bookshelf

THE MYTH OF RACE

Name: THE MYTH OF RACE
Author: Robert Wald Sussman
ISBN: 978-0674417311

THE TROUBLING PERSISTENCE OF AN UNSCIENTIFIC IDEA

by Robert Wald Sussman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2014

Despite irritating scholarly touches such as footnotes mixed in with text, Sussman delivers a lucidly written, eye-opening...

bookshelf

In this earnest, often angry history of a hot-button subject, Sussman (Physical Anthropology/Washington Univ.; co-author: Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution, 2005) argues that “biological races do not exist among modern humans and they have never existed in the past.”

The idea of race, writes the author, is a cultural rather than biological reality. Tribes always believed that strangers were subhuman, but they could overcome their inferiority by joining the tribe—e.g., converting to Christianity or adopting Roman citizenship. Matters changed significantly 500 years ago, at first in Spain, where the Inquisition determined that Jews—even after conversion—could never be the equals of pure-blooded Spaniards. Simultaneously, Europeans began colonizing America, whose inhabitants, according to most, were subhuman. Oddly, the concepts developed during the Enlightenment did not help. Philosophers (Immanuel Kant, David Hume) and many 19th-century scientists maintained that progress proved the inferiority of nonwhites. Things further deteriorated after 1900, when genetic discoveries gave rise to the eugenics movement, which lobbied, often successfully, for laws preventing people with inferior genes from reproducing. Simultaneously, Sussman’s hero, Franz Boas, was revolutionizing anthropology. He and his followers taught that culture and learning, not genes, determined human behavior. By the 1930s, they dominated the profession. Today, since racism is politically incorrect, Sussman maintains, supporters have migrated en masse to the anti-immigration movement. Some readers may want to skim the book’s last third: a dense review of fringe organizations that trumpet scientific racism and occasionally emerge from obscurity (remember The Bell Curve, which was a best-seller in 1994).

Despite irritating scholarly touches such as footnotes mixed in with text, Sussman delivers a lucidly written, eye-opening account of a nasty sociological battle that the good guys have been winning for a century without eliminating a very persistent enemy.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014

ISBN: 978-0674417311

Page Count: 346

Publisher: Harvard Univ.

Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014

Categories:

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | ETHNICITY & RACE | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

bookshelf

WEDGE

THE SECRET WAR BETWEEN THE FBI AND CIA

by Mark Riebling ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 1994

A history of American spy versus American cop written in a manner as informative as any treatise and as entertaining as the...

bookshelf

A brilliant first book chronicling the bitter rivalry of the FBI and CIA from WW II, when the CIA had its roots in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), through the present.

Riebling, who has been an associate editor at Random House, combines outstanding research based on newly declassified documents with extensive interviews to provide an anecdotal and extremely well written account of the strife between the Agency and the Bureau. He offers a superlative presentation of the dramatis personae: FDR, Harry Truman, OSS Chief William "Wild Bill'' Donovan, J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles, superspy James Jesus Angleton, and assorted supporting characters, including the present-day CIA embarrassment, Aldrich Ames. When the OSS and, later, the CIA were formed, FBI chief Hoover, the consummate bureaucratic turf warrior, was hardly a booster. He often refused to cooperate with the OSS, and the latter agency held the FBI in as much contempt. The competition between the two groups during the war was exacerbated by an old American social conflict: The OSS was comprised largely of Ivy League WASPs, while the FBI was dominated by less privileged Irish Catholics. One of the finest chapters of the book discusses how the FBI and CIA tried to protect their respective flanks in the wake of the Kennedy assassination—since the agencies had failed to share information about Lee Harvey Oswald. Riebling also details Angleton's obsessive search for a mole in the CIA and how that operation brought about more conflict with the FBI. In an epilogue, Riebling addresses various methods that the government might use to bring about a resolution of the FBI-CIA "problem.'' But he concludes that, in a republican government, the current discord might be preferable to a "superagency'' combining the purview of the two organizations.

A history of American spy versus American cop written in a manner as informative as any treatise and as entertaining as the best espionage novels.

Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1994

ISBN: 0-679-41471-1

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

bookshelf

ALL THE TROUBLE IN THE WORLD

THE LIGHTER SIDE OF OVERPOPULATION, FAMINE, ECOLOGICAL DISASTER, ETHNIC HATRED, PLAGUE, AND POVERTY

by P.J. O’Rourke ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 12, 1994

bookshelf

Rolling Stone's token Republican and the H.L. Mencken Fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute, O'Rourke (Give War a Chance, 1992, etc.) has written his most sustained and well-argued book yet. O'Rourke touts the glories of free minds and free markets as we currently enjoy them in the US, despite, in his view, the current administration's effort to undermine both. He systematically looks at the issues that supposedly dog our times, combining a glance at the scholarly literature (goofing on academic prose) with fieldwork (getting sauced on five continents). There's lots of typical O'Rourke yuks: the near-libelous name-calling; the international search for good booze and pretty women; and the admitted attacks of ``troglodyte dyspepsia.'' While earnest college kids hug trees and whine about being victims, the rest of the world, in O'Rourke's eye, is determined to get rich. In Bangladesh, he considers the nature of population growth; in Somalia, the course of famine; in the Amazon, the fate of the environment; in the former Yugoslavia, the consequences of multiculturalism; and the roots of poverty in Vietnam. What's behind it all? Politics, says O'Rourke. Often the left-wing sort. In O'Rourke's jaundiced view, the ``moral buttinskis'' of the world continually demonstrate their contempt for the most obvious solution: unfettered capitalism. And he details the wonders of Third World markets by visiting the bustling bazaars of Saigon. What better way to study foreign entrepreneurship than searching for the best bars and restaurants? Only the Somalis, with their intense hatred, really get him down, as do a number of mush-brained environmentalists he schmoozes with at the Earth Summit in Rio. The perfect antidote to revolutionary tourism, O'Rourke's raucous narrative suffers from one conceptual flaw: Like many right-wingers, he forgets that regulation, reform, and butting in led to so many of our current freedoms. (First printing of 150,000; $150,000 ad/promo; author tour)