'I'VE FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING I LEARNED IN SCHOOL!'

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'I'VE FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING I LEARNED IN SCHOOL!'

Name: 'I'VE FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING I LEARNED IN SCHOOL!'
Author: Marilyn vos Savant
ISBN: 0-312-10457-X

by Marilyn vos Savant ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 3, 1994

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The Guiness Hall of Fame lists Parade columnist vos Savant's IQ as 228. Is it possible that what makes her so smart is that she realized, a while ago, that she could make more money by being cute than by thinking? Here she offers exercises for those who fear that their brains are becoming as flaccid as their muscles, breaking her little mind-spa down into four main categories (memory, comprehension, concrete thinking, and abstract thinking), each with its own subcategories. To be sure, there is some interesting stuff, most of it smart, in this amusing hodgepodge—fun hoops through which the mind can jump while the body is, say, in the john.

Pub Date: May 3, 1994

ISBN: 0-312-10457-X

Page Count: 288

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994

Categories:

EDUCATION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ART OF SPELLING
by Marilyn vos Savant

- BOOK REVIEW
ASK MARILYN
by Marilyn vos Savant

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THE BILL

HOW THE ADVENTURES OF CLINTON'S NATIONAL SERVICE BILL REVEAL WHAT IS CORRUPT, COMIC, CYNICAL, AND NOBLE ABOUT WASHINGTON

by Steven Waldman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1995

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A nifty case study of the tangled trail—from policy idea to law—of the bill that established the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993, the program known as AmeriCorps. Waldman, a national correspondent for Newsweek, decided to adapt the magazine's ``inside story'' approach to presidential races and apply it to an examination of one campaign promise. He chose national service because he thought it typified Clinton's vision and tested his ``expansive idealism and aggressive pragmatism.'' Waldman's thorough narrative of the un-pretty process profiles policy aides, lobbyists, and bureaucrats to show how pressure and politics, more than logic, shaped the final bill. The centrist Democratic Leadership Council (which Clinton helped found) had long advocated a required national service that would be a civilian analogue of the military draft. But candidate Clinton sugared the plan by proposing a service corps made up of volunteers who would receive college-tuition aid. The mix of service and reward, of community obligation and governmental activism, stirred campaign audiences, but the proposal got little scrutiny. Clinton wanted a $9.4 billion program over five years, but he ended up with a $1.5 billion program over three years after the bill went through a Mixmaster of interests, including banks, students, unions, and veterans. Congressional debate, the author notes, focused on whether loans should be directed through universities rather than on the more complex issue of how long students should make percentage-of-income repayments. Nor was another vital Clinton interest—the role of national service in fostering diversity- -debated. Waldman deplores the follies involved but still finds the proposal a rare, even noble, federal endeavor. A more lively tale of early Clintonism than some of the recent overviews.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-670-85300-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994

Categories:

EDUCATION

- BOOK REVIEW
SACRED LIBERTY
by Steven Waldman

- BOOK REVIEW
FOUNDING FAITH
by Steven Waldman

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THE BELL CURVE WARS

RACE, INTELLIGENCE, AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICA

edited by Steven Fraser ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1995

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A searing response to the pseudo-science on the connection between race and intelligence put forth in the best-selling The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein (not reviewed). An impressive array of intellectuals address different aspects of the fiery debates that have taken place around the book. In an essay entitled ``Curveball,'' Stephen Jay Gould argues that the social Darwinism theory that Herrnstein and Murray construct lacks scientific documentation and fails because of its shaky premises. Gould also points out that any theory about racial differences in IQ will always be fallacious until there is truly equal opportunity. Howard Gardner makes the point that the theories to which Herrnstein and Murray give so much weight have been used as a justification of racial oppression for hundreds of years. This leads to a powerful discussion that goes beyond the question of why The Bell Curve to the question, Why now? Gardner links the weak scientific argument of the book to its powerful policy analysis of programs such as welfare that are often cloaked in racial issues. Not all of the essays here come down against the book. Thomas Sowell calls it ``a very sober, very thorough and very honest book.'' Sowell posits that too often discussions about race are so overtaken by passion that reason cannot enter the debate. He takes the science of The Bell Curve seriously and says the problem is not in the book itself, but in an environment that cannot sustain intellectual discussions about ``touchy social issues.'' The theories of The Bell Curve are really so flat, so weak that they are easy to dispute. What the writers in this book do is take the ideas and flesh them out with history, science, and rigorous questioning. It seems that the true meat of thought is here and not in the book they are responding to.