Buck-Morss's tale of the sputtering, guttering end of the modern Fordist disciplinary project both in the U.S.A and in the Soviet Union is a stunner. Most compelling are the historical insights -- told with particular elegance through the comparison of patriotic and advertising images -- that show how similar both projects really were! Some of the historical tidbits stick in the mind never to be dislodged: Daddy Stalin asking Henry Ford to come build him a factory to make tractors in the middle of the Depression. Lenin's admiration for Frederick Taylor. Amazing how the salvation for both communists and capitalists was the same industrial regime, the same worker's paradise of factory labor!

The second half of the book, a kind of diary of cross-cultural US/Soviet cultural exchanges prior to and after the Berlin Wall, is interesting but less intellectually energizing. Still, there is a great deal of wit in Ms. Buck-Morss's observation that Western Marxist critics such as Frederick Jameson (who attended some of the same seminars with Soviet intellectuals that Buck-Morss did) seem less willing to give up on the socialist dreamscape than their Soviet counterparts.

A great companion read is Michael Hardt's and Antonio Negri's "Empire" which really has an interesting take on the near simultaneous end of Fordism and the disciplinary state in both the U.S. and Soviet Union. They suggest it was the "multitude" or proletariat in both nations who rebelled against the industrial factory/modern project and destabilized both, an argument which runs counter to the usual top-down explanations for the rise of postmodern economics.

Interesting how we're told these days that the Soviets, now suffering in the hot bath of capitalism, are nostalgic for the certainty of the Daddy Stalin years. Perhaps their nostalgia is not so different than Baby Boomer Americans' nostalgia for the lost innocence of the early 50s/60s, the Golden Age of American economic hegemony, before the New Deal project finally collapsed. Now that the veil has dropped it seems we had a lot more in common with "them"(us) than we ever thought we did. And still do!

Efe pygmies: Archers of the African Rain Forest is a sumptuously illustrated tome that will long grace my coffee table. The main part of the book - a subtle photographic study depicting the Efe subsisting precariously but harmoniously in the depths of the Ituri forest - is preceded by a brief but fascinating scene-setting section of white-on-black text.

The author presents vivid visual and verbal images of his subjects making baskets, carrying hunting nets, filing their teeth, smoking tobacco, playing music, dispatching a net-caught antelope, touchingly expressing grief at the death of a newborn, and fleeing from their leaf huts into the night beneath a cracking and crashing, lightning-weakened tree.

Skillful, intimate photography makes us yearn for the easy laughter and simplicity of these gentle, peaceful people, yet we are simultaneously made aware of the dangers and discomforts they must constantly face.

It is a fitting tribute to a people as "primitive" and untouched by global culture as any on earth, and the precariousness of their independence. Moreover, it is a compelling and persuasive insight into our own hunting and gathering origins, and the thoughts, feelings, and reactions we all share as part of the human family.

While William Wheeler's book may not lead us to put on treebark loin cloths and chase wildlife through the forest, it is an evocative portrayal of another culture, one that can teach us something about how to live surrounded by danger and dark forces and yet keep on reverentially singing, laughing, and living for the moment.

Although the Efe are clearly too humble and happy a people to bother sending missionaries to us for our edification, this beautiful and moving book affords a glimpse of what such a mission might convey.

This is an intriguing book, well worth a read or ten. You don't need to be a historian, a critic, or an experienced reader, you have to be able to read.

Actually, I never read the book, but I do know the author and he's a great guy!

"From Grizzly Bear to Teddy Bear: Gorbachev and his Illusion of a 'Common European Home'"

Jacques Levesque, The Enigma of 1989: the USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 267 pp. trans from French by Keith Martin.

Although Jacques Levesque's book The Enigma of 1989 contains few startling revelations, it highlights succinctly the larger ironies of Gorbachev's foreign policy in the last years of the Soviet empire. This highly readable book consists of three parts: one dealing with "the place of Eastern Europe in Gorbachev's political project; another examining individual East European countries; and the third part focusing on German reunification and the end of the Warsaw Pact. Since the book seems to be more about Gorbachev and the USSR than Eastern Europe, the original French title, La Fin d'un Empire, captures the book's essence a bit better than the one provided for the English translation: [The End of an Empire]. One irony that Levesque articulates to some degree concerns Gorbachev's motives for perestroika, and novoe myshlenie [new thinking]. Was Gorbachev truly inspired by these new ideas, or was he merely making a virtue out of a necessity? In the beginning of his book, Levesque points out how the USSR was lagging behind economically, despite its success in projecting military power in the 1970s. The war in Afghanistan in particular was draining Soviet resources. NATO officials had decided to place Pershing II missiles in Europe, and Reagan initiated the Star Wars project, with which Soviet leaders knew they could not compete. By withdrawing from Afghanistan, initiating bold disarmament proposals, disavowing the use of military force to solve conflicts, praising and paying dues to the United Nations, Gorbachev could score great public relations successes and put Reagan on the defensive for dubbing the USSR the "Evil Empire." Gorbachev was saavy, probably the most highly educated Soviet General Secretary. He was no doubt conscious of the practical advantages of his ideas. Yet later events indicate that Gorbachev may have begun to believe his own ideas too intensely, to the point of naivety .For example, in a 1997 speech at Rice University in Texas, when former Secretary of State James Baker awarded him the Enron Prize for Public Service, Gorbachev explained that perhaps the Soviet Union actually "won" the Cold War because it first understood that 21st century problems require global efforts and that the superpowers' arms race was suicidal. As Levesque points out, from 1985 to 1987, Gorbachev focused most on improving Soviet-American relations, by building the United States' trust in the USSR, by initiating arms control proposals, and other measures. He spoke repeatedly about "replacing the balance of power" with a "balance of interests." But in focusing on the United States-Levesque argues-Gorbachev "neglected" Eastern Europe, the traditional Soviet sphere of influence (p. 90). By claiming repeatedly that the Soviet Union would no longer "interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states" and no longer use military force to settle conflicts, Gorbachev won the admiration of many Americans, but also undercut the authority of the communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe. How could Gorbachev genuinely have believed that after forty-odd years of maintaining hegemony over Eastern Europe by the use or threat of military force, that Moscow could retain that power without such pressure? Did he really believe, to quote Levesque, that "perestroika could co-opt a significant part of the opposition through its progression," so that "the [communist parties in each of the Warsaw Pact countries], acting through the Popular Fronts, could become their own opposition?" (p. 82). At other times, Gorbachev behaved contradictorily: sometimes pressing for more reform, at other times temporizing (p. 84). Levesque also reminds his readers that Gorbachev and some of his colleagues may have already decided to relieve themselves of Eastern Europe, which had become a financial burden-costing the USSR perhaps $18 billion per year since the early 1980s (p. 88). END

Marvelous drawings, which perfectly capture the soul of this country.

This is a wonderful technical work. The scholarship and research are well translated into a reference work for the military historian. The intelligence operatives and methods of Rome are something that have long deserved a work of this detail and scope.

In researching the A-10, this book left me no quesiton unanswered. The book is full of tables, charts, photos and illustrations that aid the text in describing the history, capabilities and future of this aircraft. The A-10 Thunderbolt, also known as the "Warthog" is a popular aircraft with US and allied ground troops. This book explains why.

It seems incredible that much of the work in this volume has not been widely available since the publication of Bierce's Collected Works more than ninety years ago. It seems particularly incredible in the case of the two long satires, "Ashes of the Beacon" and "The Land Beyond the Blow", since these constitute perhaps his most sustained attack on the absurdities of American society, and contain some of his most pointed and iconoclastic writing. Bierce himself seems to have held them in high regard, but until the Collected Works no publisher took an interest. "The Land Beyond the Blow" is a voyage to strange lands, undertaken courtesy of a large hairy fist applied to the narrator's eye; the various customs and other foibles of the peoples encountered serve to parody the government, judiciary, public taste, dog lovers, etc., etc., of Bierce's own time and place. "Ashes of the Beacon" purports to be "An Historical Monograph Written in 4930" and gives a few indications concerning the lamentable failure of "self-government" in America. It is less amusing and more analytical; and while practically everyone will find much in it to disagree with, there is also plenty to think about. Though generally conservative (with some startling exceptions) and frequently pigheaded, Bierce is neither a fool nor a hypocrite, and he makes his points with thoroughgoing clarity. His work as a whole is (among many other things) a lifelong battle against woolly thinking, murky logic and bad writing, and the pieces in The Fall of the Republic are no exception. Besides the long satires, the book includes a number of short essays on such topics as capital punishment (which Bierce favours), insurance (which he does not favour), temperance (which he demolishes completely) and the Decay of the Nose (upon which he is coolly judicious and commendably straight-faced). A further section is devoted to the Annals of the Future Historian, a series of pieces in which the Future Historian's misconceptions and presuppositions serve to point the reader towards uncomfortable questions not only about the present but, by implication, about the possible misconceptions and presuppositions embedded in our own perception of history. There is also a scholarly and sympathetic critical introduction by the editors who, in hunting out this work and making it available to a general readership, have done satire, literature and the rest of us an immense service.

The excellent Cornerstones of Freedom series has been expanding beyond American History to include such topics as "The Fall of the Soviet Union." Actually, one of the key values of Miles Harvey's book is that it looks at much more than the end of the Soviet Union. Harvey provides a concise look at the creation of the Soviet Union with the Revolution of 1917 and provides a history of the country that focuses on the key elements that would come into play when Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader. The book does not end with Gorbachev's resignation on December 25, 1991, the day the Soviet Union officially came to an end. Harvey covers the major problems faced by the Russian government, which will certainly give young readers an adequate background for what they read in the media about what is happening there now that Yeltsin has been replaced.

"The Fall of the Soviet Union" covers the better part of the 20th century and undoubtedly provides more details and a more cohesive picture of what happened than students are likely to find in their World History textbook. The book is illustrated with black & white photographs for the period from Lenin to Stalin, and color photographs for the years of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The scope of the book is nicely captured in the frontpiece photograph of a paint splattered statue to Lenin about to be toppled from its pedestal.