Shelf Life.(reviews of three political books)(Brief Article)

The Thernstroms have done it again. In Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America (Hoover Press/Manhattan Institute, 438 pp., $19.95), scholars Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom have edited an important collection of 25 essays on race in America; as we have come to expect from this redoubtable husband-and-wife team, the overall effect of the scholarship is to challenge the sacred cows of contemporary liberal race talk.

Against the hyperventilations of race rhetoric, the book's contributors erect a sturdy edifice of fact and common sense. In her own essay, Abigail Thernstrom details the racial gap in academic performance -- and takes heart in the fact that school reformers are finally focusing on the crucial K-12 years. James Q. Wilson, in an essay on race and crime, says that cities are safer than they used to be, and predicts that if crime rates continue to slide, "the issue of police 'profiling' black persons will slowly disappear." The last word goes to California crusader Ward Connerly, who says that getting rid of divisive affirmative-action preferences is the only way we can "rededicate our nation to the principle of equality and bring social peace and harmony to America."

The Thernstroms' anthology deserves the attention of anyone who cares about promoting racial harmony, but will be especially helpful in college courses, as a counterweight to the reigning platitudes.

n William F. Buckley Jr.: A Bibliography (ISI, 316 pp., $29.95), edited by William F. Meehan III, will be a valuable tool for historians. It provides a comprehensive index to a half-century's worth of writings by WFB on -- well, on everything. Leafing through the name index gives some idea of the diversity: Robert McNamara is followed by 1960s segregationist Lester Maddox, who is followed in turn by ...