nor certitude, nor peace, nor Beach, Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach (which is in help for pain.” I’m guessing there was no smoothie shack Brooklyn), Breezy Point, Jacob Riis Park, and Rock- on Dover Beach. away Beach (Far Rockaway, too). And not far past the city Even Robert Frost wasn’t immune: line are Long Beach and maybe the best of them all, Jones Beach, where, to a small boy 60 years ago, the sand Great waves looked over others coming in, seemed cleanest and the waves tallest, and where a vast, And thought of doing something to the shore glistening pool with deck and diving boards was a refuge That water never did to land before. . . . from the roughneck ocean. It looked as if a night of dark intent Twentieth-century photos of some of those beaches Was coming, and not only a night, an age. show subway-car crowds, and generally suggest a golden Someone had better be prepared for rage. age of beachgoing from the 1920s to the 1960s. My mem- (“Once by the Pacific”) ories from the years around the end of World War II are of great stretches of sandy shore—“great” to a child being For me, unlike for an agitated poet, a beach has a very flexible measure—with no room for a single addi- always been a perfect setting for lazy reverie, for thoughts tional blanket. Where did all these people come from? Sur- drifting in and out of focus. The origin of the word rounded, minimized, overlooked, I learned on a New “beach” is itself unclear, having been wiped from the York City beach—probably on a Sunday—that I was not record as if . . . as if it had been written on sand in the the center of the universe after all. path of a wave. Water has its way with a shore; if you can’t The beach was a schoolroom before I knew what a step into the same river twice, neither can you step twice schoolroom was. There I learned socialization (“Why onto the same beach. No matter how familiar, the place don’t you go and play with that little boy over there?”), is always new. An empty beach can have the purity of a and skills that would come in handy in later life (“Why blank page, on which anything might be set down; a are you crying?” “He said he doesn’t want to be my crowded beach, the expectancy of a stage with lots of friend anymore. So I smashed his truck.”) players enacting simultaneously their tiny individual I learned independence. I would go alone with pail dramas. Most of the playlets will end with the afternoon, and shovel to the water’s edge, where the sand was but while they’re being enacted, they’re all-consuming. wettest and pocked with small, scaly creatures. I was per- That’s because a beach is a self-contained world, at an haps 50 feet from my parents, having sworn to them to absolute remove from the settings of ordinary life. It’s a go no farther and having marked the location of their Janus-y world, too, and edgy. It positions you at the end umbrella by color and angle and position along the line

24 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Coasting of lampposts on the boardwalk in the distance. I would once run the length of the beach, on either side of a cen- dig for 10 minutes, though bored after two, then decide tral, pennant-flying picnic pavilion. But by the time I to return to home base. But uh-oh, the landscape had knew the beach, the boardwalk and cabanas were no shifted. Someone had moved the umbrellas, or maybe longer maintained, and, year by year, the one-two punch the boardwalk, because nothing was where it had been. of glacial northern winters and surprisingly full-bore Then a mother more caring than my own, who should summers had taken a toll on the wooden structures and never have let me go in the first place, would read the felled another section. The huge lake lapping the beach message on my alternately pinched and tremulous face: froze solid each winter, to a depth that allowed cars to be “Are you lost?” And riding some maternal broadcast driven on portions of its steely-smooth surface in the per- frequency, the surrogate mother would home in on my fect gray stillness before snow. own. That snow inevitably covered the beach as well, and And I learned shame. Near the end of the day, like come spring, when the snow left, more of the virtuosic others of my age up and down the beach, I heard a vari- sand had left too, or had had its purity diminished by a ant of the same threat: “You’re not sitting in the car in new admixture of ordinary dirt. The sand went a little those wet trunks. Do you want a rash?” So we were ordered to stand on blan- kets and hold towels round SURROUNDED, MINIMIZED, over- our waists. Our trunks were yanked down, we looked, I learned on a New York City beach were patted to aridity with the towels, and clean that I was not the center of the universe. underwear was yanked up. Never soon enough. But sometimes a kid would wriggle free of a parent during more offkey; left ungroomed, it would eventually go the drying phase and dance, jump, hop, and yell—naked! mute. Lying on that anomalous swath of shore late one “That’s stupid,” I would think, taking refuge in the spring, reading T. S. Eliot for a term paper (in those days catchall critical adjective that for a five-year-old the poet was at the height of his regard), I came to the expresses, inter alia, confusion, disgust, exasperation, passage that promises to show a reader fear in a hand- and dismay. I was just too young to recognize a future ful of dust. Such is the risk in sunlit reverie that I won- celebrity in the making. dered what the poet would have made of a handful of our singing sand. Would it have sung to him? Would he Ý have walked on it with his trousers rolled? Would those vocal granules, displaced from their natural home, have A dozen or so years later, I began to visit a beach that told him that by no means is our end always in our had been carved from several hundred feet of woods on beginning? a shore of Lake Champlain in upstate New York, not far from the Canadian border. The beach was on the prop- Ý erty of a former resort hotel, and an old brochure boasted that the exceptionally fine white sand had been brought Of course, not every sunlit beach is conducive to from Florida. It was “singing sand,” said the brochure, reverie. A couple of decades later still, I stood on the deck and if you put your ear to a small mound as it settled and of a house overlooking a beach south of Los Angeles that ran, you would hear its song. Thanks to the brochure’s appeared to enforce an age restriction: Be under 35 or encouragement, many swore that they did, though no be gone—and start having second thoughts at 32. The two ever described the same sweet susurrus. area was probably posted for dreaming. Between the A white wooden boardwalk and row of cabanas had deck and the start of the beach, which extended hun-

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 25 Coasting dreds of feet to the ocean, was a large expanse of paved school acquaintances, who had suspended for the after- surface, and on it a nonstop cavalcade of joggers, power noon the narrow alliances by which they lived during the walkers, cyclists, rollerbladers, and skateboarders, each week in favor of a weekend UN-ish coalition of the will- cohort in its delineated row, passed in a spandexed blur. ing and frisky. Beyond them, on the beach itself, teams of volleyballers A minimalist aesthetic dictated the girls’ attire, which jumped, lunged, and fell, and past the volleyballers, in was scarce as the day’s clouds, while a preference for mar- the distant ocean, kayakers struggled and surfers itime hip-hop dressed the boys in slack baggy trunks to bobbed, rose, and tumbled. (But for the sand and ocean, below the knee. Boys ran into the water and returned to I might have been in Boulder, an immortalitarian strong- shake their wet bodies above recumbent, unaware girls, hold, where to be still is grounds for deportation.) You’d who were perfectly, gratefully aware. Lithe forms, male have needed Hieronymus Bosch to put this California and female, lay prone and supine in calibrated proxim- scene on a canvas, and even he might have been flum- ity, stirring occasionally for the oh-so-matter-of-fact moxed by the ranks of busy figures to the horizon. mutual application of a suntan product. The concen- tration of hormones dancing above the site reduced vis- Ý ibility to zero. Then the boys advanced to the water to put on a show In another decade, I was thigh deep and thought free for the girls. To strut. To skim. But not on surfboards— in the placid waters off a gulf coast Florida beach, when wrong coast of Florida for that. No, the small, brightly I noticed just ahead of me in the shallows first one fin and colored boards the boys carried merely slid along the sur- then a second, attached to what were plainly not por- face of the wavelets at the gulf’s edge. After gauging the poises. The two circling sand sharks, perhaps five feet force and direction of the ripples as painstakingly as a long, were not man-eaters, but maybe man-samplers, golfer judging a showdown putt, a boy would sprint a and certainly man-bruisers. A hundred feet to my left short distance along the shore, throw down his board, was a stretch of water filled with dozens of adults and jump on, and be carried a car’s length. Or not. Most children. I walked to the closest couple of parents watch- attempts ended in disaster, an opportunity to fall one way ing the kids. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but I just saw onto the sand and roll a bit, or the other into the shallow two sharks right over there. Maybe you should get the water and make a sprawled-arms splash. The girls sat kids out. . . .” “Where?!” “Right there.” “Hey kids! Sharks! upright on the grandstand blankets, cheering or razzing Over here!” And in the best moth-to-flame, floatie-to-fin, their champions. While awaiting their turns at a run, limb-to-jaw tradition, the curious families laughed and boys wrestled one another or did handstands, and the splashed their way toward an additional holiday sunshine behind them, bouncing from the water, turned memory. them momentarily dark against the light. They were all exultant, eternal, oblivious. And the reverie began. Looking up and down the ecently I returned to that same gulf beach, on beach, I could see who many of them would become: a perfect May Sunday. I watched a group of large—way too large—adults, variously tattooed, their R teenagers, male and female, all more-or-less 16, handstand days long past, their bikinis tucked under begin to gather in early afternoon some 75 feet from yearbooks in a drawer. They would become parents, where I sat. An initial six spread two blankets, and they like those responsible folks down there close to the were joined in leisurely course by more than a dozen oth- water, with the little kids and an assortment of pails. And ers with blankets of their own. The patchwork encamp- soon enough they’d be middle aged, like those couples up ment grew by the hour and took its mood from the rau- near the dunes with no kids but with hats and an assort- cous music of a boom box set atop a sky-blue Styrofoam ment of newspapers. And fast as a wave recedes they’d cooler. Unable to hear more of their talk than the occa- be old, like, well, like someone with a mind vagrant and sional stray phrase or squeal, I invented a history for the addled, and sometimes bleached blank by too long a stay group. They were school friends, I decided, or at least in the sun. ■

26 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

One Hundred Years of Pragmatism

William James’s provoc- ative answer to the problem of maintaining religious belief in the modern age remains perhaps America’s most significant contribu- tion to philosophy and a source of inspiration for contemporary thinkers.

BY THEO ANDERSON

When William James retired from Har- vard in 1907, after 35 years on the school’s faculty, it felt like the beginning of a new life. As Profes- sor James, he once confessed to his brother, Henry, “I always felt myself a sham, with its chief duties of being a walking encyclopedia of erudi- tion. I am now at liberty to be a reality.” Perhaps no retirement has ever begun more productively than James’s. The New York Times ran a long article about his new book, Pragmatism, and “Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to Theo Anderson is a doctoral candidate in history at Yale Univer- sity. He is currently completing a dissertation on religious and cul- play with,” observed William James, shown here in a 1910 portrait, tural transformation in the United States between 1890 and 1940. “but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?”

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 27 Pragmatism reported that his ideas were taking the public square among scholars of a postmodernist persuasion. Like by storm. “When he appears on the lecture platform, these contemporary academic thinkers in literature, breathlessly listening crowds greet him as the mes- history, and other humanistic disciplines, James senger of some new gospel. Business men are caught always insisted that the human capacity to grasp disputing over their lunches about the correct mean- reality is radically limited—that there is no “God’s- ing of the word employed to designate the new faith.” eye” perch available to us. “Objective evidence and Pragmatism went through several printings in its certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with,” first year and helped set the agenda for James’s brief as he once put it, “but where on this moonlit and retirement. He spent much of his time refining dream-visited planet are they found?” aspects of his philosophy and defending it from crit- James’s embrace of uncertainty goes to the heart ics, until he succumbed to a chronic heart condition of the pragmatic philosophy, which denies the exis- in 1910, at the age of 68. tence of fixed, absolute truth and seeks to under- mine the notion that first principles are reliable guides to human behav- WILLIAM JAMES WITNESSED the ior. For the pragmatist, truth is not a static dawn of American modernity—and also essence but rather a pro- visional, ever-evolving helped to shape it. relationship between ideas and their conse- quences. A true idea is The interest swirling around Pragmatism’s pub- one that, if put into practice, achieves its intended lication was not wholly unexpected. James had been result. “The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property a renowned American intellectual since at least 1890, inherent in it,” James wrote in his most famous sum- and several of his works on religious themes—notably, mary of pragmatism. “Truth happens to an idea. It The Will to Believe (1897) and The Varieties of Reli- becomes true, is made true by events.” Consider a gious Experience (1902)—had gained a wide reader- simple example James once gave. When you meet a ship. But no one could have predicted just how new person, there are several possible results: She momentous Pragmatism’s publication would be— might like you, dislike you, or be indifferent. What- no one, that is, but James himself. Not long before the ever outcome you anticipate, it can only be made book’s appearance, he wrote to Henry that the intel- true in the actual encounter. And—a critical point— lectual currents it contained were “something quite your idea about what her response will be often like the protestant reformation.” He wouldn’t be sur- shapes that response. Believing she will like you prised, he said, if the book were someday “rated as makes that outcome more likely, and vice versa. epoch-making.” We don’t passively experience reality, in other For all its half-joking hubris, that prediction words. We actively shape it. This idea at the core of proved well founded. Pragmatism became America’s pragmatism has deeply radical consequences when most important contribution to the life of the mind translated into a comprehensive vision. Pragmatism in the 20th century. Filtered through scores of later holds that traditional philosophy’s quest to discern interpreters, it percolated across a broad segment of the “really real” is misguided—a waste of time that academic culture and influenced disciplines as leaves humans ill equipped to meet the challenges of diverse as literary criticism and legal theory. And, in a rapidly changing world. What we need are not first sharp divergence from the typical trajectory of schol- principles that line up with some dubious, pre- arly works and theories, its importance has only ordained truth about the way things are; rather, we increased with the passage of time, particularly need better methods for creating and testing our

28 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Pragmatism ideas, so that they help us become the kind of people parents, held appointments in three different aca- we want to be and build the kind of world we hope to demic departments, and fathered five children. The live in. “It is both astonishing and depressing,” wrote manuscript took 12 years to finish, ran to more than John Dewey, the most influential proponent of prag- 1,000 pages, and was a decade overdue. The sight of matism after James, “that so much of the energy of it nauseated him. James grumbled to his publisher mankind has gone into fighting for . . . the truth of that with another decade of tinkering he could trim creeds, religious, moral and political, as distinct from it by half, but “as it stands it is this or nothing—a what has gone into effort to try creeds by putting loathsome . . . mass, testifying to nothing but two them to the test of acting upon them.” In Pragmatism, facts: 1st, that there is no such thing as a science of James wrote that abstractions such as God and Rea- psychology, and 2nd, that W. J. is an incapable.” son become existential security blankets: “You can Despite these misgivings, production proceeded rest when you have them.... But if you follow the throughout the summer, and The Principles of Psy- pragmatic method, you cannot look on any such chology appeared in September 1890. It instantly words as closing your quest. You must bring out of established James’s reputation as one of the most each word its practical cash-value, set it at work formidable psychologists in the world. Encouraged by within the stream of your experience. It appears less its reception, James revised and condensed the book as a solution, then, than as a program for more work, into a text for college courses, Psychology: The Briefer and more particularly as an indication of the ways in Course. which existing realities may be changed.” The renown that James achieved with Principles This definition of truth as a provisional, evolving and The Briefer Course opened up a new world of relationship between ideas and consequences stands opportunities in public lecturing. In late 1891, the as a direct challenge to orthodox religion. For the reli- Harvard Corporation commissioned him to deliver a giously orthodox, truth is something to be accepted series of 10 lectures in the university’s new Depart- and defended rather than “made” in the realm of ment of Pedagogy. In subsequent years, he repeated human experience. And therein is a curiosity worth these talks at Harvard’s summer programs and took exploring on the centennial of Pragmatism’s publi- them on the road, speaking to teachers across the cation. In light of the book’s radical conception of nation. But James set his sights far higher than sim- truth, it might appear to clash with the religious ply translating academic psychology into practical interests that occupied much of James’s time and advice for educators. Throughout the 1890s, he also energy. Yet his reference to Pragmatism’s publication developed a set of popular lectures that were religious as an event akin to the Reformation was apt, because in the widest sense. They were aimed mainly at col- the overriding aim of James’s career was to defend lege students, and their openhearted earnestness, religious faith from the onslaughts of modernity. vaguely embarrassing in this more ironic age, is cap- Pragmatism, far from a departure from that project, tured in their titles: “Is Life Worth Living?” for exam- was its culmination. ple, and “What Makes a Life Significant.” James began Recovering the sources of James’s radical reimagining the former essay with a reference to the “deepest of truth and religion must begin with a brief account of the heart of all of us,” where “the ultimate mystery of family and the culture in which he came of age. things works sadly.” He had personal reasons for broaching basic exis- tential questions with audiences poised on the brink n 1878, when he was 36 and preparing to move of adulthood. His own experience had taught him just out of his parents’ home, James signed a contract how lonely the “lonely depths” could be, and how Ito write his first book, a survey of the fledgling fragile one’s psychic resources in the face of shatter- field of psychology. He told his fiancée, Alice, that roy- ing depression. In one of his books, James included alties from its publication would help support them, the striking story of a correspondent. Going about his but by the time he completed it he had buried both business one day, the man was thunderstruck by the

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 29 Pragmatism memory of an epileptic patient he had once seen in an some of his educational psychology lectures and pub- asylum: a “black-haired youth with greenish skin, lished the following year as Talks to Teachers on Psy- entirely idiotic, who used to sit all day on one of the chology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals. The benches. . . . He sat there like a sort of sculptured book went through two printings in its first two years Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing and was reprinted every year but one until James’s but his black eyes and looking absolutely non- death. human.” As James later admitted, this harrowing Sensitive to the charge of being a mere popular- experience was actually his own: “That shape am I, I izer, James vowed often to write another traditional felt, potentially. . . . After this the universe was academic monograph like his Principles of Psychol- changed for me altogether. I awoke morning after ogy. The closest he ever came was an unfinished morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stom- introduction to basic philosophical questions for col- ach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that I lege students. Instead, he spent most of the last never knew before, and that I have never felt since.” decade of his life tacking between two poles. If Prin- James was so deeply affected by this experience ciples was a formidable monograph, and his public because the boy in the asylum had become an embod- lectures in the 1890s had a distinctly homiletic flavor, iment of the philosophical question of free will: Do we The Varieties of Religious Experience and Pragma- control our own behavior and fate, or is the feeling of tism were serious works of scholarship that were control only an illusion? James had suffered bouts of highly accessible to general audiences. The continu- depression throughout his twenties, but in 1870, at ing appeal of both books is partly explained by the age of 28, he sank into the suicidal despair James’s graceful, lively prose. But many gifted writ- described above. Its source was the dread of being an ers from James’s era have long since been forgotten, utterly determined creature. “Nothing that I possess and the vast majority of scholarship is outdated can defend me against that fate,” he wrote of the within a few decades. Why, a century hence, is James’s mental patient, “if the hour for it should strike for me work still read, and why does it still seem relevant? as it struck for him.” The example was extreme, per- Audiences turned to him because he addressed fun- haps, but for James it pressed home the horrifying damental questions during a period of wrenching idea that all his behavior might be driven by mental changes and shifting foundations. James remains processes that lay beyond his conscious control. important because he witnessed the dawning of In late April 1870, while reading an essay by the American modernity—and also helped to shape it. French philosopher Charles Renouvier, James had a The issues he confronted were, and are, anything but sort of secular conversion experience. As he explained academic. it, he “saw no reason why his definition of free will— ‘the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts’—need be the definition illiam’s father, Henry James Sr., once of an illusion. At any rate I will assume for the said that skepticism was utterly foreign present—until next year—that it is no illusion. My W to him: He had never experienced it, not first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.” for a moment. And it does seem unlikely that Henry Though he cast this decision as little more than a ever suffered much doubt. He had neither the time thought experiment, he clung to it for 40 years as the nor the energy, consumed as he was with refining only hope of sanity and survival. and proclaiming his spiritual vision of reality, which This was the context for James’s foray into popu- was based on the writings of the Swedish mystic lar lectures on existential questions in the 1890s. Emanuel Swedenborg. According to Henry, the They apparently met a widespread need. He first divinity wasn’t so much an omnipotent being as the delivered his lecture “What Makes a Life Significant,” working out of a process: the evolution of humanity for example, at Stanford, Bryn Mawr, and other col- toward a higher, perfect state of being. lege campuses in 1898. It was then collected with Henry never found much satisfaction in his labor,

30 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Pragmatism yet he persevered year after year, trying to make his within religious circles when he lamented, in 1882, ideas clear while living off the fortune left to him by that “multitudes are drifting into the half-formed his father, a wealthy businessman in upstate New conviction that the reasons for faith seem one after York. For his effort, he was repaid with nearly total another to be dissipated by the advance of science and indifference by the general public. Some of the Tran- culture.” scendentalists, particularly Ralph Waldo Emerson, did At the same time, a tide of centralization and offer him friendship and gave him a sympathetic hear- standardization was sweeping American society. The ing. But eventually, even they grew tired of his eccen- rise of large corporations and the birth of “scientific tricities and constant hectoring. Trying to put a brave management” meant that Americans were increas- face on the matter, William once observed that if his father had been born in a different era, he “would ADRIFT AND UNCERTAIN in the have played a prominent, perhaps a momentous and intellectual and religious spheres, America critical, part in the strug- gles of his time, for he was embraced new methods and means of a religious prophet and genius, if ever prophet and standardization and control. genius there were.” What- ever the truth of that assessment, Henry’s work became increasingly irrelevant ingly brought within the compass of large organiza- as the years wore on. tions. Industrialization drove people from farms to Henry’s ambitions were thwarted, as William rec- cities and reduced to mere factory hands workers ognized, not only by his difficult personality but by the who had once possessed a degree of autonomy built cultural context in which he wrote. Henry came of age on intimate knowledge of a craft or trade. A mana- in an antebellum milieu of intense religious ferment, gerial class emerged to oversee the massive new cor- but the revival was driven by the growth and spread porate enterprises, and along with managers came of established denominations—mainly the Baptists new methods of tabulating, analyzing, and managing and Methodists—and by the formation of new groups large populations. The corporate executives were that proposed to restore “authentic” New Testament joined by growing numbers of academics, bureau- Christianity. It was a revival with theologically con- crats, and other knowledge workers. By reducing the servative implications. By contrast, William and his anonymous masses to hard numbers, administrators contemporaries began their adult lives in the after- and reformers aimed to render society more orderly math of the Civil War and in a situation utterly for- and rational—and thus more amenable to control eign to his father’s experience: one of drift and doubt. and improvement. The primary culprit was Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), which dealt a devastating blow to natural theology, the 19th century’s chief reli- his was the American scene that confronted gious anchor. It held that the most persuasive proof James in his youth: adrift and uncertain in the of God’s existence can be seen all around us, in the T intellectual and religious spheres, while at the intricacies and regularities of nature. But Darwin’s same time embracing new methods and means of stan- theory of natural selection destroyed the need for a dardization and control. Throughout his life, James’s designing deity and an ultimate purpose to repro- driving ambition was to answer the twin challenges of duction. Noah Porter, the highly orthodox Christian modernity, which meant fashioning a philosophy that president of Yale, summed up the rising unease could embrace the uncertainty of the modern condition

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 31 Pragmatism while also resisting the forces that undermined per- it,” he wrote, religion “shall mean for us the feelings, acts, sonal autonomy. His writings hang together as separate and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far facets of this single project. Pragmatism was its most as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to what- eloquent summation, but that “epoch-making” book ever they may consider the divine.” This was unmediated was inseparable from the more frankly religious writ- Protestantism in its purest, most unfettered form. But ings that preceded it, particularly The Varieties of Reli- what was the source of transcendence or redemption in gious Experience. such an unorthodox faith? The question of conversion occupied a central place in Here James turned to his background in psychology. Varieties, and Leo Tolstoy served as one of James’s central He described the discovery of subconscious activity in case studies. He drew on Tolstoy’s autobiography to the human mind as the most important development in that discipline since his youth. Its existence led him to conclude that conversion THE SUSPICION THAT JAMES was only resulted from eruptions of subconscious mental life a sympathizer with religion, not a true into the “normal, waking consciousness.” This process believer, remains difficult to shake. had nothing in common with Christian conversion in any traditional sense. It describe the pall that descends over life when meaning dis- didn’t result from divine intervention or effect eternal appears. “The questions ‘Why?’ and ‘What next?’ began to salvation. And yet it did have implications for religious beset him more and more frequently,” James wrote. “At faith, James believed. The existence of subconscious life first it seemed as if such questions must be answerable, . . . suggested to him that other forms of consciousness might but as they ever became more urgent,” they resisted reso- exist in the universe, hovering beyond our grasp. “The lution. Though physically healthy, Tolstoy was psychi- whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the cally and spiritually shattered by his late forties. “I sought world of our present consciousness is only one out of like a man who is lost and seeks to save himself—and I many worlds of consciousness that exist,” James wrote in found nothing,” Tolstoy said in describing his descent into the concluding paragraph of Varieties, “and that those depression. “I became convinced, moreover, that all those other worlds must contain experiences which have a who before me had sought for an answer in the sciences meaning for our life also; and that although in the main have also found nothing.” He finally gained some peace by their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet converting to Christianity in the late 1870s, and by the two become continuous at certain points, and higher extolling the simple faith of Russian peasants as the energies filter in.” essence of true religion for the remainder of his long life. By the logic of James’s pragmatism, the idea that (He died in 1910.) other realms of consciousness and higher energies Tolstoy’s conversion account appealed to James on exist in the universe cannot be taken on faith alone, and many levels, not least because churches and clergy played it can have no meaning outside the push and pull of no role in it. Though James sometimes self-identified human affairs. Like all other ideas, it must prove itself with Protestant Christianity, that label was accurate only in the realm of experience. How, then, do humans put in the narrowest cultural sense. Theologically, he was as it to the test? heterodox as he was unsystematic—he theorized, for James resisted giving systematic formulation to his example, that there might be multiple deities. But if he was religious ideas, but perhaps his most explicit answer to that at most a marginal Christian, James was enthusiastically question is his discussion of prayer. It is, he wrote in Vari- a Protestant. In Varieties, he pointedly reduced religion to eties, the “soul and essence” of religion. “Through prayer, its minimalist essence. “As I now ask you arbitrarily to take religion insists, things which cannot be realized in any

32 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Pragmatism other manner come about: energy which but for prayer individual salvation. His speculations on personal would be bound is by prayer set free.” This seems, at first immortality were contradictory, and he finally settled on glance, like the traditional relationship between an all- a hopeful “maybe,” but he never expended much energy powerful God and supplicating humans. But James’s on the question. True to his pragmatism, he treated understanding of the human-divine relationship was eternal life as beside the point. What ultimately mattered reciprocal. We need the help of the higher energies, but the for James was not the possibility of eternal life in some divinity needs our help as well. For James, the moral other realm but human behavior in this one. His striving of an individual does matter in some ultimate redeemed universe served as an ideal for which humans sense; it lends power to the forces of light in the universe. should fight—a goad to moral effort—but the exact Human existence, as James wrote in a remarkable passage nature of that redemption remained mysterious. in one of his popular lectures, “feels like a real fight—as if James’s inversion of some religious tenets and indif- there were something really wild in the universe which we, ference to others is difficult to square with his own self- with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to identification as a believer. One of his colleagues and for- redeem; and first of all, to redeem our own hearts from mer students at Harvard, George Santayana, once wrote atheisms and fears. For such a wild, half-saved universe that his mentor “did not really believe; he merely believed our nature is adapted.” in the right of believing that you might be right if you James thus inverted one of Christianity’s central believed.” Commentators ever since have speculated on the themes. He focused not on God’s redemptive work on authenticity of James’s faith. If we credit him with any sin- behalf of humanity but rather on humanity’s redemptive cerity at all, James genuinely did believe in the power of work in cooperation with God. And he added another prayer and the existence of higher energies. Still, the sus- twist: The final result of all human struggle and striving picion that he was only a sympathizer with religion, not a might be a redeemed universe that does not include true believer, remains difficult to shake. The question

“In prayer,spiritual energy,which otherwise would slumber,does become active,and spiritual workof some kind does become effected really,”James wrote.

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 33 Pragmatism lingers: Did James make a case for faith, or a case for faith the premise of uncertainty, as he thought we must, we can in faith? Is the ultimate object of belief simply one’s own find hope and courage by believing that our daily struggles will to believe? contribute to an unfinished cosmic battle. In Pragmatism, James didn’t so much answer this Nothing could be further from skepticism or deter- question as come down on both sides of it. The book’s driv- minism. Where orthodox religion posits certain answers ing, deeply personal ambitions were to affirm human and an all-controlling God, James’s religious vision offers only uncertain answers and an uncertain future. The FOR A THINKER so focused on the impli- details—the nature of the deity, the fate of individual cations of human struggles, James devoted souls and of the universe— remain veiled in mystery. remarkably little attention to the political Perhaps there is nothing behind the veil but a void, debates of his era. after all. And yet: Perhaps believing in the existence of higher energies—and acting freedom and help humans navigate the uncertainty of this on that belief—helps make them true, helps the redemp- earthly realm. James’s theory of truth addressed the lat- tive forces in the universe to ultimately “win through.” ter goal by denying recourse to divine revelation as a guide for human action. Rather than being vouchsafed from an eternal realm, James said, truth “grows up inside or a thinker so insistently focused on the implica- of all the finite experiences. They lean on each other, but tions of human struggles, James devoted remark- the whole of them, if such a whole there be, leans on F ably little attention to the political debates of his era. nothing.” Pragmatism’s later, secular uses flow from this His own youthful struggle against despair, and the leap of aspect of James’s thought, which is his most important faith that saved him from suicide, were always the well- philosophical contribution and his most controversial springs of his thought, and he focused mainly on the broad- idea. By denying truth’s transcendent essence, he seemed est macro and narrowest micro levels: the cosmos and the to undermine the foundations of faith. But if he did so, it individual. was for the purpose of creating a new foundation. In Nonetheless, James’s work did have profound conse- James’s vision, truth making was bound up tightly with the quences for American politics and society. In his own time, practice of prayer, the harnessing of higher energies, and his theory of truth gave momentum to a wave of reform the possibility of cosmic redemption, whatever form it measures that aimed to make American institutions more might take. responsive to human needs. Progressive theorists recognized In Pragmatism’s closing pages, he asked readers to that American corporations and government bureaucracies imagine a deity who, before creating the world, had issued had grown too big, too fast, while their practices remained a challenge to humans. The world it intended to create was caked over with 19th-century laissez-faire economic and “not certain to be saved” but was “a world the perfection social theory. As Walter Lippmann wrote in Drift and Mas- of which shall be conditional,” that condition being the tery (1914), “We can no longer treat life as something that good-faith effort of individuals. “I offer you the chance of has trickled down to us. . . . In endless ways we put inten- taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwar- tion where custom has reigned. We break up routines, ranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may make decisions, choose ends, select means.” win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work Lippmann judged this new way of thinking to be the genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will “profoundest change that has ever taken place in human his- you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face tory.” The claim is dramatic but nonetheless correct, and it the risk?” This was quintessential James. If we begin with goes to the heart of why pragmatism was—and remains—

34 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Pragmatism enormously influential and controversial. In the pragmatic to answer those questions affirmatively. Weber saw an philosophy that the young Lippmann took as his gospel, “iron cage” of soulless, bureaucratic rationality descend- nothing is certain but the fact of perpetual change. There are ing over the West. Foucault described a world in which no final truths, no fixed meanings, no extrahuman founda- Enlightenment rationality, far from delivering on its tions on which to build human societies and construct promise of human liberation, circles back and ensnares moral systems. The pragmatic method—rooted solely in the liberated in ever-constricting webs of coercion and human experience and intelligence—is our only guide. control. Lippmann was among the scores of students James taught and befriended as they passed through Harvard. Others included W. E. B. DuBois and Gertrude Stein, ames’s pragmatism departed decisively from this suggesting the range of his influence on early-20th- critique. It was a forceful statement that human century political and artistic movements. The effect of his Jefforts do matter, and that humans are fundamen- ideas took unanticipated forms, though, because James’s tally free beings. He was hardly blind to the perils of an vision of pragmatism barely survived his death. In Lipp- increasingly bureaucratized, centralized, and numbingly mann’s writings, and more important in John Dewey’s, impersonal world. On occasion, he could be as bleak and the supernatural element was displaced by an emphasis acerbic as the most despairing of cynics. Yet he finally came on scientific method. But here is the curious thing about down on the side of faith and hope. It was an uncertain James’s work. His religious vision and his theory of truth faith and a hard-won hope, and orthodox believers and not only survived the decoupling. They flourished. And thoroughgoing skeptics alike have found much to deride their influence has only risen in the wake of the anti- in James’s thought. “His wishes,” as the wry Oliver Wen- authoritarian political, religious, and academic currents dell Holmes Jr. once wrote, “made him turn down the that swept America in the 1960s. lights so as to give miracles a chance.” On the religious side, James’s writings contain But James wasn’t hoping for miracles—not of the divine glimmerings of the spirituality industry that would sort, in any case. His point was that humans make mira- burgeon in the later 20th century. He posited other cles happen by individual initiative. He persistently directed realms of consciousness and higher energies as agents his audiences’ attention to their own free will, navigating of human “empowerment,” themes that have become between the dogmatisms of materialistic science and ortho- ubiquitous among self-help authors. James likely dox religion by yoking the earthly focus of science to the would have deplored much of this genre, yet it is in eternal hopes of religion. Without the possibility of some some ways a logical outgrowth of his emphasis on the higher purpose underwriting human efforts, James feared, pragmatic consequences of faith. The ecumenism of life becomes meaningless. But the grounds for hope and the self-help genre is also quintessentially Jamesian: faith cannot be objectively and certainly true, given our lim- Spirituality is presented as an unmediated relationship ited perspective on “this moonlit and dream-visited planet.” between the individual and the divine. Institutions The onus rests on us to make them true. only get in the way. James’s thinking drew heavily on the work of many On the other side, James’s influence endures among who came before him, of course, and a complex line of theorists who have borrowed and built on his pragma- descent runs from his work to the modern pragmatists and tism. Though most are frankly secular in outlook, they self-help gurus who can claim him as their spiritual god- are in fact grappling with ancient religious themes in father. Still, the men and women who greeted James as new guises, circling around the same pressing ques- “the messenger of some new gospel,” as The New York tions that James faced: Is there an absolute grounding Times reported in 1907, were on to something. Pragma- for truth? Is there any hope of redemption? Do humans tism did indeed herald a new way of thinking—indeed, a possess free will in any meaningful sense? Many of the new way of being and acting—and James was the most 20th century’s eminent intellectuals and theorists of eloquent prophet of the new age. Through various chan- modernity—from the German sociologist Max Weber to nels, his gospel “truth” has shaped and reshaped Ameri- the French theorist Michel Foucault—found little reason can life for a century, an epoch maker after all. ■

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 35 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Rerunning Film Noir

As Americans embraced the future after World War II, they enter- tained themselves with cinematic visions of mean streets and sordid pasts. The tale of film noir’s rise and fall has a few twists of its own.

BY RICHARD SCHICKEL

Sometime right after the end of World It might seem odd to evoke this silly parade to introduce War II, they staged a parade in Milwaukee, where I was a piece about film noir, but hear me out. Noir, at that same uneasily entering adolescence. The theme of the event was historical moment, was establishing itself as the American “Don’t Buy Another Depression.” Ads for it featured a shiny movie genre, the predominant style, both visual and nar- apple, a reminder of the fruit some people had desperately rative, of almost all our seriously intended films, whether or sold for a nickel on street corners in the previous decade. not their subject was crime, in the first postwar decade. I was too young to understand the anti-inflation mes- There’s some dispute about what the first noir film was, but sage. Two other attractions drew me to the parade. One was in my opinion the first truly great one was 1944’s Double its grand marshal, Jim Thorpe, the great Native American Indemnity, which displayed most of the genre’s stylistic athlete who had been stripped of his Olympic medals tics and narrative tricks. Among the classics that followed, because he had taken a few dollars for playing semipro we’d have to name Out of the Past, The Big Sleep, The Big baseball, a punishment my father (and everyone else I Heat, and literally hundreds of others—with their seductive knew) thought was mean-spirited and hypocritical. The women and seducible men, their betrayal-upon-betrayal other was that the parade was to feature large inflatables plots, and their wee-hour lighting. (get it—inflation: inflatables?) of the kind that were the Noir, despite its Frenchified name, is a truly American heart of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. form, as Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward observe in Film The event proved to be a disappointment. The day was Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style cold and windy, and the march down Wisconsin Avenue (1979). Yes, many of its leading directors (Fritz Lang, Billy was rather paltry: two or three high school bands, about Wilder, Jacques Tourneur, André de Toth) were born in the same number of big balloons. Jim Thorpe was indeed Europe and well versed in expressionism. But their source— on view—waving genially to the sparse crowd—but in ret- often directly, always at least indirectly—was the American rospect, of course, the occasion seems even more point- crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, less. We didn’t buy another depression; we bought (and James M. Cain, W. R. Burnett, and others. Almost all noir bought) the longest period of prosperity America has actors and many of the directors’ significant collaborators ever known, one that extends to this day and has encom- (cameramen, editors, etc.) were American born and cer- passed virtually my entire senescent lifetime. tainly American trained.

Richard Schickel is the author of more than 30 books, most recently How, then, to square the dark visual and psychological Elia Kazan: A Biography (2006), and is the producer-writer-director of designs of this thoroughly American genre with the general numerous television documentaries, the latest of which, Spielberg on Spiel- berg, premiered on Turner Classic Movies in July. mood of the country in the immediate postwar years?

36 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 A new girl and an honest job can’t rescue Jeff Bailey, played by Robert Mitchum, from his former life in the 1947 noir classic Out of the Past.

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 37 Film Noir

Screenwriter and director Paul Schrader thought that was misery in a peacetime economy, as Schrader suggests. easy. In his seminal 1972 article “Notes on Film Noir,” he Instead, their aims were quite different (don’t forget, they wrote, “The disillusionment many soldiers, small busi- were meant to entertain). For one, they were trying to give nessmen and housewife/factory employees felt in returning the traditional crime film a new lease on life—particularly to a peacetime economy was directly mirrored in the sor- in the way it represented the city’s place in the postwar didness of the urban crime film. . . . The war continues, but world. Somewhat more originally, they were placing a new now the antagonism turns with a new viciousness toward stress on the power of the past—something most of us the American society itself.” I’ve never seen this rather casual thought we had buried—to reach out and twist our fates bit of sociology disputed, mostly because the many com- when we least expected that to happen. mentators on noir tend to focus on specific films, with little Noir is a rich genre, and I don’t want to imply that these interest in the society that produced them. were the only themes it took up. They are, however, the two Granted, there were a number of movies, especially in I find the most interesting. Let me begin with the metrop- the mid-1940s, about servicemen returning to civilian life olis. In the early 1930s, it had been portrayed in grimly real- to find that their wives or girlfriends had betrayed them, or istic terms—in gangster pictures and in a surprising num- that they had been cheated out of their pre-war jobs or ber of movies about the working poor, struggling to survive. prospects by scheming former associates. Sometimes, lin- But by the late ’30s, the city had by and large become a much gering issues from their military years had to be resolved in happier and more promising place—penthouses, white civilian life. And tainting the nation’s overall mood were the telephones, dressing for dinner—a setting for romantic Bomb, McCarthyism, and, on the Korean peninsula, our comedies and Fred Astaire–Ginger Rogers musicals. It was first muscular confrontation with communism. All of these a place where young provincials came to escape the nar- matters were touched upon in the movies, though not often rowing constraints of their small-town pasts. in pictures we can clearly identify as film noirs. After the war, however, the city’s glamour became much But despite these clouds, the good times were starting darker and more menacing. Noir quickly noted the gath- to roll, particularly for the middle class. A number of books, ering flight to the suburbs and the countryside. Or, at least, television shows, and films nostalgically recall this period as the desire of many people to join that flight. The genre the last “American High” (to quote the title of one popular began to offer this dichotomy: the suburbs as a clean, spare, history)—an era when we bustled heedlessly forward, safe, if not very interesting place to love a plain little woman spending freely, optimistically, on everything from the new and to raise healthy, normal children, versus the city, whose lake cottage, complete with powerboat, to European vaca- glamour was at once more menacing and more tempting tions, to better educations for our children, and forget those than it had ever been. This new noir mise en scène (rain-wet darned Russkies. streets, blinking neon signs, fog-enshrouded alleys) often gave the metropolis the aspect of a wounded beast. It was either attempting to entangle people who thought they had et me return to that 1946 parade. What it was made their escape from it, or it was obliging these refugees addressing was not our promising future but our to return to its mean streets in order to free themselves of L dark and anxious past. It was simplistically sug- some past terror or transgression that now haunted their gesting that the inflationary 1920s had so overheated our dreams of happiness. economy and our expectations that we had stupidly “bought” Two crucial noir sequences illustrate this point: One the inevitable retribution of the Depression. In other words, occurs in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953), in which we find the parade, like film noir, was directing our attention back- Glenn Ford, giving one of his typical mumbling, stum- ward, not forward. After the war, we were not so much dis- bling, imitation-Method performances, as a cop investi- illusioned by our prospects as giddily illusioned by them, and gating the local criminal syndicate. Off duty, he lives with his the message of film noir was curiously at odds with the wife (Jocelyn Brando) and child in suburban primness. national mood. This is quite novel—until then, most movie cops were duty Noir films, with their greatly intensified visual style and obsessed and not permitted “normal” lives. But one morn- their stress on perverse psychology, weren’t reflecting our ing, Ford’s wife borrows his automobile and is blown up by

38 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Film Noir a car bomb intended for him, permanently shattering the Bailey, played by Robert Mitchum at the peak of his doomy- illusion of peaceful anonymity the couple had embraced. romantic powers, as an urban escapee running a gas station More colorfully, in a more self-consciously “artistic” way, at a spare desert crossroads, his mysteriously wounded self the noir city was sometimes seen as something like the apparently on the mend and romantically involved with a hellmouth in medieval mystery plays, yawning, fiery, plain but sensible local woman. In noir, however, you can ever ready to swallow sinner or innocent. In King Vidor’s run but you can never hide, and his former criminal asso- Beyond the Forest (1949), Bette Davis’s character, mur- ciates find him. Jeff is forced to recall his past in the long derous and sexually voracious, is shown wandering flashback that forms the film’s central passage, which takes Chicago’s streets, clawed at or, worse, treated with indif- place in a hellishly realized San Francisco, where our pro- ference by its heedless denizens in a brilliantly orches- tagonist’s every encounter is with a liar or a betrayer. trated portrayal of urban cruelty. In both of these films, the leading figures are old enough Such expressionistic sequences were slightly feverish to know better than to succumb to their dark side. But attempts to imbue the city with a power it no longer had. In another fairly standard noir conceit was to place less worldly the real postwar America, the city was increasingly viewed victims at the center of a corrupt urban environment— as a place we were putting behind us, a locale of disor- ganized rather than organ- ized crime—of small-scale SEX IN THE CITY is much more exciting muggings and large-scale slum clearances. Daddy was to moviemakers—and perhaps to us—than now, in popular culture, the Organization Man or the suburban adultery. Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. He might still visit the metropolis in order to earn a living, and we were encouraged young folks struggling to find a better life, but being dragged to worry about its sapping effect on his soul. But at five back into the urban nightmare. A good example is Anthony o’clock, he beat a hasty retreat to his safe suburban haven. Mann’s 1947 poverty row film Railroaded, made before he Noirs doubtless overstressed the city’s menace and per- moved up the Hollywood ranks to produce more-polished verse seductiveness. And they perhaps underestimated the noirs such as the beautifully styled Side Street (1950), which, bucolic attractions of the hinterlands. Moviemakers are, at incidentally, also takes up the theme of innocents desperate heart, melodramatists. In a curious way, their defense of the to escape the clutching city. city’s power was a defense of the turf they had always loved In Railroaded, a nice young man named Steve Ryan has better than they did, say, the backyard barbecue, and sex in his car stolen, and it is then used in the commission of a mur- the city is much more exciting to them—and perhaps to us— derous crime. Falsely accused of the deed—the lad lives with than suburban adultery. his mother and sister and was puttering peacefully in his Two noir films particularly underscore the residual yet garage when the crime occurred—Steve is jailed, and it is up still-potent malevolence of the postwar city. One is John to his sister and a good cop who was once romantically inter- Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950), the title of which accu- ested in her (and soon will be again) to clear him. The Ryan rately and colorfully suggests the director’s vision of the family lives on a modest, shady street in a trim little house, sordid and labyrinthine city, clutching at his antiheroic pro- well away from the corrupt center of the city. tagonist (that hardest of movie hard guys, Sterling Hayden) But that suburban idyll won’t be sustained if Duke Mar- as he tries for one big, final score that will buy his way back tin, played by John Ireland, the only actor in the film who to the sylvan horse country of his idealized boyhood—a may have some dim claim on your memory, has anything goal he realizes only in an ironic-tragic way. to do with it. He’s the crime’s mastermind, and he represents The other is Jacques Tourneur’s masterly Out of the a new kind of movie villain. His habit is to perfume his bul- Past (1947), which, as it opens, shows its protagonist, Jeff lets and lovingly polish his revolver before dispatching his

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 39 Film Noir

Suburban boredom drives Pitfall ’s Dick Powell into the arms of Lizabeth Scott, but a menacing Raymond Burr is more excitement than he bargained for. victims. (He incidentally wants Steve’s sister, and in one deli- were bad—so much badder (and more bent) than movie vil- cious sequence, in which she tries to entrap him into admit- lains had ever been. At the time, we enjoyed their new ting his crime, she dresses up like a noir tart and pretends styles of transgressiveness, but on the whole they did not to seduce him in a nightclub.) present a realistic threat to our well-being. In the past, crime movie miscreants had mostly been I agree with Paul Schrader that you can detect an obvi- dull brutes, with the genially demonic James Cagney the ous American unease in classic noir, but it is very symboli- notable exception. There had been no psychosexual com- cally represented. Despite the fact that the cars and clothes ponent to their criminal calculations. Now these creeps and furniture are up to date, the world of noir is most often were everywhere. In 1947, the same year Railroaded was portrayed as a kind of alternative universe—sort of like released, Richard Widmark famously pushed the old lady America, but not quite so. For example, much noir ends, as in the wheelchair down the stairs in Kiss of Death, and we’ve seen, in tragedy. Indeed, I know of no major Ameri- Raymond Burr was a sadistic nightclub owner in Mann’s can genre that so often ends with the people we’ve been very good Desperate—his work with a hot chafing dish encouraged to sympathize with quite simply—oh, all right, prefiguring Lee Marvin’s more famous disfiguring of Glo- quite complicatedly—dead. But they end up that way not ria Grahame with a hot coffeepot in The Big Heat. because noir was reflecting what Schrader calls “the acute These characters are personifications of the evil city, downer” that hit the United States after the war, but because suggesting that its dark nights hold deeper menaces than a in these films the past still sometimes exerts a force on few guys planning some dimwit heist or other. They also rep- their destinies, just as it catches up with Mitchum’s charac- resent the movies’ postwar discovery that psychopathy ter in the aptly named Out of the Past. could reach out and maim ordinary lives. Oh, these people The past had not been much of a presence in pre-war

40 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Film Noir movies, in part because the movies had not yet discovered numbers. He stumbles out into the night city, where he Freudian psychology. Whatever personalities we encountered meets a hard-used prostitute (a brilliant cameo by Mary had been shaped—by the slums, by the orphanage, by mys- Astor) who introduces him to a man who, for a price, will terious fate—before the movie began. There were few flash- kill Joe. Frank, Joe, and the hired gun meet in a darkened backs, and almost no references to earlier incidents that train yard, and Frank, at last, achieves his only available might condition a character’s actions in the present. But redemptive destiny by taking the bullet meant for Joe. once Alfred Hitchcock made the noirish Spellbound in 1945, The film’s greatness derives from the several balances it that would no longer do. Explanations were required, and the achieves: between the haunted, desperately denying Enley noir style was ideal for dark dream and memory sequences. and the half-mad Parkson; between the placidity of the small Middle-class America might be engaging in mass amnesia, town and the nightmare energy of the decadent city; but noir, bless its twisted lit- tle heart, could not forget anything. In my opinion, the best MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICA had amnesia, noir to take up the malign influence of the past on the but noir, bless its twisted little heart, present is Fred Zinnemann’s Act of Violence (1948). When couldn’t forget anything. we meet Frank Enley (the always earnest and generally trustworthy Van Heflin), the small California town where between the hope of creating a postwar morality as prom- he and his family have taken up residence is celebrating his ising and innocent as a spanking new housing development achievements as a builder of GI housing and nascent civic and the power of dark memory to insist on original sin’s leader. However, he is being stalked by the dark and limp- remorseless power. ing Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan, without whose brooding presence one sometimes doubts there would have been a film noir genre). Joe intends to kill this paragon, and he ter- here is one great (and infuriatingly unavailable, rorizes Frank’s wife (a subdued but persuasively scared therefore neglected) film that, I think, fits Janet Leigh, appearing in one of her first films). TSchrader’s theory of the 1940s and early ’50s as an At first, we think Joe is just another psycho on the loose, American bummer. That is André de Toth’s Pitfall (1948). but it turns out that during the war he was assigned to a The picture begins in, and keeps circling back to, a subur- bomber Frank piloted. When they were shot down and ban tract house. The street where the Forbes family— imprisoned in a Nazi camp, most of the crew was killed in John, Sue, and son Tommy—lives reeks of compromise and an escape attempt that Frank betrayed. Only Joe and Frank conformity; this is the best they can obtain of the Ameri- survived. Frank’s story is that he thought he was saving lives: can dream. John (Dick Powell) reeks of dissatisfaction, too. He had considered the plan doomed and believed the Ger- He had an unheroic war and now has an unheroic job as mans’ promise that they would not kill the recaptured an insurance claims adjuster. He and his wife (Jane Wyatt) escapees. The movie, however, leaves little doubt that he gave play in a weekly bridge game, and that’s about it for excite- up his comrades for more generous rations and better ment. John talks wistfully about the boat they once treatment. dreamed of building and sailing around the world, but Frank is a fully flawed hero, and we quickly realize that that’s a lost fantasy. From their curb, the Forbeses can see we aren’t going to discover some redemptive behavior in his the city looming in the distance, a vague menace to Sue’s past. He will have to redeem himself in the here and now. fragile happiness and to John’s weary compromises. He attends a builder’s convention in Los Angeles, and Joe One day, a private detective named MacDonald, played follows him there. But the convention is a hellish shambles, by the epicene Raymond Burr, appears in John’s office. His and it’s clear that there’s no safety for Frank in its drunken evidence has put an embezzler in jail, and now he has

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 41 Film Noir traced goods purchased with the money to the embezzler’s the gathering unhappiness over the choices middle-class girlfriend, Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott). MacDonald sug- America made than the noir films of the classic era (roughly gests that John go retrieve them. John does so, and finds a 1945–55) do. It took us something like a decade to come to hurt, vulnerable woman. Included in her loot is a sassy lit- grips with the downside of our suburban exodus. tle motorboat. She gives John a ride in it—it’s as close as he’s Half a lifetime ago, after the genuine disillusionment ever going to get to his dreamboat—and that sun-splashed of the 1960s and ’70s had set in, I knew several families sequence brings him back to life. They begin an affair. who were rather like the Forbeses—people who had left Which is shadowed by a jealous MacDonald. Burr is the city so their kids could enjoy fresh air and decent strangely confident, even domineering, in his scenes with schools. The husbands endured their commutes stoically. Mona. But of course, MacDonald must terrorize John The wives were culturally restless, perhaps restless in Forbes, too. He stalks John to his suburban castle, and other ways, too. We would visit these refugees on a Sun- mercilessly beats him up in his driveway. Later MacDonald day, perhaps watch a golf tournament on TV, have a bar- returns, murder on his mind, but it’s John who kills him. becue, and leave at a reasonable hour for the journey Eventually, John confesses to the whole tangled web of his home. It is just barely possible to imagine some scarring event in these couples’ pasts—an infidelity, per- haps, but one with less than THE SPIRIT OF NOIR has never died. deadly consequences—but even that’s a reach. The true The greatest noir of all, Chinatown, did not tragedy of postwar Ameri- can life was how ahistorical appear until 1974. it was, how quickly those who lived it forgot the war and the Depression, how relationship with MacDonald, and is conditionally forgiven easily they settled for comfort, routine, and passivity. by the police and his employers. The picture ends in cleans- This possibly accounts for the fairly abrupt ending of the ing early-morning light, with Sue proposing a fresh start on noir cycle in the mid-1950s. The cities were in a decline more their marriage. But we leave Pitfall without any confidence pathetic than menacing, crime was represented in popular that the Forbeses’ life will regain even its former grousing sta- culture by the parodistic corporatism of “The Syndicate” bility, or that this sequence, despite its implicit ambiguities, (never, in those days, the Mafia), and great, late noirs like The is more than a conventional Hollywood ending—its opti- Sweet Smell of Success (1957) were first-run failures. It mistic text runs counter to its much gloomier subtext. became impossible to imagine deadly melodrama emerg- This taut little movie reflects more than any noir film the ing “out of the past” to intrude on our contentment, though worminess of the postwar American apple, indicating that we were still several decades from gentrification and its the split-level is no anodyne for sexual restlessness or for the implicit optimism about city living. anomie of dead-end jobs. The other noirs we have consid- The spirit of noir has never fully died. Indeed, the great- ered are sometimes marked by presumptive postwar opti- est noir of all, Chinatown, did not appear until 1974. Then mism; there is often a faint ray of hope in their morning there are the Godfather films and HBO’s recently concluded light. But the Forbeses have no meaningful future. They are series The Sopranos. But the former relocated the criminals trapped in the encircling present. to the suburbs, and they commuted to work in the city as if If the Forbeses prefigure anything, it is not the future of they were so many accountants. And the oft-noted genius noir. Rather, they suggest the kind of restless, unhappy fig- of The Sopranos lies in its normalization of the criminal life. ures in the suburban angst movies of the later 1950s—No Tony Soprano lives in a New Jersey McMansion, goes to a Down Payment, Rebel Without a Cause, All That Heaven psychiatrist, and has problems with his children and his wife Allows, Imitation of Life. These movies, full of bourgeois just like any other suburban pop. misery, much more clearly support Schrader’s thesis about But it has taken well over a half-century for this rep-

42 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Film Noir

When TV crime boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) isn’t fighting with his wife (Edie Falco), he’s kvetching about his panic attacks to a therapist. resentative American figure to achieve that condition, as in the late 1940s and early ’50s remains much more ambigu- we’re reminded when we glimpse the old crime movies ous than Paul Schrader and other critics suggest. and film noirs that often play on the televisions in Tony’s In the end, tailfins and picture windows, the NBC pea- home. Ah, those were the days—when screen crime had cock and the Boeing 707, became the irresistible forces of the a certain dark glamour and emerged from a carefully postwar era as it played out—precisely because they didn’t constructed aesthetic context that granted it a power not seem to be forces at all. They were merely the brave new real- found at the Bada Bing Club. ity the Organization Man had to deal with. Yes, by the 1960s the war in Vietnam and the struggle for racial equal- ity were roiling the nation, but before that, the discontents few wistful suburban gangsters aside, film noir is of American civilization were modest and local: juvenile now largely a cult interest for cinephiles and delinquency, the dead-end job, the rising divorce rate, the A cineastes. But still we must wonder: Was noir sim- prefeminist restlessness of the American housewife. ply a way of reanimating the tired conventions of the pre- These were matters beyond the purview of noir. But war crime film? Or did we need melodramatic illusions still . . . it is possible for us to imagine Pitfall’s John and Sue potent enough to overcome whatever disillusions strayed Forbes, older, but not necessarily wiser, in the 1970s, briefly into our minds as we surrendered to the mighty divorced and living in different states, drinking a little too engines of prosperity? Or was it one of those cycles—like much, perhaps considering the adulterous possibilities in the biopics, westerns, sci-fi, etc.—that Hollywood mysteriously new couple down the block—and watching nice Raymond embraces and then just as mysteriously abandons? Very Burr on television as Perry Mason and Detective Ironside. likely all of these factors account for noir’s brief dominance. Surely that was never him beating John to a pulp out there But today, it is noir’s remarkable style that we most revere. in the driveway. He must have been the figment of someone’s What the genre said or did not say about American reality overheated imagination. As indeed he was. ■

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 43 ESSENTIAL READING

Managing within Networks Adding Value to Public Organizations The Greening of the Robert Agranoff U.S. Military “[O]ffers a rich understanding of the internal man- agement of public networks. It is essential reading Environmental Policy, not only for network scholars, but also for public National Security, and and nonprofit administrators, who must be able to manage Organizational Change comfortably both within and across organizations.” Robert F. Durant —Keith G. Provan, University of Arizona “Helps to add energy, depth, and luster to aca- 978-1-58901-154-0, paperback, $26.95 demic studies of policy history, bureaucratic Public Management and Change series politics, and public management.” —Michael Barzelay, London School of Power and Principle Economics and Political Science Human Rights Programming 978-1-58901-153-3, paperback, $29.95 Public Management and Change series in International Organizations Joel E. Oestreich “Clear, concise and thoughtful, anyone interested in the changing role and agency of international organizations in contemporary international relations should have this book.” —James P. Muldoon Jr., Rutgers-Newark 978-1-58901-159-5, paperback, $29.95 Advancing Human Rights series

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Women in Charge

Once it was easy to name the world’s notable female leaders. Cleopatra,

Elizabeth I, and Joan of Arc headed a very short list. Other women wielded

power, but only indirectly, as wives or courtesans or organizers of intellec-

tual salons. Now, legions of women hold top jobs. They are CEOs,

generals, university presidents, and senators. They com-

mand attention; they lead nations. Women have not

yet achieved equality, but there are enough

at the top that we can approach ques-

tions about female leaders anew, from

the old charge that women are not fit to lead

to the new claim that they are better fitted than

men. Does women’s leadership make a difference?

Judith M. Havemann looks at women in the corner office ...... p. 46

Holly Yeager appraises the rise of

women in the officer corps ...... p. 54

Sara Sklaroff imagines a future in which women rule ...... p. 63

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 45 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Great Expectations

Women now hold half of all management jobs in America. Business books and magazines tout their superior leadership style. What’s really changing in the country’s corner offices?

BY JUDITH M. HAVEMANN

On July 17, 1975, less than a year after work together and get along. So on a hot July night, President Richard M. Nixon resigned in the Watergate Katharine Graham did a stereotypically female thing: scandal, Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham She threw a party. threw open the doors of her Georgetown mansion for Today her management method is called “transfor- one of her trademark dinners, with strolling violinists mational,” or cooperative—as opposed to the “transac- and elegant cuisine. Along the right-hand wall of the tional,” or authoritarian, manner then supposedly foyer, a wheel of tiny envelopes held the table numbers employed by the men who ran America’s biggest com- of the 58 guests. On the terrace, Graham, in a pink host- panies. But her style was just that—a style. When it ess outfit, greeted people from five different levels of the came to making decisions, Graham was as tough as any paper’s management by name, introducing each new- man. She fired former secretary of the Navy Paul Ignatius comer flawlessly. Then everybody sat down for a gour- when he disappointed her as president of the company, met dinner served on her mother’s hand-painted china. hustled his successor upstairs, and ousted a subsequent It was a virtuoso performance by one of the masters replacement. When the pressmen’s union went on strike of gracious entertaining. But Graham was applying her in the middle of the night three months after her garden formidable social skills to a different arena: her com- party, she got the paper out with a crew of managers and pany’s business. Although the Post was then at the height volunteers. When the pressmen turned down her con- of its influence and glamour, several of its 13 unions were tract offer, she replaced them with nonunion workers. fighting for their lives. Union contracts were up for True, she talked stirringly about women’s issues— negotiation, and Graham, who had become an instant sensitized by a friendship with Gloria Steinem, no less. corporate president 12 years earlier on the suicide of her But the Post implemented little of the feminist’s agenda. husband, was preparing for trouble. She fretted that It had no daycare center and offered only a bare-bones the newspaper’s managers, on whom she would have to maternity leave. Part-time schedules to accommodate rely to publish the paper in the event of strikes, didn’t child rearing were a rare privilege, and part-time think of themselves as a team. She wanted her staff to employees were ineligible for raises. Although the paper was often generous in family tragedies, it had to issue Judith M. Havemann is senior editor of The Wilson Quarterly. She was a reporter and editor during a long career at The Washington Post. checks to its female news employees to settle an Equal

46 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Katharine Graham,Chairman of the Board,the Washington Post Company,Washington,D.C.,March 11, 1976 © 2007 The Richard Avedon Foundation.CourtesyThe Richard Avedon Foundation.

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 47 Women in Charge

Employment Opportunity Commission sex discrimina- the corporate heap, among the country’s Fortune 500 tion suit over hiring, pay, promotions, and leave. Graham companies, women hold 15.6 percent of corporate officer was sympathetic to women, but the pay, benefits, and positions (defined as board elected or board appointed), day-to-day operations of the nation’s most famous according to Catalyst, a business research institute in New female-led company broke no feminist ground. Today, York. They occupy 14.6 percent of the seats on boards of Graham’s longtime executive editor, Ben Bradlee, can- directors. And they run 13 of the corporations. not think of a single decision that she made because she That’s not the revolution many had hoped for, but it’s was a woman. a significant change. The leadership positions held by women are not only in the corporate world but in the non- profit sector, the military, higher education, and other he corporate world of Graham’s era was a men’s fields. They sit on boards and campaign for public office. club, by and large, staffed with female worker bees. One of them even stands a good chance of making Edgar T Little had changed since William H. Whyte wrote Berman’s worst nightmare come true. In fact, now the his classic midcentury dissection of corporate conformity shoe is sometimes on the other foot. A handful of man- and bureaucratic culture, The Organization Man (1956). agement gurus in the business world are proclaiming that Whyte’s index includes a single entry for women: “slen- possessing a pair of X-chromosomes equips a person to be derness progression.” But under pressure from a growing a superior leader. women’s movement and the federal government, by the In books such as Enlightened Power (2005), Why the 1970s businesses were promoting a few women, although Best Man for the Job Is a Woman (2000), and The Female it wasn’t at all clear how they would fare when they took Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership (1990), to say charge. At the beginning of the decade, Dr. Edgar Berman, nothing of Secrets of Millionaire Moms (2007), writers a Democratic national committeeman and close confi- are advancing what some call the “great woman school of dante of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, created a leadership.” Magazines now assure women that their fem- minor uproar when he opined that “raging hormonal inine style will give them an edge in the new “transforma- imbalance” rendered women too unstable to hold top jobs, tional” corporation. BusinessWeek has declared that women such as president of the United States. have the “right stuff” and, even more sensationally, that a But Berman’s view was not all that unusual, at least “new gender gap” might leave men as “losers in a global among men. Women held only a tiny fraction of supervi- economy that values mental powers over might.” sory jobs, a category that included management of secre- After several decades of experience and enough stud- tarial pools and other ghettoized occupations. They were ies to fill a sizable hard drive, there ought to be answers to simply excluded from elite downtown clubs, golf courses, some basic questions about women’s leadership: Does dif- and other institutions. Leading companies ran advertising ference make a difference? Are women more effective campaigns portraying women as playthings—and they leaders, producing more successful companies? Are female- worked. The National Organization for Women was out- led firms better places to work? raged by the 1971 “I’m Cheryl, Fly Me” ads for National Air- Increasingly, research shows that women—surprise!— lines, but the number of passengers grew 23 percent in the are indeed different from men. They do a better job, on first year of the campaign. average, of collaborating, coaching, teaching, and inspiring Today’s corporations are as different from their prede- others to be creative. Yet it is far from clear that gender in cessors as 45-rpm records are from iPods. Women hold half the corner office makes a momentous difference. Evidence of all management, professional, and related jobs in the that female-led organizations produce superior results is United States, and—although some of their companies are scant. A leadership style that works well in certain fields small—nearly one-quarter of all CEO positions. Between may bomb in others. And as people climb closer to the top 1997 and 2002 women started an average of 424 new of an organization, gender-related styles of management ventures each day, and by 2004 about 6.7 million privately seem to matter less than other factors in determining who held businesses were majority owned by women, says The wins the race and what they do as leaders. Journal of Small Business Management. At the very top of Alice H. Eagly, chair of the department of psychology

48 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Women at the Top

2.6% F500* CEOs 6.7% Women CEOs by Industry F500 top earners Nonprofit 29.6% 9.4% Health Care 22.1% F500 highest titles Law Firms & Legal Services 17.7% Finance 9.6% 14.6% Real Estate 9.1% F500 board seats Insurance 8.9% Pharmaceutical 8.3% 15.6% F500 corporate officers Construction 7.4% Software 7.3% 50.6% Manufacturing 5.2% Management, professional, and related occupations Aerospace 4.5% Automotive 4.2% 46.3% U.S. labor force Semiconductor 3.1%

*Fortune 500

Women in State Legislatures Women in U.S. Congress 2,000 100

Senate 80 1,500 House 60 1,000 40

500 20

1975 1981 1987 1993 1999 2005 1975 1981 1987 1993 1999 2005 Moving up: Women tend to be judged as more effective in industries where there are more of them. Female state legislators have increased five-fold since 1971, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans by more than two to one. In Congress, the party ratio is roughly the same.

Sources: (top left) ZoomInfo Insite Report: Gender in the Executive Suite—A Quantitative View of Gender Roles in Business Leadership, May 2007; (top right) Catalyst Research, The Catalyst Pyramid: U.S. Women in Business, 2007; (both bottom charts) Center for American Women and Politics, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 49 Women in Charge at Northwestern University and perhaps the most com- controlled and not emotional enough. monly cited scholar on gender-based leadership differ- Recalling her stint as the head of the troubled computer ences, finds in a recent overview of many studies in the field giant Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina said in a recent inter- that superiors, peers, and subordinates generally rate view that her enemies in the corporate and tech worlds rou- women better leaders than men. Women are more “inter- tinely referred to her “as either a bimbo—too soft, or a personally oriented,” a key ingredient in the transforma- bitch—too hard.” She shook up the entire company, even- tional leadership style, now the modus du jour in the tually laying off 36,000 people and attracting almost as American corporation. Transformational leaders lead by much media attention as the executives who bankrupted example, empower their subordinates, and focus on the Enron and went to jail. “It broke my heart every time we future. They stress cooperation, mentoring, and collabo- had to do it,” she says of the layoffs. “It was tearing what peo- ration rather than a top-down, authoritarian structure. ple thought was the heart of the company. But it had to be Many of these attributes are exactly the traits associated done to save more jobs. Once I was fired, they said I didn’t with women, even if not all women exhibit them. do enough of it.” Hewlett-Packard has since gone from being a laggard to a leader, but Fiorina’s successor, rightly or wrongly, has IN MALE-DOMINATED occupations, reaped much of the credit. Barbara Krumsiek, from the military to auto sales, women are CEO and president of the Calvert Group, a $14 bil- still judged less effective than men. lion mutual fund company, said in an interview that advancement after a cer- But there are wrinkles. Leaders face expectations tain point “is not a matter of competence, it is how you that they must meet to persuade others to get behind are perceived.” After her first daughter was born, Krum- them, and what peers and subordinates look for can siek, then still climbing the corporate ladder, began vary according to circumstance. “Neither men nor hearing comments suggesting that she should step aside. women are better,” Eagly says. “Effectiveness is contex- A colleague flat out told her, “Women who really love tual.” Women are ranked higher as leaders in fields such their children stay home with them.” Feeling that she had as education, government, and social services, where to produce still more signs of her commitment to work, there is more focus on interaction and—some say—less she hired an executive coach and became active in pro- on the bottom line. And since women are already more fessional organizations. Her climb resumed. numerous in the upper ranks of these fields, those on the While perceptions matter a great deal, the problem with way up have an easier time persuading others to accept research such as Eagly’s is that it only goes so far. It is one them as leaders. But in male-dominated occupations, thing to ask people whether the female bosses they know from the military to auto sales, women are still judged are good leaders, another to find hard evidence that female less effective than men. leadership produces results that are better. Scholars have In many industries, stereotypes about leaders are been able to provide correlations, but no proof. The ripped from the playbook of men, and women are at a research group Catalyst, for example, divided the Fortune disadvantage because they don’t look “usual or natural” 500 companies into quartiles based on the share of top in a leader role, Eagly says. “Women in highly masculine management jobs held by women, and found that the domains often have to contend with expectations and companies in the top quartile performed 35 percent bet- criticisms that they lack the toughness and competi- ter (judged by return on equity) than those in the bottom tiveness needed to succeed.” When they do show grit, quartile. But the study didn’t show that women were they are accused of being unfeminine. Just ask Hillary responsible for that success. It may be, for example, that Clinton, who is criticized for being both too steady and successful companies tend to hire more women.

50 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Women in Charge

Doing it her way: As CEO of Amylin Pharmaceuticals for four years, Ginger Graham (here, at the opening bell at the NASDAQ) didn’t shrink from displays of emotion when her two new drugs won FDA approval.She says,“At some point you have to make the transition from being a collaborator to a decision maker.”

It is hardly surprising that scholars have not been paradigm of the past looks only a little less outdated than able to identify a precise “female difference.” Just con- a watch fob. The new mantras, propounded in books sider the political agendas of these leaders: Israel’s such as Leading at a Higher Level (2006), Wikinomics Golda Meir, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, India’s Indira (2006), and True North (2007), are mass collaboration, Gandhi, Germany’s Angela Merkel. In the U.S. Senate, “authentic” leadership, and becoming a “learning” organ- what common adjective could describe the leadership ization through communication, vision, and shared of California’s Barbara Boxer and North Carolina’s power. And who’s better at collaboration and commu- Elizabeth Dole? nication than women? Well, sometimes men are, or at In the Darwinian world of the contemporary corpo- least they are no worse. ration, survival of the fittest requires ambitious men Analyzing the results of 50-to-80-minute interviews and women to adapt whatever methods work, even if with male and female owners of 229 firms in the mid- they are soft, “feminine” methods. Under the pressure of 1990s, management scholars Jennifer E. Cliff, Nancy Lang- competition and globalization, the modern corporation ton, and Howard E. Aldrich found striking evidence that has gone from fat to lean, from vertical to horizontal, and gender had “no effect” on the organizational design and from homogeneous to diverse. Status and hierarchies are management of companies. The traditional explanation out, team building, “open innovation,” and learning are would have been that women were forced to adopt a more in. The corporation’s work force is better educated, more stereotypically masculine approach. In fact, the researchers mobile, and more demanding than it was only a few found that “the male owners in our sample were just as decades ago. In this new world, the top-down leadership likely as their female counterparts to have implemented

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 51 Women in Charge archetypically feminine organizational arrangements and By the time Graham stepped down, this past March, the practices in their firms.” Both male- and female-headed price of Amylin’s stock had nearly doubled. But while her firms, for example, had reduced the levels of hierarchy style may have been flamboyant at times, her management and cut back on formal policies in favor of more open and moves were classic. “You stand alone in these jobs,” she says. informal procedures and modes of communication— “Obviously they are well paid and very fulfilling. They call actions associated with women leaders. for an element of collaboration, but at some point you What was different between men and women, the must make the transition from being a collaborator to a authors wrote in 2005 in the journal Organization Stud- decision maker. You have to transform empathy and ies, was the way they talked about leadership. Men said engagement to accountability and decisiveness.” they wanted to be thought of “as God...as capable . . . as the captain of the ship who calls the shots.” Women wanted to be thought of as “someone who’s here to work for my inally, there is the touchiest question of all: If employees...as a resource . . . [as having] their well-being women are such effective leaders, why aren’t at heart.” But despite these contrasting self-evaluations, the Fmore of them leading? The percentage of the management methods men and women adopted were, on 500 biggest firms with women at the helm is not even the whole, “indistinguishable.” close to cracking the three percent barrier, and women’s Female business leaders interviewed recently tended to advances in a number of fields have come to a standstill. stress that while gender bias often posed special challenges After Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique every step of the way, the leadership qualities needed near reignited feminism in 1963, women poured into poli- the top transcended gender. “We don’t have a real meri- tics, medicine, the clergy, and the military. Most all- tocracy in this country, although we have made great male college enrollment policies crumbled within a progress,” Fiorina says. “Women face barriers and have to decade. Today, more than half of all college graduates work harder to get ahead. Men and women have different are women. They are a majority in many fields of grad- styles, and people focus on the style of women and the sub- uate study. Affirmative action policies have helped stance of men. But the fundamentals of leadership are women move into many occupations. But after early not gender specific.” increases in the 1970s and ’80s, some of the advances Ginger Graham, a former Arkansas state rodeo have stalled. The percentage of married mothers of pre- queen with a Harvard MBA, has had an unusual career. school children who are in the labor force has dropped She got her first job selling herbicides to local farmers four points since 1997. as an agricultural economics major at the University of In politics, despite the emergence of stars such as Arkansas, rose at Eli Lilly, and eventually was named Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, and Nancy Pelosi, CEO of Amylin, a biopharmaceutical company. When gains are uneven. Female representation in state legis- Graham (no relation to Katharine Graham) took over latures hasn’t budged much since topping 22 percent of at Amylin in 2003, she adopted a management style legislative seats in 2001. Even some advances are colored that would be unusual, perhaps inconceivable, for a by puzzling setbacks. While young women’s level of par- man. The morning after the company’s diabetes drug, ticipation in college sports has soared, thanks in part to Symlin, was finally approved by the federal government federal Title IX legislation, the number of female coaches after 18 years of research and development, she arrived has dropped. Coaches often travel three or four days a in the office in a Sleeping Beauty costume and handed week and must go on many recruiting trips during the out copies of the fairy tale. She wanted to inspire a com- off-season, a schedule that particularly puts off women pany that now needed to set up a manufacturing oper- who have, or want to have, a family, according to The ation and hire a sales force almost overnight. When a Chronicle of Higher Education. second drug was approved six weeks later, Graham Anxiety over this stalled progress may explain the jumped into the fountain at corporate headquarters. firestorm touched off by Princeton graduate Lisa Belkin’s She punctuated company sales meetings with shouts of 2003 article in The New York Times Magazine describing “whoo-hoo!” what she called an “opt-out” generation of highly edu-

52 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Women in Charge cated women like herself who said, “The heck with it, I’d mently assaulted—showing that women make more rather stay at home with my kids.” unforced errors on crucial points than on others, a At first dismissed by some as a luxury confined to elite difference absent in men.) They won’t work as many wives with well-paid husbands, the “opt-out” phenomenon hours as men. (A recent Harvard Business Review has found some support in statistical evidence, notably the survey of “extreme jobs” found that women in these data that show a dip in employment among women at high-pressure white-collar occupations “are not match- every income level who have younger children. (Sixty per- ing the hours logged by their male colleagues.”) cent of these women are now in the labor force.) Many barriers still exist in some form, but increas- “Women naturally don’t like this hard-driving com- ingly the question of whether women get to the top of the petitive atmosphere that is part of business and law firms,” heap hinges on their own choices and actions. It’s pos- argues Phyllis Schlafly, president of the conservative Eagle sible that the ascension of more women will produce a Forum and a lawyer who played a prominent role in the tipping point, dramatically easing the way for future defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment. It isn’t really female leaders in every field. Perhaps the continuing motherhood that makes women drop out, she says; “they just get tired of it.” Belkin’s passionate crit- INCREASINGLY THE QUESTION of ics scoff that the moms-go- home theme has been “dis- whether women get to the top of the heap covered” at least four times in the last half-century by hinges on their own choices and actions. The New York Times alone. They say it’s no surprise that women in jobs with no flexibility, forced to choose transformation of the corporation and other institu- between feeling they aren’t good mothers or aren’t good tions will make them more female friendly and humane. workers, elect to stay home. “If women feel undervalued Maybe Americans three decades from now will look and stalled in their jobs, no wonder they opt out,” says back on our present-day conundrums with the same dis- Sally J. Kenney, director of the Center on Women and belief with which we view “fly me” advertisements. Public Policy at the University of Minnesota. At the Yet a consistent message from women who have same time, many advocates surely worry that the opt-out reached the heights is that gender does not make a big phenomenon will reinforce the negative expectation difference in conducting the essential business of lead- that women won’t go the distance, harming the ership. Katharine Graham had to fire executives and prospects of those who remain in the race. crush unions. It was her son and successor, Donald, For more than a hundred years, women have who added female-friendly benefits such as family leave, explained their lack of power by citing barriers: laws tax-deferred accounts for dependent care, and part- that bar women from certain jobs, prejudice, a pay time schedules when they were needed to attract and gap that saps the incentive to keep working, the retain talented people. For mother and son alike, the task unequally shared burden of child care and housework, was the same: Keep their company healthy and growing. the “mommy track.” In addition to the “glass ceiling,” Just when women have the greatest opportunities in British writers have identified a “glass cliff”—the over- history, top jobs have become more demanding than ever. representation of women in nearly impossible high- The pace of change has quickened, the rigors of competi- level jobs in which the risk of failure is high. It is said tion have increased, and the scrutiny of leaders has grown that women are denied plum assignments because more intense. The route to the top may remain even more they’re thought likely to opt out. They choke in emer- difficult than it is for men, but the decision that women gencies. (Now making the rounds is a study of profes- face now is whether they want to enter—and perhaps sional tennis—whose methodology has been vehe- hope to alter—the demolition derby. ■

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 53 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Soldiering Ahead

Since women began advancing into its upper ranks, the U.S. military has become both a more humane workplace and a more lethal fighting force. What role has female leadership played?

BY HOLLY YEAGER

When Dymetra Bass was a drill sergeant, Bass had no background in artillery, but that didn’t she had no trouble proving her mettle to the fresh Army matter. Her job was to do basic training. But her male col- recruits she pushed through basic training at Fort Leonard leagues still worried that the women wouldn’t be able to Wood in Missouri. “Every private would tell me, the mean- carry their load and that to pick up the slack, men would est drill sergeants were the women drill sergeants,” she says always have to run with the fastest group and demonstrate with a touch of pride. “We had to be so tough because peo- the most demanding drills, such as scurrying under barbed ple come from all walks of life. Some people, women have wire and using a rope to maneuver across water. “We had never told them what to do before.” to prove ourselves a lot more,” Bass says. Bass enlisted in 1989, right after high school, where Female leaders up and down the U.S. military’s chain of she had been a cheerleader, and she arrived with an command—from noncommissioned officers such as Bass, essential drill sergeant’s tool: a booming voice. She who deal most directly with troops, to two- and three-star also knew how to keep her soldiers motivated. “I like generals and admirals—talk about having to prove them- control, so it was easy for me. I like being in the front. selves, again and again. But slowly, and rather quietly, more I like leading. I believe in leading by example.” and more women have been doing just that. Women make But things changed when Bass moved to Fort Sill, up 14.4 percent of enlisted personnel and 15.9 percent of the Oklahoma, in 1999 as part of the first group of female officer corps in the 1.4-million-strong active-duty U.S. mil- drill sergeants assigned to train new members of field itary, according to the most recent Defense Department fig- artillery units—one of the few areas still closed to ures. That is a marked increase from the 1.6 percent of the women. “It was the drill sergeants who couldn’t accept military that was female in 1973, when the draft ended us, because they were artillery, and then you bring and new recruitment goals for women were set. these women in here to teach these civilians how to be The war in Iraq has been a major test of women’s new soldiers, and teach them combat skills. . . . They didn’t role in the military, and while a full assessment has yet to be believe it could be done, or done the right way.” completed—the RAND Corporation is at work on one— they seem to have performed well in the field. Women are

Holly Yeager, a Washington journalist, was until recently the U.S. poli- now permitted to serve in more than 90 percent of military tics correspondent for The Financial Times. She previously covered the occupations, though they are still barred from jobs or units Pentagon for the Hearst newspaper group and Defense Daily and now writes frequently about women’s issues. whose main mission is direct ground combat. But the fluid

54 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 The Few.The Proud.A Marine drill instructor presents sword to acknowledge a squad leader’s report on her recruits at Parris Island.

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 55 Women in Charge

Women’s Research & Education Institute in Washington, D.C. “[They speculated that] the men couldn’t do their jobs, that everyone would be pregnant, that they’d be so busy having sex that they couldn’t do anything else. “We now have units under fire with men and women in them,” Manning says. “We have experience of women firing weapons. They don’t fall to emotional bits.” Nor has the American public fallen to bits. The sometimes-dramatic footage of women on the front-lines, of women returning home to military hospitals, even the too-good-to-be-true story of the capture and rescue of Jessica Lynch, have prompted little popular outcry against women’s role in the war, and little evi- dence that the public is somehow less willing to tolerate their suffering than that of men. And while Lynndie England drew public attention and outrage for her role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, advocates of women in the military say critics have been on the lookout for any systemic failure of women to perform well in Iraq—and have found little to point to. Instead, just as the invasion of Panama and the Persian Gulf War led to reviews of women’s role in the military— and expansions of the positions open to Some of the first women to respond to these World War II posters were assigned repetitious com- them—Iraq will likely prompt another munications jobs. Army leaders said men might become impatient and make careless mistakes. reconsideration. Any increase in their lines of conflict in Iraq have put the units in which women combat role would improve women’s opportunities at the serve, such as military police, supply, and support, in the line top of the command structure, where their numbers of fire, challenging traditional ideas about what constitutes are small today in part because of their lack of combat a “combat” position. “Women are fighting, they are in the experience. streets and on the patrols,” says Pat Foote, a retired Army brigadier general. “They are running the convoys, getting shot at and shooting back.” The war’s death toll reflects this ore important than how uniformed women and battlefield reality: As of early June 2007, the nearly 3,500 the public have reacted is how America’s armed U.S. servicemembers who had lost their lives in Operation Mservices have fared. After more than 30 years of Iraqi Freedom included more than 70 women. experience with women in leadership positions and in the “Critics speculated a lot about what would happen if we ranks, what may be most surprising is how little the rise of let women in these jobs,” notes Lory Manning, a retired Navy women has actually affected the American military. Make captain who directs the Women in the Military project at the no mistake, the armed services have experienced enor-

56 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Women in Charge mous changes, including the incorporation of both devas- Walter F. Ulmer Jr., a retired Army general and leadership tating new killing technologies and more family-friendly specialist, identified what it called the “Big 12”—a set of personnel policies. But just as women’s distinctive contri- behaviors exhibited by officers best able to achieve opera- bution to the forging of today’s highly effective fighting tional excellence and motivate good soldiers to stay in the force is hard to identify, so is it difficult to say what part they Army. At the top of the list: keeps cool under pressure; have played in enhancing some of the military’s “softer” clearly explains missions, standards, and priorities; sees features. the big picture, provides context and perspective. The abil- Technological advances, new thinking from outside the ity to make “tough, sound decisions on time” was also military, changes in the attributes of senior leaders, and the among the most prized skills. Despite the growing value of demands of the all-volunteer force have resulted in adjust- collaboration, military leaders know better than most that, ments in the way the military is led. Women as well as men ultimately, hard choices need to be made—sometimes with have had to change. “It used to be that you ordered some- body to do something,” says “WE NOW HAVE units under fire with Darlene Iskra, a retired Navy officer who runs a leadership men and women in them,” a retired female training program for young Navy and Marine Corps offi- Navy captain says. “They don’t fall to cers at the University of Maryland. “Now, it’s more emotional bits.” that you ask them to do it, but they understand it’s an order, or you have meetings and ask people’s opinions, ask for their input, and help lives hanging in the balance—and only one person can be them to own the solution, rather than dictating.” in charge. The study did not say that the decider shouldn’t That shift to a more collaborative approach—which be a woman. some may attribute to the growing role of women—is in part Today’s general acceptance of women on the battlefield explained by the fact that new technology has given junior is a far cry from the skepticism—and sometimes outright officers more access to information, which used to be the hostility—that greeted the opening of the services to women purview of age and experience. “Women have in some after the end of the Vietnam War. Faced with manpower measure changed the culture, but the access to information, shortages when the draft ended in 1973 and expecting that and the horizontal nature of how information is managed the Equal Rights Amendment would be enacted, Pentagon and controlled...came at about the same time,” Vice officials set aggressive goals for recruiting women and Admiral Ann Rondeau says. In addition, because of the war started changing the rules that governed the jobs female in Iraq, “the average junior officer in the military today has servicemembers were allowed to do. American women more operational experience in war than the average sen- already had a long military history, but it was a history that ior officer.” As young officers bring their real-life experi- had largely seen them confined to separate branches such ence and information to the table, “I think there is a move as the WAVES and WAAC, which called on women to toward collaboration that would normally be seen as a fem- enlist during World War II in order to “free a man to fight.” inine leadership trait,” Rondeau says. She prefers to see Now women were to be integrated into regular service this tendency as a democratic product of the speed with units. Could they really carry heavy packs on their backs? which information flows. What would happen if they got pregnant? Would military A 2004 study of four Army divisions that had just wives put up with their presence in the ranks? returned from tours in Iraq found that most leaders had A question posed in a 1976 study by the U.S. Army strong technical and tactical skills. What set the best lead- Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences ers apart was interpersonal skills. The study, headed by provided a gauge of prevailing attitudes: “What percentage

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 57 Women in Charge of women will it take to degrade unit performance?” But the ance about how to integrate women into the armed services. results of a three-day field exercise with units ranging from The United States has more women in the military than any all-male to 35 percent female, and a follow-up study the next other country. Those with the fewest barriers to women in year, surprised nearly everyone. “When properly trained and combat, such as Sweden and Norway, also have small forces led, women are proving to be good soldiers in the field, as with fundamentally different missions. In Israel, women are well as in garrison,” the Army concluded. A research brief automatically conscripted into the armed forces, but many titled Military Readiness: Women Are Not a Problem, pub- receive exemptions for religious or family reasons. Some lished by RAND in 1997, showed that the tone had shifted ground combat units include women, and an army com- a little in 20 years. It found that gender integration in mil- mission is currently studying whether infantry, armor, and itary units “had a relatively small effect on readiness, cohe- special forces should be opened to women. The Israeli mil- sion, and morale,” but that a unit’s leadership, training, itary’s highest echelons still include no female officers. and workload had a much deeper influence. In the United States, one of the main complaints of critics is differing physical standards for men and women. (To get a perfect score on the Army fitness test, a 22-year- n the heat of the 1970s debate, researchers’ findings that old man must do 75 pushups, 80 situps, and run two women would not wreck the joint did little to cool the miles in 13 minutes. Women soldiers must do 46 pushups, Ifury of traditionalists. Perhaps the most dramatic state- 80 situps, and run two miles in 15:38.) The promotion sys- ment of opposition—one that still rankles some women in tem is another sore spot. Boards that meet each year to uniform—came from James Webb, a decorated ex-Marine consider which officers from each service will be pro- who would go on to become secretary of the Navy in the Rea- moted make their decisions based on the information gan administration and get elected to the Senate from Vir- they find in a file about each candidate, including work his- ginia as a Democrat in 2006. Webb, a Naval Academy tory, training, honors, performance evaluations, any dis- graduate, took particular offense at the decision to admit ciplinary action—often a photograph. They are also given women to the service academies beginning in 1976. In an equal opportunity goals, designed to ensure that the num- emotional 1979 screed in The Washingtonian titled “Women ber of women and minorities promoted in each group of Can’t Fight,” Webb argued that women were unsuited to be officers reflects that group’s representation in the pro- military leaders and unfit for the trenches. “There is a place motable pool. Such guidelines urge board members not to for women in our military, but not in combat,” he wrote. “And penalize candidates because they lack certain job experi- their presence at institutions dedicated to the preparation ences, such as combat assignments, if they were barred of men for combat command is poisoning that preparation. from such positions. But race and gender are not the only By attempting to sexually sterilize the Naval Academy envi- concerns. The promotion boards are pulled in many other ronment in the name of equality, this country has sterilized directions as well, needing to keep a balance between, say, the whole process of combat leadership training, and our helicopter and fixed-wing pilots. Most analyses find the military forces are doomed to suffer the consequences.” promotion system to be widely accepted by men and Such public declarations against women in the military women within the military. are rare today. During his Senate campaign, Webb apolo- For many of the women who entered the military in the gized for any “hardship” his article had caused and said he 1970s and are senior officers today, it is simply the access to was “completely comfortable” with the role women play in that merit system, the chance to succeed or fail based on the military. But on-the-record comfort does not mean the their own performance without first being discounted by question is settled. The day I met Bass, she said that one of others and denied opportunities because of their gender, that the officers in her command had told her in casual conver- may be the biggest change they have seen. sation earlier in the day that he did not think women Despite that opportunity, and their larger numbers, belonged anywhere near combat, because he would be so women face a “brass ceiling,” with only the thinnest repre- concerned about protecting them that he would be dis- sentation at the highest ranks. The limited range of combat- tracted from his own duties. related jobs open to women until the 1990s meant that International comparisons don’t offer much useful guid- many lack the experience that is highly valued in promotion

58 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Women in Charge

Members of a construction battalion in Iraq attend the Lioness Program,which trains them in self-defense and the proper way to search female Iraqis. decisions. At the same time, the arc of a military career is argue that they are fundamentally changing the culture long, and because the service academies only opened their around them, they are finding different ways to lead. doors to women in 1976, the cohort of female officers with Barbara Bell, a Navy captain who graduated from the both those top credentials are only now in position to use Naval Academy in 1983, says it took many years in uniform them to help push their careers to the highest levels. before she came to a simple realization: “I recognize that I’m In the face of such institutional limits to advancement, different. I recognize that I stick out, and I’m not going to it can be difficult to understand why so many women fight it,” she says with a smile. Bell, a pilot who now works entered the military in the 1970s and ’80s. Many say they did in acquisitions, recently told an audience that included so because they wanted the chance to serve their country, young servicewomen that she tries hard to establish a just like men, and to explore interesting career paths. But respectful office environment and to pay attention to the there was something else. Vice Admiral Rondeau, one of just work-life balance for her staff and herself. Most days she five female officers with three stars currently serving in the leaves work by 4:30 to pick up her 7-year-old son. U.S. military and frequently mentioned as a candidate to While many senior women in uniform say they had become the first four-star woman in the country’s history, few female role models and mentors, their ascendance is explains: “There were glass ceilings. There were prejudices. beginning to change that, too. The mere presence of more There were barriers. But . . . there was equal pay for equal women in the senior officer grades has made a difference. work.” “It just helps everyone to know what the art of the possible Even as they prove themselves and parry occasional is, and that they can continue to move up the ranks,” says resistance to their presence, some women have brought their Lieutenant General Ann E. Dunwoody, deputy chief of staff personal—and sometimes decidedly feminine—approaches of the Army. to this most masculine of institutions. While none would Bass—now a first sergeant, the top enlisted soldier work-

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 59 Women in Charge ing at the National Defense University in Washington, dents are women, they must make difficult adjustments. But D.C.—says that when she was in Iraq in 2005, she and her perhaps more important in maintaining the military’s ethos unit’s commander, also a woman, “did things a little differ- than tradition and machismo, haircuts and pushups, is the ently.” Sitting in her office at Fort McNair, she pointed to a fact that much of what the military does is determined by photograph of a young female soldier. When Bass and her its well-defined mission to be ready, as the Army field man- commander got the news that the soldier had been killed on ual puts it, “to fight and win the Nation’s wars.” Successful women in the military are well aware of SOME CHANGES IN the military may that basic fact, and many say they did not arrive with a be seen as a more “feminine” approach to desire to change the institu- tion. “You are joining an leadership, but they reflect the demands of institution that has doctrine, that has tradition, and you attracting and retaining the all-volunteer force. either appreciate it and come to love that aspect of the institution, or at some point duty, “we woke everyone up—it was at night—so they you say, ‘No, this really isn’t where I want to be in life,’ and wouldn’t wake up to it [in the morning], so they could deal you go back to civilian life,” says Rear Admiral Michelle with it.” Howard, who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1982, After addressing them in formation, Bass stayed with her a member of the third class to include women. soldiers, talking to them, listening to them cry, trying to let them know that she understood their sadness and, at the same time, that their work had to continue. “I think we were he strength of that tradition does not mean that the more nurturing, which also motivated the troops to do organization has not changed since the 1970s. But well, and when they had problems, they knew they could Twhile those changes—in management style, family- come into our offices and talk to us, compared to the male friendliness, and other areas—may be seen as a shift toward first sergeants, who were so hard.” There is growing evidence what management gurus call a more “feminine” approach that the military is putting new emphasis on just the kind to leadership, they reflect other factors at work—most of interpersonal skills Bass displayed. important, the demands of attracting, and retaining, the all- Day-to-day standards for behavior have also changed. volunteer force. Younger people in all walks of life are less Pinups are gone from barracks walls and dirty language has willing to sacrifice everything for their careers, and are been cleaned up. “It’s definitely had an impact on the social more concerned with preserving their lives outside work. As culture of the military, which used to be one of the great boys’ in the corporate world, military leaders have recognized the clubs of the world,” says Phillip Carter, a military analyst and need for policies to protect investments in careers and train- former Army officer. “It’s not just this Spartan legion of ing with benefits for families, as well as for soldiers them- men. Now it’s much more like society at large.” selves. But the prospect of losing skilled professionals—in For all that, it is hard to find anyone, male or female, in an organization that wants its leadership to be as diverse as or out of uniform, who would assert that the ascendance of its enlisted corps—is in some ways more troubling for the women to leadership positions has fundamentally changed military. As Howard explains, “We don’t have the luxury of martial culture. “The military is still not just overwhelmingly a corporation, of hiring in someone with this skill set.... So male, but its ways of doing things are still very male,” says then the issue becomes, how do we retain this talent?” Mady Segal, a sociology professor at the University of Mary- Recent research indicates that the departure of female land whose work focuses on women in the military. Top officers, largely due to such issues of work-life balance, leaders go to the service academies, where traditional cul- poses a particular challenge to the Pentagon. A study pub- ture is reinforced. Even though about 20 percent of new stu- lished early this year of officers at several career points by the

60 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Women in Charge

Government Accountability Office found that “all services encountered challenges retain- ing female officers.” The differ- ence was most marked in the Navy, with its increasingly long spells of duty at sea, where con- tinuation rates among female officers with four or five years of service averaged nine percent- age points lower than those of male officers. A 2005 report from the Army Research Institute found that the gap between male and female Army officers who said they intended to stay in the serv- ice until retirement age had held relatively steady over 10 years. In a 1995 survey, 66 percent of male officers and 51 percent of female officers said they planned to stay; in 2004, the numbers were 69 and 53 per- cent, respectively. Male and female officers Major General Ann E. Dunwoody became the first woman to command Fort Lee, Virginia, in 2004. Today she’s an example of the “art of the possible”as a lieutenant general and the Army’s deputy chief of staff. agree that women face special challenges in pursuing military careers, but they differ a lack of consensus on the appropriate role for women over the reasons, according to a 2001 RAND report. in the military. The female officers said sexual harass- Male officers offered researchers three main explana- ment leads to an uncomfortable working environment tions: “Women are inherently less capable, physically and for women who are harassed, and they agreed that male mentally, to perform a military job and lead troops,” in fears of harassment charges had inhibited interactions the study’s words, and the ban on women in combat jobs between men and women. has kept them from occupations with the greatest oppor- Officers of both sexes cited the amount of time they tunities for advancement. The men also said that male spent away from their families and the enjoyment they superiors fear that they will find themselves unable to got from their jobs as the most important factors influ- refute an unwarranted charge of sexual harassment and encing their decision about whether to leave the Army. therefore hold back from interactions, such as mentor- But family issues appear to have a special effect on ing, with female subordinates. women officers. In the research institute study, time Female officers said their chances to perform and the away from family was listed as the most important rea- recognition they received were “diminished by expecta- son by 43 percent of women planning to leave, and 27 tions that they are less capable,” according to the study. percent of men. One reason for the difference is that Female officers reported “difficulties forming peer and female officers are much more likely than their male mentor relationships,” and said they “receive fewer peers to be married to another person in the military, career-enhancing assignments.” They also cited a conflict who can’t easily follow when a new posting comes along. between work demands and family responsibilities, and Another study, conducted in 1997 by the Army Research

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Institute, found that 80 percent of male officers were rules but was granted immunity as a witness and per- married, but just seven percent of them had wives in the mitted to remain enrolled. military. Among female officers, 58 percent were mar- But even Donnelly, perhaps the most outspoken con- ried, and more than half of their spouses were also in the servative critic of the Pentagon’s gender policies, doesn’t military. directly call for a rollback of women’s role in the military. As a practical matter, it is hard to see how the Army and other branches could be staffed without a significant or women in the military, there are plenty of complement of women—and some politicians in both easy reminders of how much things have parties are calling for an expansion of troop strength. F changed. Female Marines in the 1940s were Does all this mean that it is only a matter of time until strongly encouraged to wear lipstick, but it had to match women are fully integrated into the armed services lead- the red cord on their winter caps—a requirement that ership? New technology, fresh attention to inclusive prompted Elizabeth Arden to make Montezuma Red for leadership styles, and societal attitudes all favor a greater just that purpose. As recently as 1989, when Bass role for women in the top ranks. enlisted, it was assumed that women would remain far Deeper changes in military culture, however, are away from combat zones. “When I first came in the likely to be difficult. Along with the physiological fact that Army,” she says, “my supervisor told me, ‘If you’re firing most women cannot develop the upper body strength your weapon, the war is over.’ ” thought to be needed in traditional warfare, general Of course, this sort of vision of slow, steady, and questions about their fitness for the most direct combat accepted progress for women is not the only way to look assignments remain. Lory Manning, of the Women’s at the recent past. In 1990, Darlene Iskra, the now- Research & Education Institute, says that the issue of retired naval officer who provides leadership training to women in combat will still be politically sensitive, but she recently commissioned Navy and Marine personnel, expects it to be re-examined after the Iraq war. She sin- became the first woman to command a Navy vessel. She gles out the “co-location rule,” which prohibits women remembers the stack of congratulatory messages that with noncombat jobs, such as medics and mechanics, awaited her when she arrived at her ship, the USS from being based with combat units, as one that will Opportune, and the way her male colleagues showed new likely be changed formally after the war. “Sheer neces- respect when she wore her command pin. But 10 years sity made it go away” in Iraq. But Manning does not fore- later, something had changed: “The reason I got out was see a sweeping removal of the remaining bans on direct because I felt like an ensign again. They just did not combat. respect me. It was awful.” The career of Erin Morgan, who graduated from Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military West Point in May and is now a second lieutenant in the Readiness, a nonprofit advocacy group, complains that Army Intelligence Corps, is off to a promising start, with career-minded female officers have been behind the wide opportunities and the open doors that a degree decades-long push to open more jobs to women, and that from the academy can secure. But a few weeks before the changes have come at the cost of dangerous “double graduation, she said that women still do not have an easy standards involving women.” A case in point, she said, time fitting in. “Soldiering is a masculine trait, something was the treatment of Lamar Owens Jr., a former star that separates the men from the women and the men quarterback at the Naval Academy, who was accused of from the boys,” she says. “That is something that cadets rape by a female classmate. Owens and the classmate still struggle with.” were both drinking and ended up in bed together. He Amid the constant reminders of great warriors of the said their sex was consensual; she said she was raped. past embodied in statues and paintings at West Point, Owens was acquitted of the charge but dismissed from Morgan saw depictions of Douglas MacArthur, George the academy and ordered to repay the cost of his edu- Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, and other fabled generals. cation after being found guilty of conduct unbecoming But she was only able to find one woman: Joan of Arc, an officer. His accuser admitted to breaking academy whose image is part of the mess hall mural. ■

62 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 A Woman’s World Fresher salads? No more war? A look at our feminine future.

BY SARA SKLAROFF

Where have all the boys gone? College unprecedented societal event. That’s right: Women admissions officers would sure like to know. Less are taking over. than three decades ago, men dominated the nation’s Already, traditionally male occupations from medi- campuses. Today, they are significantly outnumbered cine to bartending are heavily populated by women. We by women, meaning that administrators have to have our second female secretary of state, our first female choose between skewed male-female ratios and affir- Speaker of the House, and the first viable female presi- mative action for the Y-chromosome. But colleges Sara Sklaroff writes frequently about gender, motherhood, and health. are merely the first responders to what could be an She lives in Washington, D.C.

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 63 Women in Charge dential candidate in the nation’s history. Young women cultures as an object lesson to keep women out of power.) today grow up with far more career options than even Anthropologists have identified societies that are organized their supposedly liberated mothers did (though these into female-dominated domestic structures, but these are “options” are often not quite what they promise). What considered “matrifocal” or “matrilineal,” mere hiccups in the were formerly “feminine” weaknesses are even being great march of male dominance. retooled as strengths: According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, crying—once taboo on the job—is becoming acceptable in the workplace, as a way to hose definitions may not tell the whole story, how- express emotion and promote “healthy debate.” ever. By looking only for mirror images of patri- So let’s run out the trend lines for a moment, and imag- T archies that happen to have women on top, says ine this future female planet. It will certainly be a nicer place Peggy Reeves Sanday of the University of Pennsylvania, to live—more attractive, friendlier, and much, much anthropologists may have failed to spot the different forms cleaner. You’ll be able to find a decent public bathroom that female-dominated societies take. Sanday lived on and wherever you go. Delicious, high-quality salads will be off with the Minangkabau people for more than 20 years. sold everywhere—not the wilted, uninspired packages Known throughout Indonesia for their business savvy, and grudgingly offered at corner delis or Starbucks, but fresh, overrepresented in the country’s intellectual and political life, innovative compositions that will make dieting a snap. the four million Minangkabau in West Sumatra also hap- This will be a woman’s world, and men will have to learn pen to call themselves a matriarchy, Sanday writes in Women to fit in. Industrial design will be based on an average at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy (2002). woman’s size, not a man’s, so men will have to squeeze As far back as Alexander the Great, according to their themselves into public bus seats and crouch down to reach legends, the Minangkabau have been a matrilineal people. items on supermarket shelves. Standard portion sizes at Land is passed on through the maternal line, and when a restaurants will be smaller; those who wish to eat more man and a woman marry, the husband moves in with his (usually men) will have to pay more. Other pricing schemes wife’s family. Young men are encouraged to leave their vil- that currently favor men will be reversed: Dry cleaning and lages for a while to travel and experience the outside world haircuts, for example, will conform to a flat-fee system. while young women stay at home learning how to run the Schoolteachers, most of whom are women, will finally farms. Though devoted Muslims, the Minangkabau simul- get the higher salaries they deserve for nurturing the next taneously follow a traditional religion that is resolutely generation, but it will suddenly become apparent that female oriented, focused on maternal ideals of growth and hedge fund managers, almost all of whom are men, don’t nurturance. In their history, queens are preeminent, Sanday really need to make millions of dollars a year for moving says: “Male aggression plays a subordinate role to the mater- some numbers around on a computer screen. There will be nal authority of the divine queen.” She also reports a “near more police on the streets, so women can walk alone at absence of rape and wife abuse.” night without fear. In public, it will be socially unacceptable Indeed, gender politics look very different in Minangk- to spit, litter, scratch oneself, shout, urinate, or wear shorts abau society. “In answer to my persistent questions about with loafers. ‘who rules,’ ” Sanday says, “I was often told that I was ask- Yes, it’s a lovely picture—but it doesn’t say much about ing the wrong question. Neither sex rules, it was explained the greater mechanisms of society. What really happens to me, because males and females complement one another.” when women rule? History offers few clues. The great Decisions are made by consensus, and the Minangkabau female rulers we read about in grade school—Cleopatra, keep one another in line by enforcing their custom of act- say, or Elizabeth I—are too anomalous to offer much ing for the common good. Each sex has its own, well- insight. Most mainstream scholars don’t believe that matri- defined realm. Men perform starring roles in religion and archies have ever even existed in human civilizations, governance (though clearly within a domain constructed by despite the feminist appeal of the Amazons and other women), while women are leaders in culture, education, and mythologized creatures. (Indeed, there is evidence that ceremony—and “hold the keys to the rice house,” making the lore of an unruly, female-dominated past is used by some important economic decisions.

64 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Women in Charge

Women call the shots among the Mosuo in the Himalayas, but they still have to dig potatoes. Here a young woman contemplates her matriarchal future.

A better-known matrifocal culture can be found among order. Yang Erche Namu, a Mosuo-born singer famous in the Mosuo, an agrarian group of about 50,000 who have China, described the code of conduct in her 2003 memoir lived for almost two millennia in a remote corner of China, Leaving Mother Lake: “We must not speak ill of others or high in the Himalayas. Their fame derives from the practice shout at people or discuss their private affairs. When we dis- of “walking marriage”: A woman does not take a husband, approve of someone, we must do so in halftones or use but once she turns 13, she is given her own bedroom (or euphemisms or, at worst, mockery. . . . We must repress jeal- “flower chamber”) and can invite any man to spend a night ousy and envy, and we must always be prepared to ignore with her, so long as he leaves before dawn. In practice, this our differences for the sake of maintaining harmony.” usually doesn’t result in wild promiscuity; it’s more like Outsiders, of course, are more interested in the sex. The serial monogamy, kept strictly private and separate from the idea that a female-dominated culture could promote sex- daily workings of the family. But walking marriage demol- ual freedom flies in the face of most cultures’ assumptions ishes the traditional concept of matrimony as a means of about women’s sexuality. But the animal world offers an protecting a sexually active woman. As one Mosuo woman even more fascinating example: the bonobo. Along with told a documentary filmmaker, “Why would you want the chimpanzees, bonobos are humans’ closest animal relatives, marriage license to handcuff yourself?” sharing more than 98 percent of our DNA. Yet they couldn’t Although men assume important roles in the commu- be more different from the warlike chimps. Bonobos live nity, Mosuo fathers do not live with their children, remain- in matriarchal tribes, in which conflicts are settled by sex, ing instead in their own mothers’ homes. Uncles shoulder and lots of it. They have sex to greet one another and to a large portion of child rearing, and many children don’t make friends; they use it to resolve conflicts and then they even know who their fathers are. There are no jails; instead, have makeup sex afterward—all in an impressive variety of a powerful sense of group-enforced propriety maintains positions. Partners can be male or female, of literally any

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 65 Women in Charge age, and are often taken from within an individual’s imme- class professional women dominate an underclass of diate family as well as outside of it. working he-men? That’s certainly good fodder for sci- Within each tribe, even the lowest-status female is ence fiction, but it’s also a vision predicated on one nar- considered superior to the highest-status male. Older row idea about how a society works. The Minangkabau bonobo females keep younger females in check by snubbing who chided Sanday perhaps have a message for us, too: them: walking away from a grooming attempt or refusing “Who’s on top?” may no longer be a meaningful question to share food. Grown male bonobos cling to their mothers if women rule the world. The real effect of female dom- ination may be felt less in the boardroom than in WOMEN AREN’T THAT much less our day-to-day existence. While the greater avail- aggressive than men—they’re just better at ability of salad greens may not seem like a revolution, hiding it. it connotes a culture that cares deeply about the well-lived life, and the indi- in order to attain status and protection. The kicker: Male vidual experiences of those who live it. bonobos live longer and are generally healthier than male Which is not to say that the first generations of female chimps, since they aren’t required to fight for status and leaders won’t concern themselves with power. After all, don’t live with the stress that chimps do. Margaret Thatcher didn’t become Britain’s prime minis- This is not to say that human males would actually ter by seeking consensus and expressing her feelings, and be better off in a matriarchy. Women regularly show it’s not clear that Hillary Clinton would be well-advised to themselves to be every bit as cruel as men, and some- use those techniques either, should she reach the White times even more savage. Like the bonobo elders reject- House. But decades on, when women born into a female- ing their daughters, human women can wield their con- dominated society come of age, hierarchy might be less siderable emotional intelligence to nasty effect. Teenage important than group welfare and consensus. We might girls were known to be trouble well before we started have less war and more behind-the-scenes politicking. Or, talking about “queen bees” and “mean girls.” And we all given that women have never been in charge before, there know plenty of female bosses who hamstring the success may be societal structures we can’t yet imagine. of women who work for them. Still, we’ve sort of been here before, if you consider In fact, there’s evidence that women aren’t that much that some proponents of the women’s vote argued that, if less aggressive than men—they’re just better at hiding it. enfranchised, the more “moral” fairer sex would make the Psychologists have found that while men channel their world a better place. Conversely, there were dire predictions aggression through purported “rationality” (interrupting, about the effects of women’s suffrage. In 1853, a New York criticizing unjustly, questioning others’ judgment), Herald reporter described his state’s suffrage convention as women are more likely to use “social manipulation” “a gathering of unsexed women, . . . all of them publicly pro- (gossiping, backbiting, ostracizing) to get what they pounding the doctrine that they should be allowed to step want. Remember that in both the Mosuo and Minangk- out of their appropriate sphere to the neglect of those abau cultures it is unacceptable to criticize another per- duties which both human and divine law have assigned son directly. But passive aggression is aggression them.” His desperate conclusion: “Is the world to be depop- nonetheless. ulated?” Well, not so far. But women’s suffrage also didn’t One thing that’s troubling about the widening gen- put an end to war, and it certainly didn’t fully achieve der gap in college is what it will mean for relations equality for the sexes. What it did show is that women are between the sexes down the road. Will the resulting as diverse, as incisive, and, yes, as fallible as men. And imbalance between educated women and a shrinking that’s worth remembering as the scales of leadership tip in pool of potential mates create a world in which upper- the other direction. ■

66 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 In ESSENCE reviews of articles from periodicals and specialized journals here and abroad

Economics, Labor & Business 67 // Foreign Policy & Defense 68 // Politics & Government 72 // Society 73 Religion & Philosophy 76 // History 78 // Science & Technology 80// Arts & Letters 83 // Other Nations 85

ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS influence their sense of well-being. Landownership among the very poor varies widely—four percent of Mexicans living on less than $1 a day Living on $1 a Day own land, while 30 percent of Pakis- tanis and 65 percent of Peruvians in the extremely poor do not seem to be similar circumstances do—but farm- THE SOURCE: “The Economic Lives of the Poor” by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther as hungry for additional calories as ers, like other poor people, are often Duflo, in The Journal of Economic one might expect,” note Abhijit V. engaged in multiple occupations. Perspectives, Winter 2007. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, econ- Why not settle on a single occu- What is it like to live on less omists at the Massachusetts Institute pation, or improve the farm? Why than $1 a day? More than one billion of Technology and directors of its spend time selling trinkets on the people in the developing world Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action street when so many others are scraped by below this global line for Lab. Their review of surveys of the doing the same thing? People living the “extremely poor” in 2001, and poor in 13 countries confirms that on the edge are reluctant to put all their lives were hard—but not as fact and turns up other insights. their eggs in one basket, the authors devoid of choices as they might seem. There are wide country-to-coun- explain. More important, they rarely In Udaipur, India, according to a try variations. Hardly any of Udai- have access to credit or safe places to recent survey, only 10 percent of the pur’s poor own a radio or television, save their money. poor own a chair and just five percent but in countries where festivals and Poor people could earn “much own a table. More than a third report other public entertainments are more” by longer and more frequent that adults in their household went rare, ownership rates are much migrations to find work elsewhere, without food for a whole day at some higher. More than 70 percent of but surprisingly few follow this path. point during the past year. Anemia and poor households in South Africa In Udaipur, 60 percent of the house- other illnesses are rife. Yet the same and Peru own a radio. A quarter of holds have a member who has trav- survey shows that the city’s poor spend Guatemala’s poor households and eled elsewhere for work, but usually five percent of their money on alcohol nearly half of Nicaragua’s own a tel- not far (the majority stay in the state and tobacco, 10 percent on religious evision. It’s not an absence of self- of Rajasthan, which is roughly the festivals, and almost 10 percent on control that leads to such outcomes, size of New Mexico) or for long (the “sugar, salt, and other processed foods.” the authors say. Poor people often median stay is one month). Perman- In India as a whole, the share of skimp on food so that they will have ent migration the world over is “rare.” income the poor spent on food enough money for things they con- Only four percent of very poor house- declined between 1983 and 2000. sider valuable. Like everybody else, holds in Pakistan included someone Researchers around the world they let comparisons with what who was born elsewhere and moved have consistently found that “even their neighbors have powerfully permanently for work; in Côte

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d’Ivoire and Peru, the numbers are ing more money,” Banerjee and Duflo The NASDAQ market, the main six and 10 percent, respectively. write. “Perhaps at some level this crash site of the Internet boom of the Images of teeming cities may give the avoidance is emotionally wise: 1990s, would have produced impression that the countryside has Thinking about the economic prob- handsome returns (9.6 percent annu- been drained of people, but a few lems of life must make it harder to ally) for a person who invested in million city dwellers added over the avoid confronting the sheer inade- 1973 and did nothing until 2002. course of decades is a drop in the quacy of the standard of living faced But even committed “passive” bucket in a country of many millions. by the extremely poor.” investors have a hard time sitting One explanation for the disincli- tight. People tend to put more money nation to migrate is that earning ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS into stocks when the market soars more money simply is not the high- and pull it out when it turns south. est priority of many poor people, the Outsmarting Most wind up buying high and selling authors say. But there’s more to it low. In order to find out how investors than that. A study in Kenya showed the Market actually fared, Dichev adjusted histor- that while farmers who used fertilizer THE SOURCE: “What Are Stock Investors’ ical market returns to reflect the flows Actual Historical Returns? Evidence From could vastly increase crop yields, few Dollar-Weighted Returns” by Ilia D. Dichev, of money in and out of the market. chose to do so, pleading poverty. Yet in The American Economic Review, That juicy 9.6 percent return on the March 2007. when aid workers offered to sell them NASDAQ? In fact, investors reaped a fertilizer voucher at harvest time “Buy and hold” is the mantra only 4.3 percent on average. Results (when they do have cash) good for of many investment gurus. Rather were better in other markets. A later redemption, many took the than try to time the market or pick capitalization-weighted basket of deal. Then something even more winners and losers, they say, indi- stocks on the New York and curious happened. Most immediately vidual investors should put their American stock exchanges held from redeemed their vouchers, and stored money into a representative basket 1926 to 2002 returned an average of the fertilizer for later use—the very of stocks and forget about it. Good 9.9 percent annually. Investors who option they’d always declined in the advice, says Ilia D. Dichev, an econ- tried to outsmart the market saw an past. They seemed to need a little omist at the University of Michi- 8.6 percent annual increase. push. “One senses a reluctance of gan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Dichev’s lesson: There can be a big poor people to commit themselves Business. What a pity it’s too simple difference between how stocks per- psychologically to a project of mak- for most people to follow. form and how investors perform.

FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE presidents seem to look toward Ike as a foreign-policy model, his “brand of realism,” says Jonathan Rauch, a National Journal senior writer, has The Eisenhower Way “never been more relevant than it will be in the post-Bush cleanup that while being challenged on several is about to begin.” THE SOURCE: “Learning From Ike” by Jonathan Rauch, in National Journal, fronts by the specter of nuclear con- In today’s America, Rauch says, April 13, 2007. frontation. Such is the scenario that foreign policy is divided between awaits the president who will take hawks, who “think that peace A new administration en- office in 2009, yet it bears many comes from American strength,” ters the White House, succeeding an similarities to the situation when and doves, who “think that peace unpopular president and inheriting Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the comes from international coopera- a failing war in a volatile region, White House in 1953. Though few tion.” Both camps, in his opinion,

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themselves over complex, unpre- dictable situations such as the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Some regard “America’s attachment to Israel as sen- timental,” while others believe that the United States must stand firm with Israel “until Palestinian militants understand that they can never win.” A third camp, Luttwak among them, believes that the only choice is “but to muddle on with diplomatic efforts to calm the situation.” Can a realist win the presidency in 2008? “One recently did—in 2000,” Rauch notes. A pre-9/11 George W. President Eisenhower talks with Secretaryof State John Foster Dulles after a 1958 press conference about Bush said, “I just don’t think it’s the Formosa (Taiwan). Congress had authorized the use of force to defend the island three years earlier. role of the United States to walk into a country and say ‘We’ll do it this way; are blinded by “misguided senti- How would Eisenhower have so should you.’ ” But just as the cool- mentality.” Realists in the mode of approached Iraq? Rauch believes that headed Eisenhower ended the Kor- Eisenhower are rare. (Zbigniew rather than view the conflict as a test ean War even as he “embraced the Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national of wills or simply end U.S. involve- principle of containment”—and in the security adviser, is their “éminence ment, Ike probably would have fav- process salvaged many of his prede- grise.”) They value both strength ored the approach championed by cessor Harry S. Truman’s policies—so and diplomacy, but “believe that Edward N. Luttwak, a senior fellow at Bush may need to hope for a realist peace ultimately comes from some- the Center for Strategic and Interna- successor to save his historical thing else: equilibrium.” tional Studies: stop trying to suppress reputation. In the 1950s, Eisenhower ac- Sunni-Shia conflict, and use U.S. mil- cepted stalemate to end the Korean itary and diplomatic power only to FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE War, “double-crossing Republican contain the conflict. “Play Sunnis and hawks who demanded the ‘rollback’ Shiites against each other,” Rauch The Five Percent of Communism and to whom his says, “both within Iraq and around campaign had pandered.” From then the region, to foster and exploit a sus- Problem on, Rauch writes, his “unsentimental tainable balance.” THE SOURCE: “The Irrelevance of the realism rarely wavered,” although it The chief flaw of Eisenhower-style Middle East” by Philip E. Auerswald, in The American Interest, Summer 2007. led to questionable covert operations, realism, Rauch says, is “that in a as in Guatemala and Iran. Eisen- pious, warm-blooded world, it is as Since the end of the Cold hower rejected calls to make a pre- unpalatable as atheism.” When con- War, America has boosted its mili- emptive nuclear strike against the fronted by the kind of genocide wit- tary presence in only a single re- saber-rattling Chinese, saying that “a nessed in Rwanda and Bosnia in the gion, the Middle East. The area preventive war, to my mind, is an 1990s and in Darfur today, realists are holds half the world’s oil reserves, impossibility today.... I don’t believe “inclined to hide behind the United sits astride crucial international there is such a thing, and, frankly, I Nations and buck the problem to shipping lanes, and makes up the wouldn’t even listen to anyone regional powers.” heartland of Islamic fundamental- seriously that came in and talked Realism is “a lens, not a road map,” ist terrorism. It’s almost universally about such a thing.” Rauch says. Its advocates differ among assumed to be central to American

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Auerswald. When the Ayatollah America’s international strategy: Bold The Middle East’s long- Khomeini took over Iran, its oil pro- or belligerent? Essential in a world of term importance to duction decreased for a year but has instability or dangerously unilateral? American foreign policy grown ever since. Since 1980, Islamic Freedom of action in space is now is roughly proportional Iran’s decisions on how much oil to as important to the United States as to its share of the world pump have been “no more menacing air and sea power, the space policy or unpredictable than Canada’s or states. As recently as the end of the population—“less than Norway’s.” Cold War, the chief military function five percent.” Threats to international shipping of space was reconnaissance. Now, lanes in the Middle East such as the satellites guide precision strikes from foreign policy. But that assumption Suez Canal are real, but no more seri- a distance to put fewer soldiers in is wrong, and getting less true with ous than threats to the Cape of Good harm’s way, reduce confusion on the each passing year, argues Philip E. Hope or the Strait of Malacca. Mid- ground, make the U.S. military more Auerswald, an economist at George dle East nuclear terrorism is a legiti- effective and lethal, and reduce casu- Mason University and Harvard’s mate concern, but no more so than a alties among troops, writes Jeff Kennedy School of Government. nuclear-armed North Korea. America Kueter, president of the George C. Petro-alarmism is exaggerated, he can maintain its irrevocable commit- Marshall Institute, in The New says. When oil prices more than dou- ment to Israel’s right to exist and its Atlantis (Spring 2007). Just about all bled between 2002 and 2006, the support for a viable Palestinian state phases of military operations, from crippling effects on the U.S. economy even as it reframes its priorities in the planning to execution, involve space, were precisely none. While rising Middle East as a whole. “The long- says Marc J. Berkowitz, former assis- prices hurt particular groups, such as term importance of the Middle East tant deputy undersecretary of defense low-income residents of rural areas, is roughly proportional to the share of for space policy, in High Frontier the impact on most consumers has the world population for which the (March 2007), a journal of the U.S. been minimal. Oil is an “inherently region accounts—less than five per- Air Force Space Command. feeble strategic weapon” because the cent,” Auerswald contends. “Some- The new National Space Policy has “economies of the oil-producing times, simply paying less attention raised alarms both in the United [states] are even more dependent on leads to better outcomes.” States and among its allies because of oil revenues than the economies of “undiplomatic and unilateral” lan- consuming countries are on the FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE guage, according to Theresa Hitchens, crude they import,” he says. The director of the Center for Defense higher the price soars, the more the A New Race Information, writing in the same issue oil-importing nations are likely to of High Frontier. The policy states that come up with substitutes. As prices in Space the United States will “deny, if neces- rise, new sources of energy, such as A SURVEY OF RECENT ARTICLES sary, adversaries the use of space capa- ethanol and oil from Canada’s tar bilities hostile to U.S. national inter- sands, become more viable. Smart President George W. Bush’s ests.” And it opposes arms control producers will keep prices from rising new National Space Policy, released agreements that might impair Ameri- so high that investors pour money unobtrusively late on a Friday after- can ability to “conduct research, devel- into developing alternatives that noon before a long holiday weekend opment, testing, and operations, or threaten the economic foundation of last October, took some time to per- other activities in space.” their nations. colate through the foreign-policy The blunt words of the policy Catastrophic scenarios of a establishment. But its forceful asser- cemented concerns that the United sudden cutoff of oil from Saudi Ara- tion of U.S. rights in space has States “intends to use force both in bia because of an abrupt regime sparked a passionate argument that space and from space,” Hitchens says, change ignore history, according to mirrors the ongoing debate over and they were met with dead silence

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from America’s closest allies. An edi- protect America’s “assets” in space is Kueter says: taking a wait-and-see torial in Aviation Week and Space merely prudent, he writes. The dan- attitude rather than risk overreac- Technology called the policy “jingois- ger of “inciting an arms race” is con- tion, changing its mind about tic,” and The Times of London de- siderably less than the risk involved in treaties and using negotiation and scribed it as “comically proprietary in leaving the nation with an “Achilles’ diplomacy to ban the introduction tone about the U.S.’s right to control heel.” of weapons into space, or adopting access to the rest of the solar system.” America’s space vulnerability was an “active defensive posture”— Administration officials responded made clear in January, when, three Kueter’s recommendation. “The flatly that the policy is “not about months after the release of Bush’s industrial and academic base on developing or deploying weapons in National Space Policy, the Chinese which U.S. space prowess depends space,” but the language of the new launched a missile that rose 537 miles is not currently capable of surging policy “muddied the waters,” Hitch- and slammed into an obsolete weath- production of existing systems or ens maintains. er satellite, turning both missile and developing new ones to meet such The Bush policy is more a begin- satellite into 900 chunks of space demands,” he says. This capacity ning than an end, in Berkowitz’s view. debris. Was this a shot over the bow needs to be built up. An “active It’s virtually inevitable that America’s in reaction to the new space policy, a defensive posture” might well re- freedom of action in space will be ham-handed effort to demonstrate quire investing in the development forcibly challenged, he says, of small satellites and and national leaders must rapid launch capabilities “undertake serious prepara- so that satellites could be tions to preserve” U.S. rights speedily replaced. More- to operate in space without over, he says, Washington interference. “It may not be needs to sort out who a choice for U.S. policy- within the government is makers to decide whether or in charge, talk frankly not space will be made a about threats and poten- battlefield; that decision tial responses with its could be made by an adver- allies, and stop the shrink- sary.” The United States is age of the pool of rocket already party to agreements scientists. that limit its activities in One more uncertainty: orbit. These pacts bar the The Chinese plan to launch their first mission to the moon this year. Two researchers argue in deployment of weapons of Foreign Affairs (May–June mass destruction, detonation of Chinese space prowess, or an attempt 2007) that the true explanation for nuclear weapons, and interference to stampede the United States into a China’s satellite-destroying stunt with methods used to verify arms treaty to ban space weapons? might be that it was a rogue action of treaties. Further treaties, Berkowitz Whatever the Chinese motiva- the Chinese army. The right hand of contends, would not be “verifiable, tions, Kueter writes in The New At- the Chinese foreign-policy establish- equitable, effective, or compatible lantis, “China is now unquestionably ment—which has built up a “peace- with the nation’s security interests.” a first-tier space power, comparable fully rising” image of its nation as a Already, he says, enemies have to the United States and Russia.” “responsible great power”—may not attempted to cripple U.S. combat China put its first satellite into orbit in know what the other hand of the Chi- effectiveness by jamming global posi- 1970, and sent up its first astronaut in nese military is doing. tioning signals and blinding recon- 2003. It plans an unmanned lunar The military has kept information naissance satellites. Developing “ac- orbiter mission this year. from others in Beijing before, such as tive and passive defense measures” to America has three options, when a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S.

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reconnaissance plane collided, and Martin Kleiber of the Center for Affairs was simply not informed of when the SARS (severe acute respira- Strategic and International Studies. the test, raising questions about tory syndrome) infection spread Diplomats now believe, they say, that China’s reliability as a global partner inside China, write Bates Gill and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign in more fields than just space.

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT areas thought critical to economic growth: patents and venture capital funding. South Carolina companies, universities, and individuals were A Low-Wage Dead End granted only 3.6 patents per 10,000 workers in 2001, half the national ticipated in the dot-com boom. rate. Available venture capital stood THE SOURCE: “Economic Development and Globalization in South Carolina” by Lacy “Smokestack chasing” stopped work- at $3 per worker in 2002, compared K. Ford Jr. and R. Phillip Stone, in Southern ing long ago. “Neither labor costs nor with $155 per worker nationally. Cultures, Spring 2007. overall business expenses are lower South Carolina, the authors con- Few southern states were in South Carolina than in Mexico or clude, must abandon the “easy politi- more successful in the economic China,” Ford and Stone write. cal posturing of seeing the answer to development derby of the 20th cen- For a while many officials all problems in irresponsible tax cuts tury than South Carolina. Its per preached protectionism, but when and the savaging of a public sector capita income rose almost fivefold foreign-owned BMW located its that creates the bulk of the state’s between 1950 and 1980. Its popu- roadster assembly plant in the state human capital.” It must invest “heav- lation increased by half. And its in 1992, politicians could no longer ily and patiently” in education so economy underwent the most re- easily rail about imports and the per- that, instead of slipping into a new markable growth since the cotton ils of foreign competition, according era of stagnation and decline, its resi- boom of the early 19th century, as to the authors. The Palmetto State dents can attain “an American stan- officials pursued a low-wage, low- relies on foreign investment capital, dard of living.” tax policy that lured heavy industry and by 2004 China was the state’s to the nonunion state. But now sixth-largest foreign customer. POLITICS & GOVERNMENT the jig may be up, write historians Two recent studies have fingered Lacy K. Ford Jr. of the University of education as the weak link in South Presidential South Carolina and R. Phillip Stone Carolina’s development. The state has of Wofford College, Spartanburg, the largest share of urban adults with- Paralysis

South Carolina. The state’s “stag- out a high school diploma and ranks THE SOURCE: “Personal Tragedy and Presi- gering” educational shortcomings near the bottom nationally in the per- dential Performance: Calvin Coolidge as Leg- islative Leader” by Robert E. Gilbert, in Con- leave it straining to compete in a centage of all adults who have fin- gress and the Presidency, Autumn 2006. knowledge-based world economy. ished high school. Only about one in South Carolina’s great leap five adults has a bachelor’s degree or Scholars now know that forward ended more than 25 years higher. Per pupil spending for public King George III, the monarch who ago, and relentless tax cutting, gov- elementary and secondary education lost America, was profoundly im- ernment shrinkage, and industry in the 2004–05 academic year was paired toward the end of his reign by courting ever since have served only $7,555, compared with a national a disease that caused progressive to stabilize its position as one of the average of $8,701—and $14,119 in insanity. Robert E. Gilbert, a politi- 10 or 11 poorest states. The state New York. The state lacks skilled cal scientist at Northeastern Univer- dodged the dot-com economic melt- workers and has no top-tier research sity, argues that more than a century down only because it had never par- university. It also lags in two other later America was led by a president

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who was also afflicted by a misun- the reopening of intercoastal water- his surviving son said, “My father was derstood and untreated mental con- ways, and a constitutional amend- never the same again.” Coolidge had dition that destroyed his authority ment to limit child labor. Many of already lost his 39-year-old mother to and undermined his judgment. these proposals were enacted. The tuberculosis when he was 12, and his Calvin Coolidge, rated by historians redoubtable Senator Henry Cabot only sibling, Abbie, to appendicitis as among the worst presidents in Lodge (R.-Mass.) praised Coolidge for when she was 14. history, strode boldly into the White the ratification of 32 treaties—“no After Calvin Coolidge Jr.’s death, House in 1923 only to lose his young such record...has ever been made by the president lost interest in working son 11 months later and plunge into any administration.” The former gov- with Congress for the remainder of clinical depression. ernor of Lodge’s home state was his presidency. He was indifferent to Following President Warren G. elected to the presidency in his own enemies and friends, Gilbert writes. Harding’s sudden death of a heart right with 54 percent of the vote in When allies brought up his cherished attack, vice president Coolidge pro- 1924, and brought in 25 more Repub- world court proposal from his first ceeded confidently to dominate the lican members of Congress on his State of the Union address, he was capital. He met almost daily with coattails. mute. When a congressman visited members of Congress, entertained In the midst of that campaign, him at the summer White House, them at breakfast and on the presi- however, Coolidge endured a person- Coolidge went off fishing and left him dential yacht, corresponded exten- al tragedy that would change his life. waiting. The president now sent up sively with influential government On June 30, Coolidge’s two sons vague and tentative State of the leaders, and upon the death of the played a game of tennis on the White Union addresses to be read by a clerk. wife of an important farm bloc leader, House court. Sixteen-year-old Calvin His few proposals were often hold- invited the senator to live at the White Jr. developed a blister on his foot that overs, or trivialities—such as pro- House for a while. became infected, and, in that era viding a location for a statue com- In his first State of the Union mes- before antibiotics, he was dead within memorating the victims of the sage, which was delivered in person at a week. Coolidge became hysterical at explosion on the battleship Maine. the Capitol and was the first such his son’s deathbed. He broke down Congress considered Coolidge easy to address to be broadcast on radio, sobbing when the body was removed ignore and safe to challenge. There Coolidge made 44 requests, including from the White House, began sleep- was little disappointment when the establishment of a world court, ing 15 hours a day, and seemed to be “Silent Cal” declared, with character- creation of a cabinet-level depart- on the verge of collapse. His secretary istic brevity, “I do not choose to run ment of health and welfare, tax cuts, described him as “mentally ill,” and for president in 1928.”

SOCIETY Nevertheless, Congress is again considering legislation to experi- ment with “health courts” staffed by judges with health expertise Let Them Sue and intended to eliminate irra- tional and unjust verdicts. Such juries are awarding unjustified verdicts are thought to contribute THE SOURCE: “Doctors and Juries” by Philip G. Peters Jr., in Michigan Law bonanzas to lawsuit-happy pa- to the high cost of medical care by Review, May 2007. tients. If anything, jurors have a forcing doctors to pay expensive slight bias in favor of doctors, even malpractice insurance premiums Despite doctors’ loud com- when they are negligent, writes and to practice defensive medicine plaints about medical malpractice University of Missouri, Columbia, by ordering extra tests and proce- suits, there is little evidence that law professor Philip G. Peters Jr. dures to protect themselves in the

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event of a suit. for the patient in the 10 to 20 the U.S. high school curriculum Actually, Peters writes, doc- percent of cases in which experts in the late 19th century, bloomed tors win most malpractice find no negligence. This is be- swiftly, then declined precipi- cases—twice as many as they cause experts review the cases tously. Only now is it making a lose. They are much more likely shortly after they are filed, while slow recovery from the dark days to win in the courtroom than juries hear the cases after lawyers of the 1930s to the 1980s, writes other kinds of defendants ac- have gathered more evidence. historian Diane Ravitch of New cused of causing injury. “Juries Juries may hear “more complete York University. are so reluctant to hold phy- and stronger evidence of medical History entered high school sicians liable that they render negligence,” he notes. alongside science as a “modern” defense verdicts in half of the It’s unclear why doctors have subject in the 1880s. For more cases that medical experts think such an edge in court. Jurors may than four decades schools tended plaintiffs should win,” he says. be skeptical of patients who sue to offer a Eurocentric course that Peters analyzes seven studies their doctors, because physicians started with ancient times, focus- of large numbers of malpractice are high-status professionals ing on the Greeks and Romans, cases conducted in the last three whose role is to heal. Doctors and moved through medieval and decades. Generally, the studies seem to be much more likely to some modern history. But as the compared jury decisions with the have experienced attorneys and curriculum grew, leading edu- private assessments of cases superior experts, and juries ap- cators became alarmed about the made for insurance companies by parently take the burden of proof helter-skelter increase in courses. outside medical or legal experts. very seriously when it comes to In 1893 came the first in a series of Juries did give patients victories medical malpractice, giving phy- prestigious commissions to guide in about 10 to 20 percent of the sicians the benefit of the doubt in the nation’s schools toward a goal cases reviewers felt they should close cases. that remains elusive today: a core lose, but patients won only 20 to In the end, the “health courts” curriculum. 30 percent of the cases rated as for which some doctors are clam- The Committee of Ten, led by tossups and about 50 percent of oring might backfire, according to Harvard president Charles W. Eliot, cases with strong evidence of Peters. Trained “health judges” recommended the study of biog- negligence. might well wind up being tougher raphy and mythology in the fifth and Many doctors, however, are on physicians than today’s sup- sixth grades, American history and horrified over the effect on their posed hanging juries. civil government in the seventh, livelihood and reputation of fac- Greek and Roman history in the ing even a 10 to 20 percent chance SOCIETY eighth, French history in the ninth, of losing a case in which experts English in the 10th, and American think they have not been negli- The History again in the 11th, with an intensive gent. Peters sees this fear as exag- study of a selected period in the sen- gerated. “Easy” cases in which lia- of History ior year. As historical study then bility is clearly present or absent mostly involved memorization and are most likely to be settled before THE SOURCE: “History’s Struggle to Sur- recitation, the committee called for vive in the Schools” by Diane Ravitch, in going to trial. The court docket OAH Magazine of History, April 2007. student participation, more critical contains a preponderance of discussion, and the use of primary “weak cases” in which the evi- It’s easy to imagine that documents and even historical nov- dence is ambiguous and experts American children in some gol- els rather than a single textbook. disagree on the quality of care. den period of the last century got Critics contended that the com- Peters contends that juries a thorough grounding in history. mittee was trying to force an aca- may frequently be right in ruling They didn’t. The subject came to demic education on all children, and

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a new group, the Committee of value in preparing students for Seven, was soon convened. But it In 1893, American edu- “effective participation in society.” echoed the earlier recommen- cators formed the first of In the 1980s, Ravitch writes, dations. More groups emerged, a many commissions to the “vapid” nature of social stud- Committee of Eight and a Commit- ies came under fire in reports guide the nation’s tee of Five, each recommending that such as A Nation at Risk, and the schools toward a goal history be part of every student’s writings of Secretary of Edu- education. But by World War I, crit- that remains elusive cation William Bennett. And ics were beginning to complain not today: a core curriculum. though recent efforts to develop only of history but of algebra and lit- voluntary national history erature, and most other courses that dents for good citizenship, standards have been widely did not prepare students for their defined as “submission to estab- ridiculed, many states have writ- future jobs. lished political order [and] coop- ten their own solid curriculum Public high school enrollment erative maintenance of same.” requirements and students are during this period grew 22-fold, As “reformers” pushed for beginning to be taught serious from 200,000 in 1890 to 4.4 vocational education, Ravitch history once again. million in 1930. Overwhelmed says that the history profession Although a “slow recovery” is schools began to offer academic “capitulated” to social studies under way, Ravitch says, there is courses only to future profession- advocates who favored a mish- still much to improve. When the als, and vocational courses to mash of civics, history, and social National Assessment of Educa- those who would become “com- science. By 1929, historian A. C. tional Progress tested students’ mon wage earners.” David Sned- Krey, president of the American knowledge in 1994 and 2001, den, Massachusetts commissioner Historical Association, would high school seniors did worse in of education, ridiculed the study write that history was far beyond history than in any other subject. of history. The only reason to the competence of the average A majority scored “below basic,” teach it, he said, was to train stu- student, and that it had little the most abysmal score possible.

stain or two, and the newspaper sections will be EXCERPT scattered like leftover napkins from a previous night’s party. . . . [One morning] I took note of all that had collected in Another Day, the hearth of my home, and I saw the repulsive. I cringed at the violent war photos and blaring headlines about the Another Kidnapping newly kidnapped, terrorized, and dead. . . . I realized that The kitchen table serves as the connecting hub to all what had previously made me despair had, over the other points in my house. The day’s mail, the children’s course of a few years, become the topic of breakfast toys, and assorted reading materials sit in neat heaps conversations. These pictures and articles had become— before finding their way to the appropriate recipient, toy along with the cheery greetings and hugs with my chest, or shelf, usually within a day. However, the husband and children—part of my morning routine. magazines and newspapers inevitably linger longer. My husband and I like to poke through the articles over the —PAULINE W. CHEN, author of Final Exam: course of a few mornings, so the magazines will often be A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality (2007), opened to an interesting article, perhaps marred by a in The Virginia Quarterly Review (Spring 2007)

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RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY to alter human consciousness. “Laughter has no greater foe than emotion,” wrote the philo- sopher Henri Bergson. He meant Three Philosophers that humor requires a certain disin- terest, or “the ability to look at Walk Into a Bar something from a more distant, abstract, or rational point of view,” cerns” of individuals, according to Atkinson explains. Incongruous THE SOURCE: “What’s So Funny? Or, Why Humor Should Matter to Philosophers” by Atkinson. Such jokes may be grist humor thus draws us closer to the Camille Atkinson, in Philosophy Today, for sociologists or psychologists, philosopher’s stance. Winter 2006. but philosophers seek universal Philosophers have never truths. And to find them, writes RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY been much for jokes. It’s not that Atkinson, they would be wise to they can’t crack a smile, but that seek inspiration in the third cate- The Catholic they don’t see much philosophical gory of humor, the humor of the value in humor, writes Camille incongruous. School Deficit

Atkinson, a philosophy instructor Jokes of this sort pit our expec- THE SOURCE: “Can Catholic Schools Be at Central Oregon Community Col- tations of what should happen Saved?” by Peter Meyer, in Education Next, lege. She thinks that’s a mistake. against what actually happens: Spring 2007. There are three general theories Don Quixote persists in his grand The number of Roman Cath- of humor. The superiority theory, delusions; Inspector Clouseau olics in the United States, now which prevailed from Plato’s time blithely acts as if he were a genius nearly 77 million, has grown by to the 18th century, holds that more than 70 percent in the past humor involves feeling superior to four decades, but in the same somebody else—or wanting to. The The Athenians may period the nationwide network of Athenians may have had jokes have had jokes about Catholic schools has shrunk by about how many Spartans it takes how many Spartans it more than half. Some 600 par- to light a torch; we have our own takes to light a torch; ochial schools have closed in the endless varieties, ranging from we have our own end- last six years alone, and the stu- harmless stereotypes of absent- less varieties. dent population receiving a Cath- minded professors to stinging put- olic education has decreased by downs of ethnic groups. nearly 300,000, or 11 percent. Sigmund Freud favored the detective. We know better, but in Everything but a plague of locusts relief theory, which posits that the end, Atkinson says, we are has afflicted the nation’s Catholic laughter is “the release of nervous laughing not at “someone but at schools, writes Peter Meyer, for- energy.” Self-deprecation—the air- something.” In these cases it is the mer news editor of Life magazine. ing of insecurity through humor—is human tendency to take oneself Catholic schools will have to be- the clearest example, as in Woody too seriously. But other incon- come expert fundraisers to sur- Allen’s quip, “My one regret in life is gruities—e.g., the comedian who vive. “And marketers. And pro- that I’m not someone else.” takes on the characteristics of a moters. And lobbyists. And Both these forms of humor— machine or an animal—can spur us miracle workers.” which often overlap—aren’t much to examine large questions: “Why Studies by scholars at the Uni- use to philosophers. They tend to don’t kangaroos go into bars?” might versity of Chicago, Northwestern,

emphasize “the anxieties or con- lead us to ask why we use intoxicants the Brookings Institution, and DISTANT password: Archive

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dren who slid into the empty desks in cities where Catholic schools have been hardest hit were disproportionately poor and had low incoming test scores. Then came the sex abuse scan- dals, Meyer writes: a shattering, “endless parade of headlines about priests abusing children.” One in four Catholics told pollsters they withheld donations, even as the church faced millions of dollars in claims. Four dioceses have already declared bankruptcy, and others are on the brink. Meyer, who attended a par- ochial school himself, says that he’s not counting them out. Two new developments may help sta- bilize the situation. Education reform is one. While a growing charter school movement has sucked away students, a second reform vehicle, vouchers—public grants that parents can use to send their children to private Holy Redeemer High School supporters march to save their school, one of 15 shuttered by the schools—are providing an anti- Archdiocese of Detroit in 2005.Only two Catholic schools,both boys-only,remain open in the city. dote in the cities where they are offered. And several archdioceses Harvard have all concluded that declining enrollments, and falling have launched successful fund- Catholic schools, on average, do a test scores. Teaching nuns, who raising campaigns to reopen better job of educating children, provided virtually free labor, con- inner-city schools and revive oth- especially poor and minority stu- stituted 90 percent of all Catholic ers. The schools are a missionary dents, than public schools do, school teachers in the 1950s; they undertaking, not one aimed solely Meyer notes. Parochial schools account for less than five percent at providing a sectarian service never had to go back to basics today. As a result, costs have for members (although religion because they never left them. soared, with tuition rising from classes are part of the curri- Catholic schools have always re- next to nothing to about $2,400 culum). Most of the children who quired correct grammar, uni- for elementary school and $6,000 would attend the schools the forms, homework, good posture, for high school. Middle-class parishes are struggling to keep proper skirt lengths, and a bal- Catholic parents who might have open are not Catholic. “We don’t anced lunch, including peas and paid the difference have largely educate these children because carrots, Meyer writes. evacuated the city neighborhoods they are Catholic,” Meyer quotes Even so, an unholy trinity has many schools serve. Enrollment Cardinal James Hickey of Wash- descended on modern Catholic dropped from 5.2 million in 1960 ington, D.C., as saying, “but be- education: financial distress, to 2.3 million in 2006. The chil- cause we are Catholic.”

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HISTORY conditions for the prisoners of war. When Homma was informed of the dire conditions in the camp, he relieved the camp com- Winner’s Justice mander, freed great numbers of Filipino prisoners, and approved Three months after World a plan for improving sanitation, THE SOURCE: “The Trial of General Hom- ma” by Hampton Sides, in American Her- War II ended, as the Allied forces installing water pipes, and at- itage, Feb.–March 2007. were beginning to prepare cases tempting to procure more food. against government leaders such He received only “one-thirtieth of Tall, English-speaking, and as Prime Minister Hideki Tojo in what was requested.” aristocratic, General Masaharu Tokyo, Homma stood before a Taking the stand, Homma testi- Homma was a familiar figure in five-man U.S. Army tribunal in fied that he neither knew about nor English society before Pearl Har- Manila and was charged with 48 condoned—let alone ordered—any bor. Openly pro-Western, he had counts of violating the inter- of the crimes with which he was lived in Oxford, London, and national rules of war. MacArthur charged. He told the tribunal that India; met Gandhi, Churchill, and himself selected “the venue, the he was not allowed to select his Mussolini; and been escorted to defense, the prosecution, the own staff officers and could rarely the top of the Empire State Build- jury, and the rules of evidence in interfere with subordinates’ work. ing by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. the trial of a man who had beaten Staff officers, he said, would not A brilliant student and friend of him on the battlefield,” writes presume to distract a commanding writers, painters, and dramatists, Hampton Sides, author of Ghost general with minutiae. His own he lacked the temperament for the Soldiers (2001). “The army would army was running out of medicine military career that family tra- not unilaterally administer a war and food and did not have enough dition required him to pursue. crimes trial like this until the for the prisoners. Nevertheless, in April of 1942 cases now being prepared for the On February 11, 1946, Major he succeeded in wresting the Phil- Iraq and Afghanistan war General Leo Donovan, ippines from General Douglas detainees at Guantanamo.” handpicked by MacArthur to MacArthur, becoming the only Day after day, prosecutors intro- head the tribunal, read Homma Japanese general ever to decisively duced descriptions of beheadings, the guilty verdict: “The Commis- defeat a U.S. army. When the live burials, shootings, and acts of sion sentences you to be shot to Americans surrendered, about gratuitous torture on the Death death with musketry.” The U.S. 70,000 starving and malarial men March route, which was within 500 Supreme Court refused to inter- staggered out of the jungle into feet of Homma’s headquarters. At vene in the case, although two prisoner of war compounds admin- first, Homma shook his head, but justices strongly dissented, with istered by a much smaller force of after several days he took out his Justice Frank Murphy suggesting Japanese, also short of food and handkerchief and wept. that the government was medicine. The movement of this No evidence was presented descending to the level of “re- unexpected number of POWs to a that Homma knew of the atroci- vengeful blood purges.” When concentration camp some 60 miles ties, though an American master Homma’s wife appealed person- away became universally known as sergeant testified that he saw ally to MacArthur, he responded the Bataan Death March, con- Homma in an official car on the that the general’s crimes “have ducted with unimaginable cruelty. Death March route. Homma’s become synonyms of horror and About 10,000 U.S. and Filipino subordinates told the court that mark the lowest ebb of depravity soldiers perished. the general had tried to improve of modern times.” Fourteen days

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later, Homma was executed by an HISTORY about the New World: It was a dis- Army firing squad. tant, rough, demanding land. People Robert Pelz, now 88, is the last The Shining Fac- could get lucky and strike it rich. Quite surviving member of Homma’s legal a few would give up in disgust and defense team. He believes Homma tory Upon a Hill come back with a bad attitude. Refine- did not receive a fair trial. But that THE SOURCE: “Beyond ‘Voting With Their ment would be lost, morals often un- doesn’t mean he was morally inno- Feet’: Toward a Conceptual History of ‘Amer- dermined. America as a society was ica’ in European Migrant Sending Commu- cent. “I’m convinced that he was not nities, 1860s to 1914” by Max Paul Friedman, “immediate and present” to ordinary aware” of the atrocities, Pelz says, in Journal of Social History, Spring 2007. Europeans, writes Max Paul Fried- but “as the military commander he man, a historian at American Univer- should have known.” Brilliant, well Over the centuries, the Euro- sity. Letters, songs, games, slang, epi- educated, and patrician, “he should pean peasants who stayed behind thets, dictionaries, even place names have sought out that intelligence. when their neighbors boarded ships flesh out a “history of concepts” about He of all people.” for America developed strong views the United States that were remark-

acquired land got sold and vanished, making it a EXCERPT close question as to what exactly we won. Strong lives, I suppose. Legacy of the Frontier —LARRY MCMURTRY, author of 29 novels We came as pioneers, we worked extremely and other works about the American West, hard, for a time we prospered; then the old folks died quoted by Hillsdale College vice president Douglas A. and their children died; little by little the hard- Jeffrey in Claremont Review of Books (Spring 2007)

This sod house on the North Dakota prairie sheltered John and Marget Bakken and their children, Tilda and Eddie, shown here about 1896.

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ably detailed, and which shifted from America to succeed. the Balkans, 58 percent for Italians, place to place and in time. Communities that had undergone 22 percent for Germans, and 12 Most commonly, America was high rates of migration knew that percent for the British. seen as remote. In the German grand making it in America was a struggle Although there is evidence in sur- duchy of Hesse, the field furthest from and not always a genteel pursuit, viving letters that some immigrants the house was called the Amerika-feld. Friedman says. In French-speaking spoke of their new land as a haven of A town in Bohemia was nicknamed Switzerland, to have “the American religious freedom, Puritan John Win- Amerika because flooding often cut it eye” meant to be avaricious. America throp’s vision of America (famously off from nearby villages. A farmer in was rendered in some songs as Mis- quoted by Ronald Reagan) as a shin- Mecklenburg might be teased about ery-ca, a land of bad luck. Departure ing city upon a hill was only a small “trying to get to America” when he ceremonies in Ireland were called an part of the Europeans’ image of the plowed an especially deep furrow. “American wake” because most who continent. Immigration research A sleeping person might be said to emigrated were never seen again. The shows that most immigrants came to inhabit Kamerika, someone packed Japanese had a nickname for their America in search not of liberty, but off to jail might be described as being country’s emigrants to America: work. Even most of the Puritans were nah Amerika. Columbus’s discovery kimin, meaning the discarded. seeking economic betterment, not was occasionally an oath or a threat: In the Italian Piedmont, an primarily religious freedom, Geh af Amerika!—go to hell. A parent American was a stranger to be wary Friedman says. in Klentnitz might say to a naughty of. To commit an americanata was European idioms about the child, “Do you want to see America?” to act in an eccentric or tasteless upstart nation were extensive and Children’s counting rhymes, manner. In Umbria, an amerikanu varied, envious and contemptuous. marble games, and hide-and-seek was a spendthrift, most likely a ref- “The vernacular has no monopoly all referred to going to America. In erence to free-spending immigrants on truth,” Friedman says. But the many parts of Italy, to find one’s who returned with money in their traces of meaning that are found America meant to strike it rich. Fig- pockets. One in three immigrants in the everyday lives of European ures of speech sometimes con- eventually turned around and came villagers can serve as a corrective tained an element of defiance. In home. When the U.S. government to platitudes, such as the one as- Hesse, Er hodd hie Amerika funn began keeping records in 1908, serting that 30 million immigrants meant that somebody got rich right return immigration rates were all voted with their feet for in Hesse and didn’t need to go to about 70 percent for people from freedom and liberty.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY computers needed to create such monster proofs, Stewart says, but only computers can verify them. And that calls into question the very nature of Monster Math mathematical proofs. Ever since Euclid of Alexandria he guess that nearly 400 years would invented proofs in the third century THE SOURCE: “The Future of Proof” by Ian Stewart, in Prospect, March 2007. pass before his solution would be bc, most people have gotten their proven—nor that the proof, by math- introduction to them in geometry When Johannes Kepler’s ematician Thomas Hales, would be class. Later mathematicians followed inquiry into the structure of snow- about as long as 10,000 full-length Euclid’s method of writing down flakes led him in 1611 to propose the novels. It would take “about 30 years proofs so that others could verify most efficient method for stacking merely to read it,” according to math- their work. There was “an unspoken items in three dimensions, little did ematician Ian Stewart. Not only are assumption that the verification

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process could, and should, be carried an brain of routine tasks, leaving it free died at the rate of 1,000 per day dur- out by one unaided human brain.” to concentrate on the big picture.” ing the previous year. But mathematicians, Stewart says, The new study’s methodology are “much more interested in solving SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY was quickly questioned. Lurking in problems than in philosophizing the background was a political ques- about their methods.” There is no rea- How Many Dead? tion: Was it just a coincidence that son to think they can’t accommodate an earlier controversial Burnham- THE SOURCE: “The Number” by Dale computer proofs. Even without elec- Keiger, in Johns Hopkins Magazine, Roberts estimate had appeared just tronic help, proofs often get incom- Feb. 2007. before the 2004 U.S. election? An prehensible, so mathematicians fre- Were nearly 700,000 civil- article in Science (Oct. 20, 2006) quently reduce them to essentials. ians killed in the first three years of highlighted objections by British Stewart compares the process to giv- the Iraq war? When epidemiologists researchers Neil Johnson, Sean ing driving directions from point A to Gilbert H. Burnham and Leslie F. Gourley, and Michael Spagat. point B. We leave out details such as Roberts of Johns Hopkins Univer- “When a survey suggests so much “Exit your house, go down the walk- sity’s Bloomberg School of Public higher numbers than all other way, open your car door, get in.” In the Health published that estimate in the sources of information, the purvey- same way, mathematical proofs often British medical journal The Lancet a ors of this outlier must make a good- begin by jumping ahead to a “sign- few weeks before the 2006 U.S. con- faith effort to explain why all the post” spot. gressional election, it made headlines other information is so badly wrong,” Mathematical proofs are really around the world, reports Dale Spagat said. That was missing. The narratives, Stewart says. “Poetic” Keiger, a senior writer for Johns Hop- three argued that the Johns Hopkins proofs—short, snappy, and some- kins Magazine. British prime minis- researchers had introduced bias by times elegant—are the discipline’s ter Tony Blair and President George focusing their Baghdad interviews in delicacies. The mathematician Paul W. Bush both rejected it. “I don’t con- areas near main-street intersections, Erdös once speculated that such sider it a credible report,” Bush said. where violence is centered. Another proofs reside in a book owned by Around the time the study British researcher questioned how God, who occasionally offers mere appeared, the U.S. and Iraqi govern- so large a survey could have been mortals a glimpse. More common are ments were citing 30,000 Iraqi done so quickly. the “novel-like” proofs, such as the deaths, while other sources put the Burnham and Roberts counter one occupying several hundred pages death toll up to several times greater. that their researchers did sample in Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Official estimates are based only away from main streets, but say that Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica on reports from hospitals and the records were destroyed to protect (1910–13) showing that 2+2=4. (Rus- morgues, and it’s generally believed the identity of respondents. Since that sell is said to have come close to a that they understate the total. Burn- eliminated the possibility of repro- nervous breakdown verifying it.) ham and Roberts used the “cluster ducing or checking the results, it Today’s computer proofs are more survey” technique epidemiologists made Spagat, Gourley, and Johnson like a “telephone directory.” Yet even employ to track the spread of disease more suspicious. Spagat, an econo- they can contain bits of poetry. At the to arrive at their estimate. Eight Iraqi mist at the University of London, has bottom of Thomas Hales’s massive surveyors interviewed people from called for an investigation. proof of Kepler’s idea is a “poetic” in- nearly 2,000 households in 47 selec- A colleague of Burnham and sight that reduces the proof to “a very ted areas in Baghdad and elsewhere Roberts, Scott Zeger, believes that the large list of routine computations.” in Iraq to determine how many two researchers did “the best science At worst, Stewart concludes, deaths had occurred in their families. that could be done under the cir- computer-driven proofs are “accep- Then Burnham and Roberts calcu- cumstances.” Iraq, after all, is a war table.” At best, they “open up new lated a mortality rate for the entire zone, not a laboratory. Says Zeger: realms of discovery, relieving the hum- country. Their conclusion: Iraqis had “Noisy data is better than no data.”

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY questions in neuroscience: Why is one of six different-flavored pellets it that the more people know, the such as bacon or banana in a “start Speeding Up more they can learn? box” and could get more of the same Long ago, British psychologist treat by going to the correct sand pit Memories Frederick Bartlett laid out a frame- and digging it up. The rodents prac-

THE SOURCE: “Schemas and Memory Con- work for how people remember. In ticed for six weeks, during which a solidation” by Dorothy Tse, Rosamund F. a 1932 paper, he identified frame- “schema” of how to remember the Langston, Masaki Kakeyama, Ingrid Bethus, Patrick A. Spooner, Emma R. Wood, Menno works of existing knowledge or locations of each flavor (even when P. Witter, and Richard G. M. Morris, and “schemas” in the brain into which the experimental arena was rotated “Rapid Consolidation” by Larry R. Squire, in newly acquired information could slightly) built up in their long-term Science, April 6, 2007. be incorporated, writes neuroscien- memories. Then two new flavors were Anyone with an unusual tist Larry R. Squire. What wasn’t introduced, and the rats remembered name has experienced the frustra- clear was how the biology of the the locations after only a single trial. tion of trying to get it across to a mental circuitry actually worked. When researchers removed new acquaintance: The hearer Subsequent research showed that almost all of the rats’ hippocampus betrays bewilderment, seems to be the initial learning of facts and events where initial memories are stored, mentally shuffling through a card is recorded in a part of the brain the rodents not only still found their file of all previously known names, called the hippocampus. As time way to the original six locations but and settles on some remote ap- passes, a permanent memory is con- to the two new ones, even though proximation or gives up entirely. structed in a different, deeper part of they had been introduced only two It’s as if names can only be re- the brain, the neocortex. It is the neo- days earlier. Previously, research membered if someone is already cortex that holds the framework of had shown that the buildup of a familiar with similar appellations. knowledge that has been built up schema for remembering took at The notion that the ability to from many experiences, and the neo- least a month in rats, and several remember new information often cortex was, until now, considered a years in humans. Dorothy Tse, depends on prior knowledge of the slow learner. Rosamund F. Langston, and their topic is well known. Now, re- The research conducted by the colleagues theorize that the rats beat searchers in Edinburgh, Tokyo, eight authors of “Schemas and Mem- the clock on remembering the two and Trondheim, Norway, have ory Consolidation” investigated how new flavor locations because a conducted a study that helps rats remembered to find food in a framework for remembering them answer one of the most important maze. The rats were given a sample of was already in place.

ties and risks help create glamour and interest.... The EXCERPT possibility follows that the more sophisticated students become as users of search engines and online databases, the more likely they will become readers, and perhaps The Glamour of Ink buyers, of books. The knowledge-hungry person will need and appreciate print, just as many serious readers of tradi- Because progress has made communication so tional books in an older generation became the gurus of efficient, the prestige of inconvenience extends to today’s electronic scholarship. personal life. . . . Just as luxury watches remain in demand while most people carry cell phones that give the time with —EDWARD TENNER, author of Our Own Devices: How virtually observatory-standard accuracy, the Web will Technology Remakes Humanity (2003), in The never destroy older media, because their technical difficul- Chronicle Review (March 9, 2007)

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ARTS & LETTERS

Tall Tale

THE SOURCE: “Lust for Height” by Philip Nobel, at American.com, Jan.–Feb. 2007. The height of the Burj Dubai, the Persian Gulf mega- skyscraper slated for completion in 2009, is a closely guarded secret, but it is rumored that the structure will soar more than 160 stories, to around 2,600 feet. So much for fears that the World Trade Center attacks doomed tall- building construction. Freedom Tower, to be built at Ground Zero, will stand a symbolic 1,776 feet tall—408 feet more than the orig- inal towers. Even a mile-high building—proposed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1950s—no longer seems preposterous. According to Philip Nobel, author of Sixteen Acres: Architecture and the Outrageous Struggle for the Future of Ground Zero (2004), “The technologies are waiting for the money and the willing client.” Today’s tallest building—a 101- story tower in Taipei standing 1,666 feet—will be eclipsed next year by the Lotte World II Tower in Busan, South Korea, which “will edge seven feet higher,” Nobel reports. The Dubai tower will then claim the title, almost guaranteeing that another future building in nearby Doha “will likely make little news: At 1,460 feet it is a baby—only 10 feet The precise height of the Burj Dubai,a 162-storyhotel,office,residential,and retail tower in the United taller than the Sears Tower.” Arab Emirates, is a secret, but it is expected to be the world’s tallest building—at least temporarily.

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According to Nobel, such growth cities of Asia. Not so in ARTS & LETTERS gigantic structures are built for the Middle East, where oil-rich only two reasons: “to make countries such as Dubai are Mind Traveling money, responding to existing building big partly just to make a demand, or to advertise and statement. But the Burj Dubai THE SOURCE: “Head Is as Good as Feet” by Mark Lawson, in The Guardian, Feb. 9, 2007. flaunt the money one already has.” project will also make money. “It Tellingly, six of the 10 tallest filled in three days when space “Write what you know.” It’s buildings in the world are in went on sale several years ago,” the gospel preached in today’s China, and in booming Shanghai says Nobel. many fiction-writing workshops. nearly 100 buildings over 500 feet Commercial success often The reading public’s appetite for tall were built in the past decade. eludes such huge projects; the nonfiction—biography, memoir, The twin Petronas Towers, which Petronas Towers, for example, histories of everything—also took the world’s-tallest title from “didn’t make a dime, and they encourages novelists to rely on fac- the Sears Tower in 1998, “were still stand largely vacant.” tual material. Imagination, once built primarily to make visible the Likewise the Empire State Build- free to roam distant continents, is roar of Malaysia’s Asian Tiger.” A ing “so outstripped economic relegated to conjuring up the inte- planned new tower at the Shang- necessity that for years it was rior life of the odd character. Obvi- hai World Financial Center, referred to as the Empty State ously made-up stories risk consign- though it will not surpass the Burj Building.” More often, Nobel con- ment to “slightly disreputable Dubai, may reach 2,200 feet and cludes, “we see the most primal bookshops, or academic categories snatch “Asia’s tallest” back across motivation for skyscraper called ‘fantasy’ or ‘magic realism,’ ” the Taiwan Strait. construction: to stake a claim, to writes Guardian commentator The original catalyst for sky- mark the land, to show how your Mark Lawson. scrapers was population density, power (read: money) can change Occasionally, however, a book Nobel says. “Limited space to build the world.... Nothing says ‘I am tacks against the prevailing literary forced land values, and therefore the master of the universe’—the winds. This year, debut novelist Stef building heights, through the natural, societal, and financial Penney won Britain’s prestigious roof.” Such forces still drive some universes—more clearly than the Costa Book of the Year Award (pre- of the megabuildings in the high- erection of a tall building.” viously the Whitbread Prize) for The

very few exceptions, remained anchored to an authoritarian EXCERPT past of caudillos and cliques who practiced despotism, looted public funds, and kept economic life frozen in feudal- ism and mercantilism. A monstrous divorce resulted: Small Latin Divorce redoubts of cultural life—tiny spaces of liberty left to their own fate by a usually dominant political power that A certain issue prowls the tricky by-paths of Latin disdained culture—stayed in contact with modernity, evolv- American culture: the abysmal contradiction between its ing and producing writers and artists of high quality, while social and political reality and its literary and artistic the rest of society remained practically immobilized in self- production. . . . While cultural elites were modernizing, destructive anachronism. opening themselves to the world, renewing themselves by constant intercourse with the great intellectual and cultural —MARIO VARGAS-LLOSA, novelist and former Peru- centers of contemporary life, Latin American politics, with vian presidential candidate, in Salmagundi (Winter–Spring 2007)

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Tenderness of Wolves, a murder Bellow had never been to Africa mystery set in snowy 19th-century We shouldn’t be sur- when he wrote the book, about a Canada. Penney, a former agora- prised when writers millionaire who finds spiritual phobe, hadn’t spent a minute on inspiration among primitive Afri- astound us with worlds Canadian soil. She researched the can tribes. “Bellow’s book, broadly they build entirely in story entirely at the British accepted at the time of its publica- Library. And she isn’t the first their fertile minds. tion in 1959, came to be regarded Costa/Whitbread winner to substi- by some as contemptuous or even tute a library card for a passport. having been there. A clever writer frankly racist,” Lawson writes. For example, Sid Smith won the can fake it from printed sources— The vivid, concrete fiction of 2001 Whitbread First Novel few readers could have guessed “traveler-novelists” such as Graham Award for Something Like a that Sid Smith was a stranger to Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and their House, set in China during the China—but his writing style is contemporary counterparts John Cultural Revolution. Smith had impressionistic. A more documen- Le Carré and Paul Theroux can’t be never been to the country. tary prose-stylist needs a few jab- duplicated with a sun-dappled But there are limits to the marks in the arm.” imagination. But we shouldn’t be imagination, Lawson says. Histori- The disrepute into which Saul surprised when writers astound us cal fiction must, of necessity, rely Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King with worlds they build entirely in upon the mind of an author— has fallen in some circles tracks a their fertile minds. Where their often stocked with armchair re- growing cultural prejudice against heads can take them, Lawson con- search. However, “realistic con- novels that depart from autobio- cludes, “is finally more important temporary fiction benefits from graphical or journalistic models. than where their feet did.”

OTHER NATIONS driven by the ongoing reduction of two productivity gaps,” the authors say. One is the gap between industries in thriving Why China Won’t Be No. 1 coastal cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou and the interna- tional economy. The other is the

THE SOURCE: “The Sources and Sustain- rate of about three percent, it will gap between those booming ability of China’s Economic Growth” by Gary catch up in 25 to 30 years. industries and the rest of the H. Jefferson, Albert G. Z. Hu, and Jian Su, in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Don’t hold your breath, say Chinese economy, including non- No. 2, 2006. economists Gary H. Jefferson, coastal industries and the Albert G. Z. Hu, and Jian Su. nation’s large and lagging Will China overtake the China’s surge is almost entirely services and agricultural sectors. United States to become the the product of rapid gains in About 80 percent of China’s world’s largest economy? At $2.2 industries along the Chinese workers are employed in this trillion (in 2005), it is already the coast. That growth is likely to “other” economy. fourth largest, behind Germany, slow as their productivity catches Compared with South Korea Japan, and the world leader, at up with that of the rest of the and Taiwan at similar stages in $12.5 trillion, the United States. world. The remainder of China’s their development, “China leans If China can sustain its nine per- economy is growing much more more heavily on its coastal indus- cent annual growth rate of the slowly. trial economy for overall catch- past two decades, versus the U.S. China’s growth is “being up,” Jefferson and colleagues say.

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The region’s factories are benefit- OTHER NATIONS ing from an inflow of workers Labor productivity in from the countryside, reallocation China is still only about After Fidel of capital to more efficient enter- one-fourth of the U.S. THE SOURCES: “Rethinking the Cuban prises, and the demise of Embargo: An Inductive Analysis” by Douglas inefficient businesses. But labor industrial average, and A. Borer and James D. Bowen, in Foreign Policy Analysis, April 2007, and “Castr- productivity is still only about diminishing returns are ated: The Bush Administration’s Aversion to one-fourth of the U.S. industrial going to set in. Dealing With Cuba Is Reducing Our Influ- ence on the Island—Just When There’s average, and diminishing returns a Chance to Encourage Change,” by Joshua are going to set in, just as they did Kurlantzick, in Washington Monthly, April 2007. in other developing nations in the by diminishing returns. past, predict Jefferson (of There are some caveats to all Fidel Castro missed his Brandeis University), Hu (the this. The authors compare the size 80th-birthday party in August, the National University of Sing- of the U.S. and Chinese economies anniversary of the Cuban Revolution apore), and Su (Beijing Univer- using today’s exchange rates, as- in December, and the annual work- sity). When that happens, the suming no change in the future. ers’ parade on May 1. He hasn’t been economists say, “China’s GDP And by an alternative measure of seen except on television since growth can be expected to slow gross domestic product called undergoing emergency intestinal sharply.” purchasing power parity, China surgery last August. Could his China’s future growth will will likely overtake the United apparently grave illness mean the largely depend on developments States “as early as 2010.” imminent end of the Fidel era, the in other sectors and re- lifting of the U.S. embargo, gions. The authors find and the normalization of evidence that noncoastal relations with the United industry is slowly catch- EXCERPT States? Don’t count on it, ing up with the success judging by Cuba’s recent stories of Shanghai and actions, say Douglas A. Guangzhou, although its Just Visiting Borer of the Naval Post- labor productivity is still graduate School and 30 to 40 percent behind. Our apartment—a five-minute walk from the James D. Bowen of the But the gap between bridges over the Rhone River, at the point where it University of Wisconsin, industry and the huge emerged from Lake Geneva—had been rented Madison. And America’s services and agricultural furnished. This was how I came to associate living in tactics are making such a sectors widened be- another country with sitting at tables where others happy ending even less tween 1995 and 2004. had sat before, using glasses and plates that other likely, writes Joshua Getting those two people had drunk from and dined on, and sleeping in Kurlantzick, former sectors moving faster beds that had grown old after years of cradling other foreign editor of The New will require deep sleeping people. Another country was a country that Republic. institutional reforms, belonged to other people. We had to accept the fact The Cuban govern- from an overhaul of that the things we were using would never belong to ment “does not want to see banking laws to the us, and that this country, this other land, would never the embargo lifted,” Borer establishment of more belong to us, either. and Bowen contend. The firmly grounded prop- ban on trade gives Castro erty rights. Even if that —ORHAN PAMUK, Turkish novelist and Nobel laure- an excuse for the country’s happens, however, the ate, in The New Yorker (April 16, 2007) poverty, and an enemy to benefits will be limited blame it on. Although the

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European Union has twice success- pursuing a civilian version of “shock samurai who helped negotiate the fully challenged the legality of the and awe.” Maintaining the embargo, resignation of the Tokugawa shogu- U.S. sanctions against Cuba before however, plays straight into the nate in 1867, which led to the Meiji the World Trade Organization, Cuba hands of the current regime, Borer Restoration. Ryoma’s- plum position hasn’t bothered to press its advan- and Bowen say. sets a pattern; many of the revered tage. Indeed, it failed even to sign on In strengthening hard-line poli- Japanese figures seem to have a re- to the cases as they were being cies against Cuba, “the U.S. prepared bellious and certainly warlike bent, argued. This “inaction at the WTO is for the least likely scenario, a demo- and many who had a hand in top- potent evidence of Havana’s true cratic revolution, and didn’t prepare pling the high and mighty appear to policy preferences,” Borer and for the most likely, a gradual hand- have sturdier reputations than even Bowen write. over,” Cuba scholar Daniel Erikson the emperors. Oda Nobunaga, at Ever since Castro handed over told Kurlantzick. The United States number three (Napoleon managed to power to his brother, Raul, last sum- has squandered its potential in- grab the second slot), was the son of a mer, the interim leader has been fluence by allying itself with only the 16th-century minor warlord who consolidating his authority and most extreme faction of Cuban almost managed to unify Japan. On making high-profile visits to military exiles, according to Kurlantzick: the cusp of achieving his goal, though, installations, Kurlantzick writes. “The prospect of instability upon he was forced to commit seppuku, Meanwhile, the United States is act- Castro’s death is not outlandish, and many believe by one of his own gener- ing as if Cuba will rapturously the Bush administration’s failed pol- als, Akechi Mitsuhide (No. 10). embrace democracy, just as it icy has reduced our ability to ensure Japan’s fascination with heroes expected in Iraq. President George things go smoothly.” from its own past means that many W. Bush has already appointed a figures who might be considered director of the Commission for OTHER NATIONS Assistance to a Free Cuba to help oversee the transformation of Cuba’s Who Is Sakamoto political system, the privatization of - Cuban industries, the possible trans- Ryoma? fer of property to returning exiles, THE SOURCE: “History’s 100 Most Influen- and even the management of Cuban tial People, Hero Edition” by Nippon Televi- programs such as national retire- sion Network, April 1, 2007, at Japan Probe, www.japanprobe.com/?p=1471. ment funds and traffic safety initia- tives. “In Iraq at least we waited to Further confirmation, if invade the country before appoint- any were needed, that we all have a ing a transition coordinator,” Kur- firm sense of our own place in the lantzick quotes a former U.S. diplo- world is the release of “History’s 100 mat in Cuba as saying. Most Influential People, Hero Edi- The commission is seen as a pay- tion,” a survey conducted by the off to the older, vehemently anti- Nippon Television Network, Japan’s Castro Cubans who supported Bush largest broadcast system. Thirteen during the 2000 election, and of the top 20 slots on the list, and marched on his behalf to stop the about half overall, are occupied by Florida ballot recounts his campaign Japanese people, an impressive—if opposed. In the years since, America somewhat ethnocentric—sprinkling - has tightened its embargo and of samurai, daimyo, and shoguns. Japan’s greatest hero, Sakamoto Ryoma, wear- ing the hakama and sword of a samurai warrior, stepped up its television and radio In the place of honor, at number beat out Napoleon as history’s most influential broadcasting into the island, as if one, is Sakamoto Ryoma,- a revered person in a Nippon Television Network survey.

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“influential” in the West get left out: workers, there is no requirement There’s no place for Jesus, Buddha, While Fair Trade coffee that coffee harvesters be paid a min- or Muhammad; no Adolf Hitler or has improved living imum wage, and some are not. Joseph Stalin; no Karl Marx or Sig- The Fair Trade movement aims to conditions for many mund Freud. There are, however, eradicate “sweatshops in the fields” by growers, a researcher some eyebrow-raising entries: Walt guaranteeing co-ops about $1.26 a Disney (40), Audrey Hepburn (46), finds a “disconnect pound for coffee regardless of the Freddy Mercury (from the rock between promotional international price, which dropped group Queen, at 52), and Elvis Pres- materials and reality.” below 65 cents a pound in 2001, ley (70). William Shakespeare— according to supporters of the effort. highly regarded in some literary living standards for many growers, But because Fair Trade prices are circles—languishes at number 87, there is a “disconnect between pro- higher than market prices, there is well behind Arthur Conan Doyle motional materials and reality,” not sufficient demand for all the avail- (69), the creator of Sherlock Holmes. writes Jeremy Weber, a graduate able coffee. The Fair Trade Labeling Some mystical symmetry seems student at the University of Wis- Organizations International esti- to be suggested by the list’s book- consin, Madison. mated that in 2002 the supply of Fair ends, however. In the final slot, at The Fair Trade system, he writes, Trade–certified coffee in Latin Amer- number 100, is Commodore promises a living wage to poor ica, Asia, and Africa was seven times Matthew Calbraith Perry, who farmers organized in cooperatives. greater than the amount exported as forcibly opened Japan to Western In reality, it guarantees organi- Fair Trade coffee. The rest had to be trade by sailing his gunboats into zations of producers a minimum sold on the conventional market at the harbor of Edo (now Tokyo) in price. By eliminating “unnecessary” the market price, Weber says. 1853–54. The Japanese leaders with intermediaries who siphon off large To give themselves an edge, many whom Perry “negotiated”? Those fees for financing, sorting, process- producers have switched to growing same Tokugawa shoguns brought ing, and exporting the coffee, the organic coffee, but the years-long down by number one–ranked Fair Trade system is designed to organic certification process is expen- Sakamoto Ryoma.- funnel coffee profits straight to the sive and demanding and the Fair people who grow the beans. But Trade process itself requires capital. OTHER NATIONS tossing out the middlemen means Basic certification costs $3,200, and that someone within the coop- most coffee-producing organizations An Ethical erative must handle the same tasks. need about $15,000 in financing to “Each of those activities . . . if not export a cargo container of Fair Cup of Joe managed effectively and efficiently, Trade coffee. The costs threaten to THE SOURCE: “Fair Trade Coffee Enthusi- can consume much of the higher shut out some of the smallest asts Should Confront Reality” by Jeremy Fair Trade price before it reaches producers Fair Trade wants to help, Weber, in Cato Journal, Winter 2007. growers,” Weber says. Moreover, and to protect the cooperatives that Along with screwing in while many Fair Trade drinkers are already operating. compact fluorescent bulbs and lac- believe that the system guarantees Ask practical questions and ing up running shoes made solely in minimum wages to coffee pickers, spend less time searching for factories following fair labor prac- wage requirements cover only enemies, Weber advises: “If Fair tices, a growing number of socially “employees”; many hired laborers Trade is dominated by those who conscious Americans are drinking on small coffee farms are not see mainstream for-profit com- “Fair Trade” coffee, hoping to im- covered because their work is “sea- panies as intrinsically destructive, prove the lot of farmers around the sonal.” While the Fair Trade Foun- the movement will remain a fringe, world. While there is little doubt dation urges farmers to take steps to niche market that supports a few that Fair Trade coffee has improved improve working conditions for all privileged groups.”

88 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2007 Also in this issue:

Martin Walker on Nixon and Kissinger CURRENT

Florence King on Abe Lincoln mania BOOKS Russ McDonald on Shakespeare’s big reviews of new and noteworthy nonfiction ideas

Emily Bernard on the N word Father of Journalism Andrew Burstein on Virginia’s Reviewed by Rajiv Chandrasekaran decline Foreign correspondents often For Kapuscinski,´´ whose TRAVELS WITH haul around something that reminds them spare style and risk-defying Ruth Levy Guyer HERODOTUS. on how doctors of home and serves as a talisman in chaotic reportage have been mod- ´ think By Ryszard Kapuscinski.´ places. Long before the days of iPods, a col- els for successive gener- Knopf. 288 pp. $25 league at The Washington Post lugged a sep- ations of correspondents, David Lindley on arate attaché case containing a phonograph the book was far more than a salve in the hin- the Smithsonian’s and speakers so that, wherever he went, he terlands. Herodotus became his muse, men- mysterious founder could listen to opera while he wrote. A tor, and faithful companion on journeys to friend at The New York Times packs a Scrab- Benares, Beijing, Tehran, and much of Africa. Claude R. Marx on ble board in his bag. When I was reporting Kapuscinski’s´´ final book, part memoir and part Aimee Semple from overseas, I carried a bottle of wine homage to his favorite historian, is replete with McPherson from my native California. It was thoroughly the subtle-yet-revealing insights that make impractical to do so as I trekked through Kapuscinski’s´´ work so powerful. This time, Borneo or arrived in Pakistan, where my however, his subject is not some colonial back- libations were smashed by customs inspec- water, but his own life. Though Kapuscinski´´ tors, but my Napa Valley cabernet com- was too self-effacing to write an outright auto- forted me on long journeys. biography, the story of his love for the Histories Ryszard Kapuscinski,´´ the indomitable is very much a tale of Kapuscinski´´ himself. Polish correspondent and author who died Kapuscinski´´ did not have role models at in January at age 74, traveled the world with home in Poland, or even in the insular world a copy of Herodotus’s Histories, a grand and of foreign correspondents. He often traveled sprawling account of the first great war alone. “I was quite consciously trying to learn between East and West. Herodotus the art of reportage and Herodotus struck me (484?–425? bc), the Greek historian who as a valuable teacher,” Kapuscinski´´ writes. became known as the Father of History, “From the very outset,” he says elsewhere, “the wore out his shoe leather traveling through- author of the Histories enters the stage as a out the Middle East to produce his account visionary on a world scale, an imagination of the fifth-century bc conflict between the capable of encompassing planetary dimen- Greeks and the Persians. sions—in short, as the first globalist.” In the

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Generations of foreign correspondents idolized Ryszard Kapuscinski´ ´ (1932–2007) for defying death to report his spare,evocative stories.

same tradition, Kapuscinski´´ had the temerity to but it prompts a bit of envy among his fellow cor- tell his newspaper editor at The Banner of Youth in respondents: Over the years, Kapuscinski´´ wit- 1955, when he was in his early twenties and Poles nessed 27 coups and revolutions and was sen- were still in Stalin’s Gulags, that he wanted to tenced to death four times. “I was tempted to see travel abroad. what lay beyond, on the other side.... I wanted His first trips took him to India, where language one thing only—the moment, the act, the simple was a barrier, and to China, where government fact of crossing the border,” he writes in Travels minders kept him on a short leash. Yet on his later With Herodotus. “The desire to cross the border, to expeditions he struck off, not for Poland’s more look at what is beyond it, stirred in me.” comfortable neighbors to the west, but instead for Because he produced much of his best work Africa and Latin America (the Polish Press Agency when Poland was still behind the Iron Curtain, appointed him its only Third World correspondent Kapuscinski´´ never achieved the acclaim of journal- in 1962). So as not to run afoul of his communist ists such as George Orwell, David Halberstam, or editors in Warsaw, he confined much of his early David Remnick. But he was one of the very best at reporting to cultural and arts subjects, and the describing for his countrymen what lurked in for- political stories he later wired from African eign lands. And with the translation of several of countries were contextually distant enough that his books into more than two dozen languages, he they didn’t draw the attention of censors. garnered admirers around the world. The Emperor During a career that spanned four decades, (1978), an account of the decline and fall of Haile Kapuscinski´´ probably traveled to more parts of the Selassie’s authoritarian regime in Ethiopia, was his developing world than any other journalist of the first book to appear in English, in 1983, and is per- 20th century. The biographical note on the flaps of haps his most famous. Others include The Soccer his books might make the average reader cringe, War (1978), about a six-day conflict that erupted

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between Honduras and El Salvador over a soccer tion of Athens than about the latest military coup game; Shah of Shahs (1982), on the 1979 Iranian in the Sudan, and the sinking of the Persian fleet Revolution; and Imperium (1993), about the fall struck me as more tragic than yet another mutiny of the Soviet Union. of troops in Congo.” Though obsessed with the ancient history I would like to believe that Kapuscinski´´ was recounted in Herodotus’s tales, Kapuscinski´´ exaggerating. Here he sounds like a narrow- doesn’t dwell on history in his own work. Another minded Eurocentrist, but it is impossible to read Day of Life (1976), his marvelous account of his books and come away convinced that he does Angola in the grip of civil war, explains little about not care about all that he experienced. He proba- the roots of the conflict, but through his encoun- bly spent more days in Africa, and wrote more ters with ordinary people, his perceptive observa- about the continent, than any of his European and tions, and his casual chats with Marxist rebels, he American contemporaries. Yet his admission high- reveals something about what it is to be human. As lights his book’s principal shortcoming: He fills fleeing Portuguese colonists converge on the capi- pages with lengthy recapitulations of Herodotus’s tal, Luanda, and prepare to leave the country, he tales rather than concentrate on the fascinating writes, people can talk of nothing but the wooden story of his own journeys. I complain only because shipping crates they are building to pack out their I opened Travels With Herodotus as his other belongings, and “this dusty desert city nearly de- admirers may, hoping for one full, final dose of his void of trees now smells like a flourishing forest.” adventures. It is because that expectation wasn’t Pet dogs, once their owners abandon them in the entirely fulfilled that I am disappointed. emptying city, roam in great, pedigreed packs, I wish that Kapuscinski´´ had been healthy scavenging for food. enough to travel to Iraq before he died. I can only imagine the trenchant observations he would have apuscinski´´ was accused of at times delivered from Baghdad’s Green Zone—the rum- embroidering what he had observed to pled Polish reporter walking around, not bother- K build a better story—not wholesale ing with geopolitics or military strategy, but vacu- fiction, but little embellishments here and there. It uming up the sorts of stories nobody else was. He is not clear why he did so. Perhaps he was emulat- would have spent a week with the Indians and ing his idol—some have called Herodotus the Pakistanis hired by Halliburton to serve food in father of lies—in inventing details to flesh out the the cafeteria. He would have gotten into the cab narrative and get at some larger truth. Or perhaps with a truck driver from Texas and navigated the he worried that if he didn’t produce vivid dis- treacherous convoy routes. patches, he’d be relegated to the obituary desk in In the years since Kapuscinski’s´´ travels, many Warsaw. We cannot forget that he was a product of other books have been written about the places he a different era, of a different system, when such lib- visited. But few have had the staying power of his. erties were not regarded as firing offenses. Though this may not be his finest, it does not His obsession with Herodotus, Kapuscinski´´ attenuate the power of his life’s work. When young admits, sometimes proved a distraction. When journalists ask me whom they should read, I’ll he was covering a civil war in Congo, he found continue to tell them to immerse themselves in himself “infected with the contagion of war—not Kapuscinski.´´ Now, however, I’ll add: Read him as the local one, but another, distant in place and he read Herodotus. time.” Later in the book, he continues: “As I immersed myself increasingly in Herodotus’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran is national editor of The Washington Post and has been the Post’s bureau chief in Baghdad, Cairo, and book, I identified more and more, emotionally Southeast Asia. His book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside and cognitively, with the world and events that Iraq’s Green Zone, written in part while he was a public policy scholar at the Wilson Center, won the Samuel Johnson Prize for he recalls. I felt more deeply about the destruc- Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award.

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The Odd Couple Reviewed by Martin Walker The cover of this mammoth book de- meetings with the president; NIXON AND picts the odd couple in what seems a characteris- the nominal secretary of state, KISSINGER: tic pose. Two middle-aged men in suits and William Rogers, and Secretary Partners in Power. proper leather shoes are walking up a path of Defense Melvin Laird had By Robert Dallek. toward the White House. Their backs are to the just 30. But Kissinger clearly HarperCollins. 740 pp. $32.50 camera. Richard Nixon is on the right, in saw the president as a loner. trousers a little too short for him. He strides “Isolation had become almost a spiritual neces- stiffly, his head lowered and his hands clenched sity to this withdrawn,...tormented man who behind a back that appears rigid with tension. insisted so on his loneliness and created so much On the left, both deferential and tutorial, Henry of his own torment,” Kissinger wrote in his Kissinger seems relaxed as he bends slightly memoirs. “It was hard to avoid the impression toward his president, making some long- that Nixon, who thrived on crisis, also craved forgotten point. They could almost be friends, disasters.” but there is a distance between them, a palpable Kissinger, for his part, craved dramas. He was lack of intimacy. a prima donna, furious at any slight, even the When apart and in military aircraft assigned to him for his 1971 In Dallek’s view, Nixon and private, they could be secret trip to Beijing, though a more prestigious Kissinger were “rivals who cruel about each other. presidential plane would have attracted un- could not satisfy their aspi- My “Jew boy,” Nixon wanted attention. He threw legendary tantrums, rations without each other.” called his gifted and could be cruel to his overworked staff. When national security future secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger adviser. According to was driven to a state of nervous collapse and fell presidential historian Robert Dallek, Nixon to the floor, Kissinger literally stepped over his “accurately suspected that Kissinger saw himself prone form, until he finally realized the serious- as a superior intellect manipulating a malleable ness of the situation. Dallek describes Kissinger president.” Kissinger in turn called Nixon “that as a match for Nixon in ambition and devious- maniac” or “our drunken friend” or “the meatball ness, playing up to both Democrats and Repub- mind.” Of his trials during his first year in the licans, and to Nelson Rockefeller as well as Nixon White House, Kissinger confided to Nixon, as he maneuvered for political power in British ambassador John Freeman, with whom the 1960s. In Dallek’s view, the two men were he was far more candid about American foreign psychological twins, “a union of two outsiders policy than he ever was with the State Depart- who distrusted establishment liberals.... Their ment (at least until he became secretary of cynicism would also make them rivals who could state), “I have never met such a gang of self- not satisfy their aspirations without each other.” seeking bastards in my life.... I used to find the Dallek briskly covers the lives of his two Kennedy people unattractively narcissistic, but subjects before they came together in the they were idealists. These people are real heels.” White House, with so little initial understand- Yet nobody was closer to Nixon, the self- ing between them that Kissinger was not even made son of California Quakers, than Kissinger, sure he’d been hired. But Nixon and Kissinger the child of German-Jewish refugees. In the first is not a double biography; rather, it’s a study in 100 days after Nixon took office, the White mutual seduction, mutual dependence, and House log recorded that Kissinger had 198 shared power. Strikingly little that is truly new

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President Richard Nixon (left) was a loner, and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, was a prima donna. Together, they toppled governments,waged war in Vietnam,opened China—and unwittingly launched the nation into a decade of crippling inflation. emerges from the 20,000 pages of Kissinger’s the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Kissinger acted as telephone transcripts, hundreds of newly a kind of co-president. released Nixon tapes, and the diaries of White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman upon n broad terms, we knew this already. Even which Dallek relies. He has, however, gleaned putting aside the fresh material, Nixon’s is and some useful nuggets, such as Kissinger’s grum- Imay well remain the best-documented presi- ble to Nixon, “In the Eisenhower period, we dency in history because of the Watergate tapes. would be heroes,” regarding their role in over- Dallek, who has already written solid accounts of throwing Salvador Allende’s elected Marxist the Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, and government in Chile. They swiftly congratu- Reagan presidencies, tries honorably to present lated themselves for keeping their part in the Nixon’s first term in office without the tarnish of coup at least semisecret. Watergate, but the task is impossible. Whatever the Most of Dallek’s new details are of this unsa- interim triumph, be it the opening to China or the vory and personal nature, and suggest that the launch of détente with the Soviet Union or the sign- current fashion for “realism” in U.S. foreign pol- ing of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the icy in the Nixon-Kissinger style, rather than the dark clouds gather ominously ahead. naive or flawed idealism of liberals and neo- So much of Nixon’s ruthless and anguished conservatives, carries its own costs in ruthless- character came out in Watergate and the epony- ness and denial of democratic principles. Mainly, mous tapes that any attempt to assess his personal- however, this material reinforces Dallek’s con- ity, hopes, and ambitions depends on the hindsight tention that in crises such as the secret bombing made possible by the scandal that ruined him. This of Cambodia, the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971, or is true of all the memoirs written by figures who

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knew Nixon at the time, all the interviews dutiful all the more alarming to the Soviets because historians have assembled, and all the histories. their troops were skirmishing with Chinese sol- And yet it was a fresh, confident morning when diers along the Amur and Ussuri river borders Nixon came into office in January 1969, promising between the two countries. to bring the nation together again after the assassi- The result was a remarkable success, not only in nations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, but also in Kennedy the previous year, after the campus riots the way that event unlocked so many avenues of and the burning of American cities. There was even superpower diplomacy with Moscow. The era of hope that he would, as promised, end the Vietnam détente, in regard to both Europe and arms control, War on plausibly honorable terms. and the eventual withdrawal of the Soviets from Nixon’s failure to resolve the Vietnam con- Egypt and their relegation to a secondary role in undrum poisoned his presidency from the begin- the Middle East, followed. But the price turned out ning. He had no “secret plan” to end the war, as was to be much higher than expected—and it receives reported at the time; his only scheme was to use unusually scant attention in Dallek’s history. back-channel contacts with South Vietnam presi- dent Nguyen Van Thieu to sabotage any prospect he real American weakness in the early for success for the Johnson administration at the 1970s had less to do with Vietnam Paris peace talks. (In an aside that is new, at least to T (though the costs of the war made matters this reviewer, Dallek reveals that Lyndon Johnson worse) than with the U.S. dollar and the apparent knew of this from bugs on Spiro Agnew’s campaign faltering of America’s economic dominance, plane and elsewhere, but dared not publicize the which eroded Washington’s influence over its information because of the illicit way it had been increasingly affluent European allies. Even the obtained.) Like Johnson, Nixon was reduced to ever-loyal British began to distance themselves. bombing even harder and then to escalating the Prime Minister Edward Heath limited the tradi- conflict into Cambodia, when the North Vietnam- tional openness of Anglo-American diplomatic ese made it clear that the war would end only on and intelligence conversations on the grounds their own terms, with an American withdrawal and that as a new member of the European Economic a united Vietnam under their control. Community, Britain should be able to share what In the end, what Nixon and Kissinger both it learned from Washington with its European realized was that however dominant the partners. Vietnam War seemed in American public life, it In retrospect, the crucial non-Watergate date was essentially a second-order issue on the wider in Nixon’s presidency was the weekend of August strategic map. The agony of Vietnam loomed so 14–15, 1971, when a meeting was held at Camp large because it was a matter of American self- David that Kissinger did not attend. The discus- esteem, made acute by anger and incredulity sion was led by Federal Reserve chairman Arthur that the nation was committing half a million of Burns, and the issues on the table were the weak- its troops yet being defeated by a small and ness of the dollar, the balance-of-payments gap, backward state. But once Nixon and Kissinger and the prospect of serious inflation. With his realized that no important dominoes were eyes firmly on his reelection campaign the follow- falling in Asia and that the United States re- ing year, Nixon decreed the most draconian eco- mained a superpower despite its apparent nomic measures ever enacted by a president in humiliation, they turned to the grander matters peacetime. He froze prices and wages, imposed of the Soviet Union and China. In effect, they surcharges and other controls on imports, and compensated for the apparent strategic reverse severed the link between the dollar and gold that America was suffering in Vietnam by playing the had endured since the New Deal. Kissinger’s China card against the Soviets, a move that was absence was understandable; at the time, he knew

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little, and cared less, about economics. Once he the diplomacy and strategy of political leaders. understood the effect of the economic crisis, he The United States was uniquely powerful in the asked the new British ambassador, Lord Cromer, decades after World War II because it was a former chairman of the Bank of England, for uniquely rich, and in the end it was the ability to some private tutorials on the topic. pay for both guns and butter that allowed Amer- If in the early 1970s Kissinger did not fully ica to prevail in the Cold War against a much understand how economic weakness would poorer antagonist. The heirs of Kissinger and affect the United States’ strategic role, he and Nixon, however skillful they may be in diplomacy, the rest of America soon learned better. The must engage a world in which Europe already nation’s abandonment of the gold standard operates from a base of similar financial strength, devalued the dollar against other currencies, and eventually China and then India will as well. which meant that oil-exporting countries The emergence of these separate poles of received less real money for their oil, tradition- economic might is already squeezing American ally priced in dollars. The OPEC countries freedom of maneuver as sole superpower. immediately agreed to confer about steps they In this new world that is upon us, the skills of a might take to restore their income, and their Kissinger, who made his name as a scholar with his opportunity came in 1973 with the Yom Kippur study of Prince Metternich’s diplomacy in the era of War, when U.S. support for Israel triggered an Europe’s concert of great powers after 1815, could oil embargo. The price of oil subsequently come into their own once more. But any future tripled, sharply exacerbating the inflation that Kissinger had better know much more about global had been gathering speed since Johnson’s presi- economics than the original. It is no accident that dency. The Great Inflation of the 1970s, which the only American figure in the last two decades has emerged as one of the gravest legacies of the other than a president to achieve international sta- Nixon years, roared into being. It was the weak- tus as a sage and global guru equal to Kissinger’s ness of the dollar, far more than the Vietnam has been central banker Alan Greenspan. What we War, that colored the presidencies of Nixon’s know about America’s future challenges suggests successors, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. that the abilities of both a Kissinger and a Green- Indeed, the United States was not to recover its span will be required. But we can certainly do with- economic self-confidence until the Reagan years. out another Nixon. It may soon be considered peculiar to write books like Nixon and Kissinger that give so little Martin Walker, a senior scholar at the Wilson Center, is editor emeritus of United Press International and director of A. T. Kear- prominence to the economic forces that underpin ney’s Global Business Policy Council.

Our Inner Abes Reviewed by Florence King

Looking for the real Abe Lincoln is logical hold over us. like looking for Moby Dick, Rosebud, and the sil- While a boy growing up in LAND OFLINCOLN: ver lining, all at the same time. Do not be fooled Illinois, Weekly Standard Adventures in Abe’s America. by the title of this book. Some stores will senior editor Andrew Fergu- inevitably stock it under Travel, but its real pur- son collected the usual arti- By Andrew Ferguson. Atlantic Monthly Press. pose is to explore why America’s most complex, facts and memorized the 279 pp. $24 contradictory president still exerts such a psycho- Gettysburg Address, but he

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had become a Lincoln buff in remission. It such as Louise Taper of Beverly Hills, who seemed to him that Lincoln no longer be- owns one of the largest private collections of longed to the ages but to special pleaders, Lincolniana. Her interest in Lincoln began such as bipolar sufferers who latched on to his when she read Love Is Eternal, a 1950s histor- melancholia, or imaginative gay-rights advo- ical romance novel by Irving Stone based on cates who saw a connection between his hell- the Lincoln marriage. She began to haunt ish marriage and the long circuit rides he rare-books-and-manuscripts outlets, in part, made with other young lawyers in his Spring- she speculates, as a way to escape the fate of field days. being one of the ladies who lunch. She got so Then in late 2002, Richmond, Virginia, good at identifying Lincoln’s authentic hand- erupted in controversy over the city council’s writing that today she is an expert in the field. proposal to erect a statue of Lincoln and his Taper couldn’t quite nail down the reason son Tad commemorating their brief visit to she’s so taken with Lincoln, except to say, “He the Confederate capital at the end of the Civil was just an amazing man.” She came closer to War. Ferguson covered the story and found the truth when she spoke about Mary Todd that Lincoln was once again the man of the Lincoln, Lincoln’s wife and the heroine of the hour, the bee in every bonnet, and the fork in novel that started it all: “People hated her every tongue. On one side were the pro-statue because she didn’t fit the mold.” Ferguson diversity buffs of the “healing power” persua- insightfully connects her Lincoln obsession sion, and on the other, hot-eyed cavaliers of with the pains she takes to avoid becoming the Sons of Confederate Veterans trailed by another typical Beverly Hills matron. For Mrs. paranoid homeschoolers who eagerly bought Taper, Lincoln plays a seemingly unlikely role: their educational materials (e.g., an “Arm He’s the inspiration for a feminist-style jour- Yourself With the Truth” booklet). ney by this woman who is determined to chart Ferguson realized that the dispute was not an individual course. about the Civil War itself but about what kind The last place Ferguson expected to find of man Lincoln was. The cavaliers, citing his Lincoln was in a management training semi- proposal to repatriate blacks to Africa, saw nar held in Gettysburg, but there he was, pre- him as a hypocritical closet racist and a war sented as the ultimate successful executive. mongering Big Government dictator, while Lincoln as business guru is, Ferguson points the pro-statue crowd saw him as approach- out, a stretch. His brief career as clerk of a able, introspective, nuanced, and comfortable frontier store ended when “the store went with ambiguity—or, in Ferguson’s delicious broke so spectacularly that its proprietor felt analogy, “If Lincoln had been born 125 years compelled to flee the territory.” All his closest later, he could have been Bill Moyers.” associates spoke on record about his dearth of money sense, his chaotic law office, his disre- mericans, it seems, still need Lincoln gard for systems, and his lack of any head for to love or to hate, to explain or to figures. He forgot to cash his paychecks and A excuse, to identify whatever it is kept important papers in his hat. about ourselves we consider essential. To What could a corporate seminar do with understand ourselves we must first under- such a man? Ferguson, who published a hys- stand Lincoln, Ferguson suggests, and so he terical essay on the self-improvement indus- embarked on an American odyssey in search try in his first book, Fools’ Names, Fools’ Faces of people and places whose inner Lincoln (1996), mimics the way PowerPoint software lives on. might boil down one of the most exquisite He gained entrée to memorabilia collectors prose styles in the English language:

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Vision: Big Picture • 4 x 20 + 7 = 87 years ago • Forefathers
continent
new nation • Key Proposition: Everybody Equal • Civil war
long endurance test • Battlefield = cemetery (final resting place) = hallowed ground • Caveats: cannot dedicate cannot consecrate cannot hallow • Action step: new birth of freedom

Ferguson figured that the Lincoln facilitators would merely teach history from a different angle, but by the seminar’s end he realized that they weren’t just teaching history, or even busi- ness techniques, but “something else that, nowa- days, is harder to come by, and harder to make stick”: “They’ve taken the most American of pur- suits, and potentially the most crassifying— getting ahead, making lots of money, climbing the greasy pole of success—and turned it into an The clothes make the man: On special occasions, the occasion for painless, gentle moral instruction. Lincoln Presenters wear the hat of the former president. Lincoln lets them do it.” Spending a couple of days studying this man who talked about “the better angels of our na- to speak to organizations, march in parades, ture,” who felt malice toward none and charity to and in general make history pay. In these re- all, who personified our ideal of equality, is bound enactment-happy times, some of them even to have a positive effect on people committed to make a living at it: $50 for cutting a ribbon and the workshop mindset of conflict resolution, $200 for a major appearance. The job requires anger management, and group decision-making. them to log a lot of time on the road, and some- And better people, so the thinking goes, make times they have to sleep in their cars, but they better leaders. At the very least, Ferguson sug- feel a calling. “Lincoln is as close to perfect as a gests, dwelling on the kindness, sympathy, and human being could be,” said one. “That’s what patience Lincoln so often displayed might in gives us a sense of mission.” some small way help stem the tide of coarseness The only place Ferguson visited that is im- overtaking American life. mune to inspiration and beyond redemption is The same regard for a blend of money- the Lincoln homestead in Springfield, now part making and personal growth pervades the Lin- of the Lincoln Heritage Trail preservation proj- coln Presenters—they reject the label ect run by the federal government. “The reign- “impersonators” as too show-biz. They’re mostly ing ideology of the Park Service is party tall, lanky men who were told so often that they poopery—a constant vigil against anyone taking looked like Lincoln that they decided to turn it unauthorized pleasure in a Park Service into a career. Headquartered in Cincinnati, the property.” The funky authenticity he remembers group was founded in 1990 and now numbers from his boyhood visits is gone; everything near more than 250. Presenters hire themselves out the house has been torn down, replaced by a

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sterile visitors’ center. Inside, a theater loops like “We are now in the parlor.” through an orientation film. Security cameras Andrew Ferguson is a writer with perfect monitor all who enter. Speakers broadcast con- pitch and flawless timing who can go from stant announcements (“Your safety is our hilarity to poignancy without missing a beat. primary concern. . . . A heart defibrillator is Whether he is describing the seedy glories of located in the visitors’ center”) and warnings Route 66 or the Holocaust survivor who that an alarm will sound if visitors step off the believed Lincoln came to him in a dream, his rubber walking guides. Worst of all are the reporter’s powers of observation and his instinc- robotic Smoky the Bear–garbed guides, their tive understanding of the human condition pro- voices flattened by the boredom of reciting the duce the satisfying blend of entertainment and same memorized material day after day, who instruction he delivers in this marvelous book. rattle off their speeches so mechanically that Florence King writes a column, “The Bent Pin,” for National they lose all power of inflection and say things Review.

IN BRIEF

ARTS & LETTERS A Man of Ideas Shakespeare the Thinker begins and ends with a SHAKESPEARE reminiscence about a medi- THE THINKER. tative walk to the English vil- By A. D. Nuttall. Yale Univ. Press. lage of Shottery. Late one 428 pp. $30 afternoon, A. D. Nuttall flees the tedium of the biennial International Shakespeare Conference in Stratford to go off on his own, wandering down a country lane “looking for the boy who would grow up to become the author of Hamlet, King Lear, As You Like It, and all the other amazing plays that bear his name.” The anecdote nicely cap- tures the spirit of the author, a beloved Ox- ford don who considered himself a maverick, an independent reader impatient with the William Shakespeare, c. 1610 triviality and dead ends of academic squab- bles. Nuttall died suddenly in his rooms at New College this past January, and Shake- Nuttall permits himself a few preliminary speare the Thinker stands as a fitting tribute and marginal swipes at current (and by now to his learning, his humane values, and his not-so-current) fashions in literary theory, pedagogical talents. especially the solipsism of poststructuralism

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and the “absurd” New Historicist view that un-being ..., Shakespeare propels us into a “Shakespeare was locked into an unde- more fundamental bewilderment.” Late in his veloped, savagely hierarchical political philos- career, “the dramatist may have been visited ophy by the period in which he lived.” Leaving by a kind of nausea as he contemplated the these sterile ideas and methods to those “in obscene power of his own manipulative art.” the airless lecture-room,” Nuttall sets out to Judicious source study, poetic sensitivity, his- help readers find their way into the plays (he torical context, linguistic scholarship, ac- does not consider the sonnets or narrative quaintance with, among other philosophers, poems) and to account for their distinctive Locke, Wittgenstein, Hegel, and Popkin—all intellectual power after four centuries. To this these tools are employed to illuminate the task he brings exceptional learning (especially competing ideas that animate play after play. in the Greek and Latin literary traditions), a If the book displays the benefits of lifelong grounding in European philosophy, a lifetime study, it also suffers, regrettably, from some of of studying and teaching the plays, and an the mild corrosions academic eminence can accessible prose style. bring. Years of autonomy and admiration Explaining his title, Nuttall properly dis- made the author a little too Olympian. He dis- tinguishes between, on the one hand, what misses the critical establishment as if he were Shakespeare thought—which, given the med- not a product and a perpetuator of it. (His ium of drama, we cannot know—and, on the central theory, for example, resembles other, what he thought about and how he arguments made by unmentioned critics such thought about it, which we can know. He ad- as Helen Vendler and Norman Rabkin.) And vances more or less chronologically through when he does occasionally linger over a stim- the canon, devoting some 10 pages to almost ulating essay or argument, these almost every play, identifying and exploring the dra- invariably turn out to have been written either matist’s treatment of such central human by his own students or by critics dead for sev- concerns as love, death, politics, religious eral decades. Too many paragraphs begin with doubt, nature, art, and language. Scrutiny of some form of the phrase “Several years ago I these topics generates Nuttall’s fundamental wrote that. . . .” insight, that Shakespeare “shows an uncanny But a little tolerance will lessen the irrita- ability to anticipate almost every kind of tion. Nuttall’s voice will be missed. And the counter-feeling.” In other words, the play- reader—whether general or professional—will wright routinely complicates or subverts any find much to enjoy in this posthumous important statement or position he dra- volume—and much, well, to think about. matizes by considering the virtues of its —Russ McDonald opposite. Villains talk sense; heroes behave badly; audiences cannot make up their minds. The Professor of Desire The chief impression one This tension between opposing points of THE LIFE OF view is indisputably central to Shakespearean takes from The Life of Kings- KINGSLEYAMIS. thought and theater. Love’s Labour’s Lost, for ley Amis is of a man who By Zachary Leader. instance, raises ethical concerns about words, loved pleasure. Indeed, few Pantheon. offering a “juxtaposition of verbal gymnastics men have matched Amis’s 996 pp. $39.95 and an anti-verbal message.” Richard II pres- enormous appetite for enjoyment—of music, ents a “horror at the substitution of an idea of laughter, booze, and especially sex—or his reality for reality itself.” In Hamlet, “less guilty capacity for stirring delight in others. With the than most of evading the central mystery of publication in 1954 of the comic novel Lucky

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Jim, Amis (1922–95) burst onto the British lit- edited Amis’s letters, and is alert to how the erary scene as one of the isles’ Angry Young novelist, with his aggrieved, heckling tone, Men. But from the start, his obsession was not influenced British literature by jeering at pre- rage but desire. “There was no end,” concludes tension. Cultural critic Paul Fussell best the reluctant academic of that novel’s title, “to described the virtues of his friend Amis’s writ- the ways in which nice things are nicer than ing: “the quest for enjoyment, unmarred by nasty ones.” anxiety about fashionableness and alert to the The trouble, as Amis’s next 40 years proved slightest hint of phoniness or fraud.” and as Zachary Leader documents in this Those who wish to see Amis only as a bully meticulous yet surprisingly jaunty biography, and a debauchee will find plenty of ammu- is that nice things can’t dispel the nasty ones, nition here. But such judgments ignore the and the single-minded pursuit of nice things fact that, ultimately, he was not a defender of might turn you more than a little nasty your- libation but the bard of the hangover. His self. Amis’s cocktail of work never lost its humor, but as he aged, it neuroses was a strong was increasingly flooded with regret. Amis’s cocktail of neuroses blend—he was afraid In The Old Devils, one of his later novels, was a strong blend—he was of loneliness, mad- about a group of retired friends, the character afraid of loneliness, mad- ness, and above all Peter (an obvious stand-in for Amis) offers a ness, and above all death— death—and to cope halting apology to Rhiannon, the woman he and to cope he became a he became a first- abandoned years before. “I’ve always loved you first-class heel. class heel. and I do to this day,” Peter says. “I’m sorry it He cheated on his sounds ridiculous because I’m so fat and horri- first wife, Hilly, at an ble, and not at all nice or even any fun, but I astonishing rate. (In one of the book’s richest mean it. I only wish it was worth more.” This is anecdotes, he misses the opportunity to testify the confession of a man who came to see the against the longtime ban on D. H. Lawrence’s limits of consuming nice things. It is worth novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover because he’s quite a lot. busy with a lover of his own.) After he —Aaron Mesh abandoned Hilly and their children for a sec-

ond marriage, he poisoned it with energetic CONTEMPORARY AFFAIRS callousness. And as Amis’s fame increased, he delighted in playing the role of the reactionary Hard Word clubman, with a sideline in what he admitted was “pissing on harmless people.” The N Word is not an THE N WORD: Yet Leader is not without sympathy for this easy read. That’s hardly sur- Who Can Say It,Who man who was “full of fear, full of fun.” The fun prising, given that the history Shouldn’t,and Why. is of an extraordinarily high level: not only in of the word “nigger” is so bru- By Jabari Asim. two dozen novels (I Want It Now [1968] and tal and violent. What is sur- Houghton Mifflin. 278 pp. $26 The Old Devils [1986] rank with Lucky Jim as prising, though, is how seam- masterworks in chronicling the frustrations of lessly Jabari Asim threads a history through his the little guy) but in limericks, verbal mimicry, story of the “n word”: a history not only of the and wonderfully vitriolic, often poignant African-American experience but of the Ameri- letters to his best friend and fellow putdown can republic itself. His title harkens back to Ran- artist, the poet Philip Larkin. dall Kennedy’s Nigger: The Strange Career of a Leader, a professor of English literature at Troublesome Word (2002). Asim’s polite title London’s Roehampton University, previously may land a softer blow, but the substance of The

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N Word delivers a serious pummeling. even in an attempt to reclaim it, unimag- Asim, deputy editor of The Washington Post inative: “As long as we embrace the derogatory Book World, begins by disputing lexicographers’ language that has long accompanied and abet- claims that the first recorded usage of “nigger” ted our systematic dehumanization, we shackle was neutral. Jamestown colonist John Rolfe ourselves to those corrupting white delusions— described the arrival in 1619 of “twenty negars” and their attendant false story of our struggle in his diary. In fact, Asim writes, none of the in the United States.” terms—among them “nigger,” “niger,” “negur,” Determining when use of the “n word” is and “negar”—used to refer to black Africans was permissible—even constructive—and when it devoid of negative connotations. Long before the is harmful is a delicate and subjective matter. Revolutionary War, black people fought against For Asim, the issue comes down to a distinc- efforts to dehumanize them through language, tion between the public and the private but “the notion of black inferiority spread as rap- spheres. “A man may have as bad a heart as he idly as the spirit of independence that enlivened chooses,” he quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the new nation.” “if his conduct is within the rules.” Though American ideologies are on trial here, and so Asim does not make good on the definitive are a few individuals who embody them. Thom- and prescriptive promise of his subtitle, read- as Jefferson, for instance. Asim calls Jefferson’s ers come away with an appreciation of the fact Notes on the State of Virginia (1784–85) “a that every utterance of the word is accom- handy, influential primer for those who aspired panied by a history to which we must all be to advance the cause of white supremacy.” Jeffer- held accountable. son represents a quintessentially American par- Asim displays a curious obsession with adox: The legacy of one of this country’s most quantification (“nigger” appears some 95 times prominent statesmen cannot be separated from in Gone With the Wind, 215 times in Huckle- its white supremacist roots. Of course, as Asim berry Finn, 21 times in the 1859 novel Our points out, the black American experience is Nig), and his careful cataloging of these men- steeped in this same paradox. Campaigns tions functions as a kind of rhetorical assault. against white supremacy have been central to Perhaps his private ambition is that readers the evolution of African-American identity. will be forced to reflect on the psychological And yet, he argues, “nigger” survives because effects of this constant confrontation with the Americans want it to. He buttresses this claim word on the page. Each repetition compels us with prodigious examples from literature, music, to revisit the awful history the word carries. theater, film, and science. Josiah Nott, a 19th- And we have Michael Richards, Don Imus, and century scientist who sought to prove blacks’ the others who will come after them to remind inferiority, described his work as “niggerology.” us that the history of the “n word” is by no Asim links widespread acceptance of this means concluded. pseudoscience to anti-Negro campaigns evident —Emily Bernard in courtrooms, congressional committees, churches, and the popular media. Asim does not believe the word can or Oil’s Final Frontier should be expunged from our language. He On a 2005 visit to south- applauds black artists, such as comedian and ern Chad’s Doba Basin, John UNTAPPED: The Scramble for actor Richard Pryor and poet Sonia Sanchez, Ghazvinian stood on a road Africa’s Oil. who have used the word for aesthetic, histori- outside a fenced compound By John Ghazvinian. cal, and ethical purposes. Ultimately, however, occupied by ExxonMobil. On Harcourt. 320 pp. $25 he calls black people’s casual use of “nigger,” one side, a 120-megawatt

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power plant operated by the U.S. oil company spur to the African continent’s healthy develop- produced six times the amount of electricity gen- ment. The history he recounts and the people he erated in the rest of Chad, and posh amenities meets in his travels—from the young Nigerian abounded: modern apartments, air conditioning, who leads him to an illicit oil-trading post to the Internet access, basketball courts, a health clinic, Chevron executive who blithely deflects reports even an airport. A sign proclaimed, “Home of the of widespread corruption—suggest that there is World’s Greatest Drilling Team.” more than enough blame to go around for the On the other side of the road, 10,000 people entrenched poverty and violence in Africa’s oil- lived in squalor. Atan, a town that had taken root rich states. in the desert a decade earlier as a squatter camp In recent years, billions of dollars in national for job seekers, lacked clean running water. oil wealth have landed in the private accounts of Nightclub prostitutes served an American and ruling families or been redirected from develop- French clientele a short distance from Atan’s ment projects to arms purchases. Meanwhile, houses of worship and tiny schools. “Despite the Washington often turns a blind eye. Ghazvinian’s veneer of respectability, Atan is an enormous fes- most disturbing stories emerge from Africa’s tering embarrassment for ExxonMobil,” Ghazvin- small rentier states, where once-diversified ian writes, “a living, breathing metaphor for the economies have become dangerously dependent failure of the Doba drilling operation to bring on the royalties paid by oil exporters. The meaningful development to the people of Chad.” opulence he finds in Libreville, the capital of For Western oil and gas producers, Africa is Gabon, is a mirage. The national unemployment the world’s last El Dorado. Since the early 1990s, rate is 40 percent, and Gabon imports most of advances in deepwater-drilling technology and the food once produced in its jungles. Mean- the terms of “production-sharing agreements” while, the oil is running out. with host nations have cleared the way for Like other recent books whose authors substantial American and European footholds off roamed the world to expose the underbelly of the coast of West Africa and south of the Sahara. “energy security,” including Paul Roberts’s The After 9/11, Big Oil and the Washington elite were End of Oil (2004) and Lisa Margonelli’s Oil on captivated by the prospect that exploring for oil the Brain (2007), Untapped taps into our grow- in Africa could loosen OPEC’s stranglehold on ing, converging anxieties about oil supply, U.S. energy supplies—and that locating wells off- national security, and global warming. But shore would separate them from the political Ghazvinian and his fellow authors also shed light upheaval that troubles so much of the oil- on an important question that Americans still producing world. China joined the bonanza more rarely ask: What does our relentless hunger for recently. oil mean for those who vie to feed it? Journalist and Oxford-trained historian —Joel Kirkland Ghazvinian steers clear of caricatures or smug

prescriptions for Africa’s feeble democracies as HISTORY he explores the complex political, economic, and social factors that fuel the “curse of oil.” Gertrude of Arabia Every developing country in Africa where oil The life of Gertrude Bell has been discovered, he notes, has seen GERTRUDE BELL: decreased living standards and increased suf- (1868–1926) cries out for a Queen of the Desert, fering, a phenomenon scholars call the “para- biopic. More famed and influ- Shaper of Nations. dox of plenty.” ential in her day than her col- By Georgina Howell. African oil, Ghazvinian argues, is neither an league T. E. Lawrence, with Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 481 pp. $27.50 easy source of energy security for the West nor a whom she rallied Arab tribes

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Gertrude Bell (middle), flanked by Winston Churchill on her right and T. E. Lawrence on her left, tours the pyramids during the 1921 Cairo Conference,where she played a starring role in determining the destiny and drawing the borders of modern Iraq. to rebel against the Turks during World War I, woman officer in British military intelli- she was eclipsed after her death by the myth- gence—and tirelessly shepherding unruly Iraq making that crowned him Lawrence of Arabia. toward the wobbly independence it finally But Lawrence could never have accomplished achieved in 1932. Her life, like Lawrence’s, his own cinematic exploits among the Arabs if ended in pathos. The great political adventure not for Bell’s preceding years of intrepid travel ebbed, leaving her lonely in Baghdad, and she and dogged information-gathering in the died at 57 after what most biographers agree desert. was an intentional overdose of pills. Bell was pivotal to the politics of the day, Several recent biographies, notably Janet serving as Oriental secretary in the British Wallach’s Desert Queen (1996), have striven to administration in Baghdad—she was the only capture the mystique of the woman who crossed

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and recrossed the Middle East on camelback, Museum, which she founded) and “Miss Bell’s spoke fluent Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, met university.” Bedouin and Druze sheikhs on equal terms, and Howell’s shortcoming as a biographer is her ended up knowing everything about the tribes apparent inability to criticize her subject. She and their rivalries, trading patterns, and internal earnestly defends even her heroine’s antisuffrage politics. Her story is painfully relevant today for activism. (Bell became the founding secretary of the light it casts on why nation-building in Iraq is the Anti-Suffrage League in 1908, and for years so difficult—indeed, was difficult even for some- opposed votes for women, most likely because one with Bell’s formidable sense of the region and she identified with the political interests of her its cultures. We can learn much from her strug- social class—the upper crust feared a large gles to draw the borders of Iraq and weld its war- increase in the franchise—over those of her gen- ring Shiite, Sunni, der.) Howell’s uncritical treatment extends to the Kurdish, and other politics in which Bell was enmeshed: She shows After meeting Gertrude populations into a no discomfort at the puppet-style “indepen- Bell, one sheikh exclaimed, modern nation. dence” Britain permitted Iraq after World War I, “This is a woman—what Georgina Howell, a or the duplicity of the policies that preceded it. must the men be like!” British magazine The romantic British vision of the East possesses writer, has produced a her utterly. vivid portrait that Romantic expectations of transforming the tends toward the breathless—forgivably so, for Middle East have persisted long past Gertrude the most part, given the material. Bell was stylish Bell’s time. But what endures of her legacy flow- and fearless. Arriving at the remote tents of a ered not from fanciful ideas about the region but desert ruler, she would dispense gifts, share the from her intense engagement with its realities. latest political news and gossip, and join her —Amy E. Schwartz hosts in reciting classical Arab poetry far into the night. The sheikhs, perplexed at first, came to treat her with profound respect; the British Daze of Yore In the decades leading authorities, well aware of her value, accepted her DOMINION OF as a colleague. (There were hitches: One sheikh, up to the Civil War, Virgin- MEMORIES: meeting with Bell and other senior officers in ians were casting longing back- Jefferson,Madison, Baghdad, exclaimed, “This is a woman—what ward glances. They “believed and the Decline must the men be like!” “This delicious peror- that they had already of Virginia. ation,” she wrote dryly to her parents, “restored glimpsed—if not momentarily By Susan Dunn. Basic. 310 pp. $27.50 me to my true place in the twinkling of an eye.”) captured—the essence of the Disappointed several times in love, Bell good life,” writes Williams College historian poured herself into the Arab cause. Late in life Susan Dunn. But, she goes on to ask, did nostal- she wrote home, “I’m acutely conscious of how gia tempt the Old Dominion in particular, and much life has, after all, given me. . . . I’m the South, by extension, to mistake its plantation happy in feeling that I’ve got the love and con- idyll for a more-or-less permanent stasis? Did the fidence of a whole nation.” This seems to have nearly religious embrace of the rural way of life, been so. The king she helped install, Faisal ibn which was equated with manly independence, Hussain, treated her as a valued adviser. Iraqis and a cultivated distaste for urban industrialism called her the Khatun, or great lady. As eternally mar relations between North and recently as 1990, in Saddam-era Baghdad, the South? What was it that sank the fortunes of minister of antiquities respectfully took me to proud Virginians? see “Miss Bell’s museum” (the Iraqi National Dominion of Memories is a richly detailed

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investigation of Thomas Jefferson and James Jefferson might be considered valid, it is in the Madison’s home state in the half-century after mechanism of a plough.” the Revolution, as it struggled with slavery, Dunn’s take on Madison is complex and inter- weighed government’s role in public education, esting. Unlike Jefferson, Madison acknowledged and speculated about the proper parameters of and struggled with the contradiction between democracy more generally. Dunn, a smooth and social happiness and national identity. Neither persuasive writer, digests the best literature on man could stomach the idea of a biracial society, Virginia and Virginians, highlighting the scholar- but Madison was a unionist, clearer in his insis- ship of the last 50 years as well as drawing on tence that North and South were equally bound newspapers and correspondence of the early 19th by the constitutional compact of 1787. Despite his century. In these pages, illustrious founders vie own culpability for the “looming crisis,” Madi- with lesser lights to chart the future, only half- son’s final message to the nation, delivered in a realizing and half-accepting how shaky a foun- short public letter he penned in 1834, “was a dation—how exhausted the soil—the future rests supremely rational one—union and vigilance— upon. though he offered it in vain.” Virginia’s decline from Enlightenment-era Dunn completes her analysis by relating the prosperity to political and cultural backwardness South’s early sacrifice on the altar of limited was spiritual as much as a matter of political government—a creation of Jefferson’s misguided economy. For her explanation, Dunn points to idealism and provincialism—to Virginia the depletion of tobacco-stained land, crop fail- politicians’ later opposition to New Deal legisla- ures, the migration of common farmers to the tion. And she connects the conservative call for fertile West, the refusal of a tax-averse legislature hands-off government in our own generation, to support public schools, and the general lack of and a self-satisfied lethargy that stalled advances interest in creative solutions to these issues. Most in civil rights, to that same unreasonable fear of telling, though, is state representatives’ inor- intrusive federal power. The American nation dinate fear of the consolidation of power within was conceived in energy and dynamism, much of the federal government. “Prisoners of their own it engineered in Virginia. So what happened to plantations,” as the author calls Virginia’s planter divide North and South? Dunn’s answers, some elite, perpetuated their myth of splendor in the unsettling, are all credible. grass. —Andrew Burstein No portrait of the Old South is complete with- out the eccentric provocateur John Randolph of SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Roanoke (1773–1833), and he pops up several times in Dunn’s account. His people, polished Physician, Think and unfailingly decent, were content to remain isolated from whatever challenged the legitimacy for Thyself Once upon a time, doc- of their dream world. Even Jefferson, a hero of HOWDOCTORS states’ rights as much as he was a clarion on tors made house calls and eye THINK. behalf of individual rights, was not conservative contact. Chatting at patients’ By Jerome Groopman. enough for Randolph. In one of the great put- bedsides or with their families Houghton Mifflin. downs of the 19th century, he dismissed the third at kitchen tables, doctors 307 pp. $26 president’s ample intellect with faint praise for assessed both patient and context. They under- his invention of the moldboard plow: When, in stood the sensible counsel of postbellum physi- 1829, Jefferson was invoked to promote state cian William Osler: Listen, and the patient will constitutional reform, Randolph declared, “Sir, if tell you the diagnosis. So how can 21st-century there be any point in which the authority of Mr. physicians hope to interpret their patients’ ill-

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ness narratives, when, in the typical encounter, woman. When Rachel Stein arrived at the the doctor interrupts 18 seconds after the orphanage in Vietnam, she was handed a thin, patient begins speaking, and within 20 seconds congested three-month-old who in no way has formed some opinion of what is wrong? resembled the “robust and content” infant she Jerome Groopman, a Harvard professor of had seen in photographs. By the time she and medicine and New Yorker staff writer, became Shira arrived home in Boston, the baby was upset that the medical students, interns, and gravely ill. residents he was training did not seem to be During a month in intensive care, Shira “thinking deeply about their patients’ prob- bore the weight of staggering diagnoses—SCID lems.” He asked astute diagnosticians around (severe combined immunodeficiency syn- the country how they approached and cracked drome), AIDS, pneumonia, exotic and mun- difficult diagnoses and what happened when dane fungal, viral, and bacterial infections— they failed. Misdiagnosis is not an insig- and was subjected to countless interventions. nificant problem: Groopman cites a finding Yet in the end, her problems were all attributa- that between one in six and one in seven ble to malnutrition. “In addition to forming patients is incorrectly assessed. Most medical mental prototypes and retreating from zebras,” errors, he discovered, arose from all-too- Groopman writes, “Shira’s doctors made a third human “mistakes in thinking,” not technical cognitive mistake, called ‘diagnosis momen- glitches. tum.’ ” As soon as the first doctor decided Shira Some physicians latched on to the first had SCID, the other members of the staff diagnosis that could accommodate all appar- accepted SCID as a given. “Diagnosis momen- ent symptoms. Some were focused on a partic- tum, like a boulder rolling down a mountain, ular prototype because they had just missed gains enough force to crush anything in its that diagnosis in another patient or because way.” five patients had recently come in with similar Medical detective work resembles crime complaints. And some were honoring the law detection with an important difference: of parsimony—choose the simplest necessary- “Human biology,” Groopman notes, “is not a and-sufficient explanation; their premature theft or a murder where all the clues can add anchoring in an incorrect diagnosis reflected up neatly.” And contemporary doctors never attention to the medical maxim, “When you seem to benefit from the luxury of time for hear hoofbeats, first think ‘horses,’ not reflection. They’re under pressure from ‘zebras.’ ” patients—do something! anything!—and The algorithms and decision trees that from colleagues. The most insidious pressures young doctors are taught provide “a static way come from drug representatives pushing new of looking at people,” noted one doctor whom products. Groopman cautions patients to ask Groopman interviewed. But patients are not doctors why they are proposing specific thera- static and should demonstrate their vitality by pies. Did the pharmaceutical company’s drug actively putting to doctors such questions as rep give the doctor a ski trip to Vail? “What’s the worst thing this can be?” and How Doctors Think provides an important “Shall I begin at the beginning?” These quer- 21st-century guide for doctors and patients. In ies, Groopman suggests, can help doctors re- exposing the workings of the medical-indus- frame their thinking and consider the illness trial complex, it makes a powerful case for a afresh. more humane culture of medicine in which His most poignant example of the patient care would rightly be approached with difficulties in medical diagnoses is the story of “a mix of science and soul.” a Vietnamese baby adopted by an American —Ruth Levy Guyer

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portrait of the man. A disastrous 1865 fire at the The Man Who Smithsonian destroyed Smithson’s letters and Built the Castle notes along with his scientific collections. Scour- ing libraries and private collections throughout Gracing the National Europe, Ewing has made a remarkable effort to THE LOSTWORLD Mall in Washington, D.C., gather up what documentary evidence remains OFJAMES with several splendid SMITHSON: of his existence. buildings, the Smithsonian Science,Revolution, Macie was born in Paris in 1764 or 1765 to Institution is a huge tourist and the Birth of the Elizabeth Macie, mistress to Hugh Smithson, attraction, a repository of art Smithsonian. the first Duke of Northumberland. When, at and culture, and a pioneering By Heather Ewing. about age 35, he changed his name to Bloomsbury. center of scientific research. 432 pp. $29.95 Smithson, he was only making official a parent- As is well known, this singu- age that was already widely known. He never lar American institution, encompassing 19 met his father. museums and nine research centers, came Smithson had a passion for science, and by about because of a quirk in the will of an Eng- age 22 was a fellow of the Royal Society of Lon- lishman who gallivanted around Europe all his don. It didn’t hurt that he was well connected life but never crossed the Atlantic. Luckily for and well off, though the us, the man born Jacques Louis Macie changed origin of that wealth his name in midlife to James Smithson, hoping never becomes clear in Luckily for us, Jacques Louis to gain an ounce more respect in the salons of Ewing’s account. Taking Macie changed his name to London and Paris. It would have been hard to life as an extended James Smithson. It would turn “Macie” into a mellifluous name to etch grand tour, Smithson have been hard to turn into stone. popped up over the “Macie” into a mellifluous Architectural historian Heather Ewing can- years in Germany, Italy, not be faulted for failing to summon a full and Denmark, as well name to etch in stone. as England and France. Unable to say much about the man himself, Ewing instead gives a rich account of the origins of the Royal Society and the rise of chemistry, fashionable society in the capital cities and tourist resorts of Europe, and the chaos that enveloped France during the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Against this ornate background the enigmatic Smithson flits back and forth. He traveled to Paris in 1788, for example, with a letter of introduction from the botanist Sir Joseph Banks to the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, whose scientific importance and grisly demise on the guillotine Ewing duly recounts. Did Smithson actually meet Lavoisier? We can’t be sure. Judging by his brief appearances in the letters and diaries of Englishman James Smithson, shown here in 1816, never set foot in the United States, but it was his fortune that created Amer- such notables, Smithson was a charming, well- ica’s ultimate museum piece, the Smithsonian Institution. liked man, and a clever but hardly profound

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scientist, publishing mainly on chemistry and the word had a very different connotation, mineralogy. namely, to count, reckon, or impose order on Ewing makes a slender case that Smithson information. Alex Wright, an information saw in the American and French revolutions architect and former Harvard librarian, the promise of a fresh, utopian future—until argues that we’ve outsourced so much proc- the blood began to flow in Paris, leaving the essing, storing, and retrieving of information United States the sole unblemished example of to machines that we’ve come to see informa- a new society, free of the snobbery and conde- tion technologies as mysterious, thoroughly scension of the old. Upon his death in 1829, he modern innovations. In Glut, he sets out to bequeathed a good living to his nephew and show that if we resist the tendency of the the bulk of his fortune to that nephew’s issue. technorati to look only into the future, we can When the nephew died, childless, in 1835, a see that we’ve been in an information age of proviso in Smithson’s will sent roughly sorts all along. £100,000 (about $510,000) “to the United Inventions such as Sumerian tablet writing States of America, to found at Washington, in the third millennium bc and the Phoe- under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, nician alphabet in approximately the 10th an establishment for the increase & diffusion of century bc testify to humankind’s innate abil- knowledge among men.” ity to organize data. The original purpose of Some proud Americans declared that their the familial order of the Greek Pantheon country should refuse this Old World largesse. (Cronus begat Zeus, who begat Athena) was When the money finally did reach Washing- not to imbue stories with familial drama but ton, bickering ensued over what sort of to help orators recall the sequential details of establishment it should support. Not until their epics. Exotic accounting tools such as 1846 did Congress charter the Smithsonian; the Incan quipu—long pieces of intricately the cornerstone of its castle home, which sym- knotted rope—were once thought to be simple bolizes the institution to this day, was laid the ledgers; new evidence suggests that they following year. served as historical chronicles as well, and If Ewing can’t turn Smithson into a substan- perhaps even stored gossip. tial character or explain precisely why he left his Wright, an information systems theorist, famous legacy, she is nonetheless persuasive that holds that all social schemes—from bee the bequest wasn’t merely whimsical, as popular colonies to stock exchanges—share certain legend sometimes has it. Smithson was a true observable characteristics in how they create scientific enthusiast, and something of an ideal- and disseminate data. Such systems branch ist. He would be happy with the institution that from a single source (a hierarchy) or bubble bears his name. up spontaneously (a network). A hierarchy —David Lindley involves individual elements grouped into cat- egories that, in turn, fall into broader categories. Aristotle’s taxonomy of flora and Making Sense of It All fauna, which classified animals according to To the modern mind, the their medium of locomotion (i.e., water, air, GLUT: verb “compute” signifies a Mastering land), is the quintessential hierarchy. A com- murky electronic process— Information puter pull-down menu is another example. blinking lights, the hum of a Through the Ages. Networks, on the other hand, follow no single processor, possibly the scroll- By Alex Wright. pattern. French philosopher Denis Diderot’s ing of digits across a screen. Joseph Henry Press. 18th-century Encyclopédie featured the writ- 296 pp. $27.95 But before the 20th century ings of Voltaire and Rousseau alongside bits

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of colloquial knowledge and folk histories. explosions” as far back as the Ice Age, when In the eyes of Internet age utopians—those our ancestors began using symbols. who herald our digital future with nearly reli- Wright the information architect is less gious fervor—hierarchies are old-guard interesting than Wright the historian. He systems that naturally reinforce a particular tends to oversimplify in order to impose his worldview or bias, and are doomed to extinc- universal organizing theory on the entirety of tion by the democratic, malleable networks human history. But his book does succeed that are replacing them. But this is an beautifully as a museum in which various oversimplification, Wright says. While there is artifacts reveal how humankind has used wit, a “fundamental tension” between the two reason, and imagination to store and compute kinds of information systems, they “not only data. Nothing, in fact, could be more human. coexist, but they are continually giving rise to —Patrick Tucker each other.” Wikipedia, a vast online encyclo- pedia that accepts and posts entries by virtu- RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY ally anyone, has been forced to institute a supplemental system of hierarchical controls Call Letters for Jesus to govern the activities of its contributors. The current growth of network activity The contemporary holy AIMEE SEMPLE across the Internet—which is also provoking alliance between evangelism, MCPHERSON shakeups in the organizational charts of com- the media, and politics has AND THE panies and even in the military’s traditional roots that are many decades RESURRECTION command-and-control authority structures— old. Long before Pat Robert- OFCHRISTIAN doesn’t spell the end of hierarchical institu- son or Billy Graham, there AMERICA. tions, Wright concludes, nor are the tremen- was Aimee Semple McPher- By Matthew Avery Sutton. dous technological shifts we’re witnessing son (1890–1944), a self- Harvard Univ. Press. 351 pp. $26.95 unprecedented. History has seen “information educated minister mostly

Credits: Cover, p. 45 (detail), Illustration by Dan Craig; p. 10, Photographs courtesy of Lisa Irion; p. 11, Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel/MCT via Newscom; p. 12, © Index Stock Imagery via Newscom; p. 13, Earl S. Cryer/AFP/Getty Images via News- com; pp. 14–15, 16, 20, Copyright © Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos; pp. 22–23, Richard Meek/Time Life Pic- tures/Getty Images; p. 27, William James (1842–1910), © Ellen Emmet Rand, Oil on canvas, 138cm x 106.1 cm (54 5/16" x 41 3/4") Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Commissioned by the Department of Philosophy for the faculty room, 1910, H111, Photograph by Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College; p. 33, David Grossman/Getty Images; p. 37, RKO/Photofest; p. 40, United Artists/Photofest; p. 43, WENN via Newscom; p. 51, AP Photo/Mark Lennihan; p. 55, U.S. Marine Corps photo by SSGT John A. Lee II; p. 56, National Archives & Records Administration; p. 59, U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. James R. Richardson; p. 61, AP Photo/Progress-Index, Stacey G. Brooks; p. 63, © Hugh Kretschmer/Getty Images; p. 65, Image taken from The Women’s Kingdom (2004), a film by Xiaoli Zhou and Brent E. Huffman, www.germancamera.com; p. 69, Photo by Joseph Scherschel/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images; p. 71, Copyright © 2005 Patrick Chappatte, All Rights Reserved; p. 77, Photo by George Waldman/ZUMA Press; p. 79, State Historical Society of North Dakota A1049, by John McCarthy; p. 83, Burj Dubai, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP, model photo by Steinkamp-Ballogg Photography; p. 87, Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images; p. 90, AFP Photo/Reporter/Polandout, via Newscom; p. 93, This photograph was reproduced from the original records in the cus- tody of the Office of the Nixon Presidential Materials Staff (NLNS), National Archives & Records Administration (NARA) at College Park, MD, Roll D391, Frame 23A; p. 97, Photo by Mark Peterson, courtesy of Grove/Atlantic Monthly Press; p. 98, Portrait of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) c. 1610 (oil on canvas), attributed to John Taylor (1580–1653)/National Portrait Gallery, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library International; p. 103, Gertrude Bell Photographic Archive, Newcastle University; p. 107, James Smithson, by Henri-Joseph Johns, Tempera on paperboard, 1816, 7.6cm x 7 cm (3" x 2 3/4"), Accurate, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.85.44; p. 110, Repro- duced from the Collections of the Library of Congress; p. 112, Reproduced from Scientific American, July 26, 1913.

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The people’s preacher: While other ministers still used Bibles as their only props, Aimee Semple McPherson’s theatrical ser- mons filled the temple she built in Los Angeles in 1923.A media pioneer, she also started a radio station and appeared in film reels.

remembered now as the model for the hypo- the first women to attain a prominent leader- critical revivalist Sister Sharon in Sinclair ship position in an American church, she was Lewis’s novel Elmer Gantry (1927). But in recognized as a pioneer even as she was criti- her day, McPherson was one of the most cized for her love of publicity, lavish lifestyle, famous women in America. high-profile romances, and flamboyant Born in rural Canada, she emigrated to services. Chicago with her first husband, who died McPherson was always looking for ways to shortly after they arrived in 1910. She soon increase her flock, and early on she saw the remarried, but left her second husband to potential in the new media of radio and film. follow her religious calling, eventually found- She went on the air in 1924 with her own sta- ing the International Church of the Four- tion, Kall Four Square Gospel (KFSG), bank- square Gospel, a conservative Protestant sect. rolled by her followers, and broadcast her A charismatic preacher with a flair for dra- services and a variety of other programs, ma, she came to exert enormous influence from live music to talks by a local Boy Scout from the 5,300-seat Angelus Temple, which leader. By the late 1920s she was appearing she built in Los Angeles after settling in Cali- in newsreels and movies. fornia in 1918. McPherson’s celebrity—and her notor- Matthew Avery Sutton, an assistant pro- iety—grew with her mysterious 36-day disap- fessor of history at Oakland University in pearance in 1926, after which she claimed to Michigan who was himself raised around the have been kidnapped. Many people believed Foursquare Church, clearly admires McPher- she had faked her abduction in order to steal son, but he is not blind to her faults. One of away with Kenneth Gladstone Ormiston, a

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married radio engineer at KFSG. She was McPherson’s visibility helped the Angelus eventually charged with perjury and obstruc- Temple grow into one of the first megachurches. tion of justice, but the charges were dropped. Today, the Angelus Temple is home to a She also had a series of well-publicized worldwide spiritual movement with millions of romances, including one with actor/singer members. However, the pressures on her took David Hutton, a man 11 years her junior who their toll. Plagued with ill health and loneliness, starred in a biblical opera she composed. she became addicted to After a brief courtship, he became her third prescription drugs and husband, in 1931. (McPherson went on the was dead at the age of Aimee Semple McPherson air from their bridal suite.) When Hutton 53, after an overdose of may be best known now as filed for divorce less than two years later, sleeping pills. the model for the hypocrit- critics—including some of McPherson’s own Although McPher- ical revivalist in Elmer followers—seized upon the failed marriage as son was enough of a Gantry, but in her day she evidence of the evangelist’s hypocrisy and an cultural icon in her ungoverned sexual appetite. lifetime to be the was one of the most But McPherson persisted in her ministry. inspiration for charac- famous women in America. She worked with political leaders of both ters in popular books parties to support prohibition and fight com- and movies, today munism and the teaching of evolution. Dur- she’s largely forgotten. Sutton has done an ing World War II, she was better than Holly- admirable job of portraying McPherson’s life wood stars at selling war bonds, and and work. She deserves no less, for her efforts championed nationalism, writing, “The flag to reshape the role of Christianity in Ameri- of America and the church stand for the same can life resonate still. thing. . . . They stand or fall together!” —Claude R. Marx

CONTRIBUTORS

■ Emily Bernard teaches English and courses in bioethics at Haverford Col- of a chapter on media and politics in ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies at the lege and in writing in Johns Hopkins The Sixth Year Itch: The Rise and Fall University of Vermont, and is editor of University’s Arts and Sciences gradu- of the George W. Bush Presidency Some of My Best Friends: Writers on ate program, and is a regular com- (2007). Interracial Friendships (2004) and mentator on NPR’s weekend All ■ Russ McDonald teaches Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters Things Considered. Shakespeare and Renaissance litera- of Langston Hughes and Carl Van ■ Joel Kirkland is a Washington, D.C.- ture at Goldsmiths College, University Vechten, 1925–1964 (2001). based reporter for Platts, a news serv- of London, and is the author, most ■ Andrew Burstein, a historian of ice that covers energy and environ- recently, of Shakespeare’s Late Style early America at the University of mental policy. (2006). Tulsa, is the author of six books, ■ ■ Aaron Mesh is screen editor of the including The Original Knicker- David Lindley is the author, most Willamette Week, in Portland, Oregon. bocker: The Life of Washington Irving recently, of Uncertainty: Einstein, (2007) and Jefferson’s Secrets: Death Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for ■ Amy E. Schwartz is a contributing and Desire at Monticello (2005). the Soul of Science, published earlier editor of The Wilson Quarterly. this year. ■ Ruth Levy Guyer is the author of ■ Patrick Tucker is associate editor of Baby at Risk: The Uncertain Legacies ■ Claude R. Marx is a political colum- The Futurist and director of commu- of Medical Miracles for Babies, Fami- nist for The Eagle-Tribune in North nications for the World Future lies, and Society (2006). She teaches Andover, Massachusetts, and author Society.

Summer 2007 ■ Wilson Quarterly 111 PORTRAIT

Future, New York, by H. Wiley Corbett, 1913

Paleofuturism

Cars still don’t fly, the moon remains uninhabited, and at people crave the sincere and hopeful dreams of yesteryear. home there’s no robot doing the laundry. What happened This drawing graced the cover of the July 16, 1913, issue of to the future? To find it, bloggers and sci-fi buffs alike are Scientific American, in which a columnist called for the flocking to websites that explore the paleofuture—“the construction of elevated sidewalks to end the “obsolete future that never was.” Matt Novak, the man behind method” of conducting “foot and vehicular traffic” on the paleo-future.blogspot.com, says that in today’s cynical age, same level. Today, the future is a thing of the past.

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