Contemporary Review articles from October 2000

Contemporary Review archives from October 2000

CAMPAIGN BUTTONS TO HOT BUTTONS: AMERICAN ELECTION IMAGES, 1789 TO 2000.
October 1, 2000... THE earliest Presidential elections featured little public campaigning, and virtually no direct candidate involvement. In 1789 the whole affair of the first election was more of a nationalist celebration. But it spawned a number of souvenirs....

A MODERN RURAL RIDE: SUSSEX.
October 1, 2000... IN THE mid-1820s William Cobbett, variously farmer, soldier, bankrupt and Radical MP, rode through the English countryside noting the condition of agriculture and of the people. The southern counties that he visited had neither suffered nor...

THE UNDERTONES OF THE SRI LANKAN CONFLICT.
October 1, 2000... SRI LANKA, 'Ceylon' during the days of the British Raj, has been in the grips of a civil war where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), acknowledged as one of the world's most ruthless guerrilla groups, has been battling with the...

ASSAD IS DEAD: WILL ASSAD LIVE LONG?
October 1, 2000... PROBABLY Basher al-Assad, until recently an ophthalmologist, would rather be doing something other than governing Syria. Looking into diseased eyes, for instance, or tinkering with his computers. But it would be a mistake to assume that power...

SCOTLAND'S REFERENDUM IN RETROSPECT.
October 1, 2000... THE working clothes of Scottish devolution are very different from the trappings of the new Parliament's election and inauguration in May 1999. The dialect and diet of an older Scotland would have summed things up as a move back to 'auld claes...

DOT MATRIX.(Poem)
October 1, 2000... I spawn the words onto the page, Blurb and blob amassed as one, Clumped and combined, Intermeshed and intertwined, Hard to manoeuvre and difficult to manipulate, Yet each black dot primed with possibility, Loaded with...

MURDER MOST OXFORD.(Critical Essay)
October 1, 2000... THROUGH the night-shrouded city, the corpse of a college principal is shuttled in a wheelbarrow, his head wrapped in a black academic gown. In the chapel of another college a seeming human shape, enveloped in dark clothes, swings from the...

POETIC INTERPLAY.(Poem)
October 1, 2000... The Life Unlived The road we didn't travel To the places never seen Is the highway to IF ONLY and PERHAPS and MIGHT HAVE BEEN. Consequences Everything the world has been Informs the current way, No need to...

NEW POLITICS OR JUST NEW LANGUAGE?(Review)
October 1, 2000... New Labour, New Language. Norman Fairclough. Routledge. [pound]35.00. 164 pages. ISBN 0-415-21826-8. Dumbing Down: Culture, Politics and the Mass Media. Ivo Mosley, editor. Imprint Academic. [pound]12.95 p.b. 326 pages. ISBN 0-907845-65-7. The...

WHITHER THE ARMY?(Review)
October 1, 2000... The British Army: Manpower and Society in the Twenty-First Century. Hew Strachan, editor. Frank Cass Publishers. [pound]45.00/US$62.50 h.b. and [pound]18.50/US$27.50 p.b. 260 pages. ISBN 0-7146-5005-6 h.b. and 0-7146-8045-1 p.b. The...

UNDERSTANDING THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT.(Review)
October 1, 2000... Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. Benny Moms. John Murray. [pound]25.00. 751 pages. ISBN 0-7195-6222-8. According to the religious Zionists, it all started a very long time ago. God made some territorial...

P.D. JAMES'S UNCOMFORTABLE AUTOBIOGRAPHY.(Review)
October 1, 2000... Time to Be in Earnest. A Fragment of Autobiography. P.D. James. Faber and Faber. [pounds]16.99. 281 pages. ISBN 0-571-20094-X. P.D. James' account of her 78th year is, in prospect, a tantalising book: a mix of meetings with luminaries --...

THE ECCENTRIC HERO: ORDE WINGATE.(Review)
October 1, 2000... Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia, and Zion. John Bierman and Colin Smith. Macmillan. [pound]20.00. 434 pages. ISBN 0-333-72576-X. Orde Charles Wingate of Chindit fame occupies a unique place in British military history. One of...

ERNEST DOWSON: THE SINGER AND THE SONG.(Review)
October 1, 2000... Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson, Poet and Decadent. Jad Adams. I.B. Tauris. [pound]19.95. 211 pages. ISBN 1-86064-470-8. Ernest Dowson... a hundred years dead this millennium... fifty-five years since last...

Wild Fruits.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Henry David Thoreau. Bradley P. Dean, editor. W. W. Norton. [pound]22.00. 409 pages. ISBN 0-393-04751-2. This is the 'lost manuscript' left unfinished at Thoreau's death in 1863 and never before published. In his notes Thoreau raised his...

Independence Years: The Selected Indian and Commonwealth Papers of Nicholas Mansergh.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Diana Mansergh, editor. Oxford University Press, New Delhi. [pound]15.99/495 Rupees. 274 pages. ISBN 0199564847-1. Nicholas Mansergh (1910-1991) is perhaps best remembered for his work on Irish history but he also wrote extensively on India and...

Reader's Guide to Music: History, Theory, Criticism.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Murray Steib, editor. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. [pound]95.00. 891 pages. ISBN 1-57958-143-9. The aim of this vast reference book is 'to provide some help to those who wish to explore the wealth of writing on music'. There are 500 entries...

Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Herbert L. Kessler and Johanna Zacharias. Yale University Press. [pounds]22.50. 237 pages. 0-300-08153-7. This is something of a hybrid book, part history, part archaeology, part picture-book and part fiction. Its aim is to trace the...

The Civil Wars Experienced: Britain and Ireland, 1638-1661.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Martyn Bennett. Routledge. [pound]14.99 p.b. 277 pages. ISBN 0-4154-15902-4. There have, over the centuries, been many histories of the civil wars. Few however have concentrated themselves to what the upsets, political changes and fighting...

Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Anthony F.C. Wallace. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. [pound]18.50/US$29.95. 394 pages. ISBN 00674-00066-8. The author describes Thomas Jefferson as 'an enigma with charisma'. When it comes to America's Indians, he appears 'as...

Internationalism and the State in the Twentieth Century.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Cornelia Navari. Routledge. [pound]19.99 p.b. 373 pages. ISBN 0-415-09748-7. This study is concerned with the vast changes that have affected international relations during the last century. The growth of international organisations, the...

Western Architecture: A Survey from Ancient Greece to the Present.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Ian Sutton. Thames and Hudson. [pound]9.95 p.b. 384 pages. ISBN 0-500-20316-4. This survey may be called something of a 'politically correct' history of architecture: its 'value judgements' are fairly well founded in current thought. Not only...

The History of Bread.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Bernard Dupaigne. Antonio and Sylvie Roder, translators. Harry N. Abrams. [pound]38.00/US$60.00/Can$90.00. 280 pages. ISBN 0-8109-3438-8. The author of this delightful book is the head of the ethnology laboratory of the Musee de l'Homme in...

George Moore: 1852-1933.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Adrian Frazier. Yale University Press. [pound]29.95. 604 pages. ISBN 0-300-08245-2. This is the first biography of the Irish-born novelist and writer since 1936 and is a welcome addition to the growing number of literary biographies being...

Modern Britain since 1906: A Reader.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Keith Laybourn, editor. I.B. Tauris. [pound]39.50 h.b. and [pound]14.95 p.b. 254 pages. ISBN 1-86064-298-5 h.b. and 1-86064-237-3 p.b. This volume is part of Tauris' 'History Readers' series. Its aim is 'to examine the major trends and...

The Reasonableness of Christianity As Delivered in the Scriptures.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... John Locke. John C. Higgins-Biddle, editor. Clarendon Press, Oxford. [pound]55.00. 261 pages. ISBN 0-19-8245254. This latest volume in the Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke was the philosopher's investigation into the basis of the...

The British Political Process: an Introduction.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Tony Wright, editor. Routledge. [pound]15.99 p.b. 393 pages. ISBN 0-415-04966-0. Unusually, this guide to contemporary British political life is edited by an academic who is also an MP. Of the seven other contributors, all are connected in some...

American Slaves in Victorian England: Abolitionist Politics in Popular Literature.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Audrey A. Fisch. Cambridge University Press. [pound]35.00/US$59.95. 139 pages. ISBN 0-521-66026-2. This little book examines an aspect of nineteenth-century Anglo-American relations: how English liberals were affected by the northern American...

Boris Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life.(Review)
October 1, 2000... Leon Aron. HarperCollins. [pound]29.99. 934 pages. ISBN 0-00-255922-6. Biographies of living people are usually weak and of course, in this case, final judgements cannot be given. Yet Boris Yeltsin is now politically dead so the usual caveat...

Selected Letters of Rebecca West.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Bonnie Kime Scott, editor. Yale University Press. [pound]22.50. 497 pages. ISBN 0-300-07904-4. This is the first collection of Rebecca West's correspondence. During the novelist's long life (1892-1983) she wrote upwards of 10,000 letters. These...

Middlemarch.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... George Eliot. W.W. Norton. [pound]9.95 p.b. 678 pages. ISBN 0-393-97452-9. This 'Norton Critical Edition' was first published in 1977 and this is a second edition. It has the text of the novel based on the 1874 edition, itself a revision of the...

The Struggle for Civil Liberties: Political Freedom and the Rule of Law in Britain 1914-1945.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... K.D. Ewing and C.A. Gearty. Oxford University Press. [pound]50.00. 451 pages. ISBN 0-19-825665-5. This book concentrates on three basic questions. What are civil liberties? How are they protected in Britain? What is the role of the judges as...

The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Jeffrey A. Auerbach. Yale University Press. [pound]25.00. 280 pages. ISBN 0-300-08007-7. The large number of illustrations and the book's size should not lead anyone into thinking that this is not a first-rate piece of historical scholarship....

Encyclopedia of Eastern Europe from the Congress of Vienna to the Fall of Communism.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Richard Frucht, editor. Garland. [pound]60.00. 958 pages. ISBN 0-8153-0092-1. The collapse of Communist Russia's European empire has affected European and American students' views of history. Eastern Europe, that vast area made up of Albania,...

The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought.(Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Christopher Rowe, Malcolm Schofield, Simon Harrison and Melissa Lane, editors. Cambridge University Press. [pound]75.00/US$125.00. 745 pages. ISBN 0-521-48136-8. As Prof Rowe writes in his Introduction to this impressive collection of essays,...