Word: elson
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...stole most of their great intellectual discoveries from the Egyptians are promoted by radical Afrocentrists in college classrooms across the U.S. In this fierce little polemic, (BasicBooks; 222 pages; $24), Wellesley humanities professor Mary Lefkowitz argues that Afrocentrists substitute pseudo history for the real thing, says TIME's John Elson. "The real problem with Afrocentrism, Lefkowitz concludes, is not that its 'truths' about Greece and Egypt are false. More dangerous is the underlying attitude that all history is fiction, which can be manipulated at will for political ends. The enthronement of this view on campus, Lefkowitz warns, means the death...
...printing (100,000 copies), and the author is committed to a 20-city publicity tour. Nonetheless, says Bradley, "what I'm doing is not about candidacy. The book is something I had to do for my soul." That may be all it's good for, notes TIME's John Elson. "Bradley writes about his Senate colleagues so blandly that even North Carolina's Jesse Helms, a bitter ideological foe, gets praised for being 'courtly.'" Never an accomplished orator, Bradley is scarcely more convincing a writer. "The book is outrageously padded with long lists that gobble up lines without clarifying issues...
...past treatment. The Pope wrote that there is "anurgent need to achieve real equalityin every area," calling for equal pay, fairness in career advancements andcivil equality.But the Church is not a democracy, John Paul says, and there is still no room in the priesthood for women. The letter, Elson notes, is "entirely consistent with his theme of the dignity of human life. He has expanded his horizons to emphasize the role of women outside marriage. Butthe weight of traditionis too much for John Paul to ever advocate ordaining women priests...
...theater, literature. How and why New York attained its now partly-lost eminence is the grand theme of this detail-crammed psychohistory (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 606 pages; $25) by Columbia University professor Ann Douglas. "Douglas' dense, rat-a-tat-tat narrative is full of surprises," says TIME critic John Elson, who notes that the author sometimes gets her details wrong. But Elson says those are minor flaws in an "erudite portrait of a dazzling decade and metropolis."MONEY
CONTRIBUTORS: Bonnie Angelo, Laurence I. Barrett, Jesse Birnbaum, Nina Burleigh, Jay Cocks, Barbara Ehrenreich, John Elson, Pico Iyer, Edward L. Jamieson (Consulting Editor), Leon Jaroff, Gregory Jaynes, Michael Kinsley, Charles Krauthammer, John Rothchild, Richard Schickel, Walter Shapiro, R.Z. Sheppard, John Skow, Martha Smilgis, Mark Alan Stamaty, Richard Stengel, Andrew Tobias, Claudia Wallis, Michael Walsh, Robert Wright...