Volume 28, Number 7 · April 30, 1981
Up for Grabs
By Andrew Hacker
The United States in the 1980s
edited by Peter Duignan, edited by Alvin Rabushka
Hoover Institution Press, 868 pp., $20.00
Setting National Priorities: Agenda for the 1980s
edited by Joseph A. Pechman
Brookings Institution, 563 pp., $9.95 (paper)
Human Scale
by Kirkpatrick Sale
Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 558 pp., $15.95
The Third Wave
by Alvin Toffler
Bantam, 544 pp., $3.95 (paper)
The Microelectronics Revolution
edited by Tom Forester
MIT Press, 589 pp., $12.50 (paper)
The 1980's: Countdown to Armageddon
by Hal Lindsey
Bantam, 178 pp., $6.95
A National Agenda for the Eighties: Report of the President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties
US Government Printing Office, 224 pp., $4.75 (paper)
Life After '80: Environmental Choices We Can Live With
edited by Kathleen Courrier
Brick House, 280 pp., $6.95 (paper)
Writing about the future generally takes two forms, prediction and prescription. The first is more or less prophetic: we are told what's in the cards, with warnings to get ready. There may be some choices at the margins of what is to come, but the major moving forces are already underway. Writers have always differed on those basic causes. Some emphasize technology, others an exploding population or new class configurations or an idea whose time has come. Or even the unfolding of a grand cosmic plan. 'Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes…. The world is heading toward a holocaust.' So predicts Hal Lindsey in The 1980's: Countdown to Armageddon. He suggests we keep our sea lanes open, bring back capital punishment, and pray that our sins be forgiven. Even if the future is immutable, we are still free to forecast what we think is coming. In that sense, each effort at prediction reflects some current mood.
Review, 6210 words
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