Not long after his humiliating defeat on the Independence Party line-the first-ever defeat of his political career-Governor George Pataki stood before a group of school teachers from lower Manhattan and made his strongest remarks to date attacking a June appeals-court ruling that said an eighth-grade education is enough for New York City schoolchildren. “I totally Read More
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America , by Louis Menand. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 546 pages, $27.
There’s a new book out about mauve, the color. Recently there was a history of the mirror. A book about longitude scaled the best-seller list last year. This is the trend: inflated trivia. The strategy Read More
Philosophy and Social Hope , by Richard Rorty. Penguin Books, 288 pages, $13.95.
In the dark days after Ronald Reagan won his second overwhelming mandate from the American people, and liberals everywhere lay in a deep funk, Mario Cuomo hit the university circuit with a version of the speech he had given at the 1984 Read More
Liberal Anxieties and Liberal Education , by Alan Ryan. Hill and Wang, 199 pages, $22.
Who would have thought that when the dust settled from the culture wars, the big winner would be Rudolph Giuliani. Forget teacher sensitivity training, single-sex schools and multicultural curriculums; forget vouchers, national standards and starched uniforms. What whips Read More
