Table of Contents
Volume 23, Number 15 · September 30, 1976
Keith Thomas, Epidemic Man 
Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill
Christopher Lasch, The Narcissist Society
Decadence: Radical Nostalgia, Narcissism, and Decline in the Seventies by Jim Hougan
Growing (Up) at Thirty-Seven by Jerry Rubin
Three Journeys: An Automythology by Paul Zweig
Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism by Otto F. Kernberg MD
The Awareness Trap: Self-Absorption Instead of Social Change by Edwin Schur
Thomas R. Edwards, Tough Guys
The Blue Hammer by Ross Macdonald
The Family Arsenal by Paul Theroux
Robert Penn Warren, Youth Stares at Minoan Sunset (poem)
Helen Vendler, Myths for Mothers
Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich
George M. Fredrickson, The Gutman Report
The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 by Herbert G. Gutman
Henri Zerner, The Mark of Bewick
A Memoir of Thomas Bewick: Written by Himself edited by Iain Bain
Neal Ascherson, Battle over Monty
Montgomery of Alamein by Alun Chalfont
Osip Mandelstam, Poem (poem)
Henry Steele Commager, 'Intelligence': The Constitution Betrayed
Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities United States Senate
Richard Murphy, Poetry and Terror
North by Seamus Heaney
Michael Wood, The Ladies Vanish
The Doctor's Wife by Brian Moore
Triptych by Claude Simon, translated by Helen R. Lane
Beard's Roman Women by Anthony Burgess, with photographs by David Robinson
Moses: A Narrative by Anthony Burgess
Letters
Olwyn Hughes, Reviewing Sylvia Plath
Richard Ohmann, C.L. Barber, The Power of Lit.
Edward Butscher, Reviewing Sylvia Plath
Stanislaw Baranczak, Jacek Bochenski, et al. Appeal from Poland
Mary Folliet, Karl Miller, Reviewing Sylvia Plath
Alfred Kazin, Appeal for Kofi Awoonor
George Kearns, Irvin Ehrenpreis, Aoi!
Robert M. Stevenson, I.F. Stone, Surprise!
Contributors
Neal Ascherson is the author of The Struggles for Poland, The Black Sea, and Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland. He is the editor of the journal Public Archaeology at University College London. (November 2007)
Thomas R. Edwards is Emeritus Professor of English at Rutgers and a former editor of Raritan. His most recent book is Over Here: Criticizing America, 1968–1989. (June 2004)
George M. Fredrickson is Edgar E. Robinson Professor of US History Emeritus at Stanford. His most recent books are Racism: A Short History and Not Just Black and White, a collection co-edited with Nancy Foner. (August 2006)
Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) was born and raised in St. Petersburg, where he attended the prestigious Tenishev School, before studying at the universities of St. Petersburg and Heidelberg and at the Sorbonne. Mandelstam first published his poems in Apollyon, an avant-garde magazine, in 1910, then banded together with Anna Akhmatova and Nicholas Gumilev to form the Acmeist group, which advocated an aesthetic of exact description and chiseled form, as suggested by the title of Mandelstam's first book, Stone (1913). During the Russian Revolution, Mandelstam left Leningrad for the Crimea and Georgia, and he settled in Moscow in 1922, where his second collection of poems, Tristia, appeared. Unpopular with the Soviet authorities, Mandelstam found it increasingly difficult to publish his poetry, though an edition of collected poems did come out in 1928. In 1934, after reading an epigram denouncing Stalin to friends, Mandelstam was arrested and sent into exile. He wrote furiously during these years, and his wife, Nadezhda, memorized his work in case his notebooks were destroyed or lost. (Nadezhda Mandelstam's extraordinary memoirs of life with her husband, Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned, published in the 1970s, later helped to bring Mandelstam a worldwide audience.)
Richard Murphy's most recent books are Collected Poems and The Kick: A Life Among Writers. (February 2004)
Keith Thomas is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. His books include Religion and the Decline of Magic, Man and the Natural World, and The Oxford Book of Work. (April 2007)
Helen Vendler is the author, most recently, of Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form. She is preparing for publication her recent Mellon Lectures, entitled Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill. (June 2008)
Michael Wood is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton. His most recent book is Literature and the Taste of Knowledge. (April 2008)
Henri Zerner, Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard, is the author, most recently, of Renaissance Art in France: The Invention of Classicism and Écrire l'histoire de l'art: Figures d'une discipline. (January 2005)
