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 Vol. Summer 2007, 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.