Americans have the peculiar habit of slicing up their past into
decades. We use terms like the 1950s, the 1920s and the 1930s with
an easy assurance that we will be understood. Only slightly more
problematical are terms like the Gay Nineties (the 1890s). Certainly
the 1960s have become not merely a decade but a concise topic over
which historians and others have expended much ink. Douglas T.
Miller '58's On Our Own: America in the Sixties (D.C. Heath) is a
sane and non-political contribution to the ongoing attempt to make
some sense of that crucial decade.
Reading the Future
Imagine a society in which two thirds of all mothers had children
outside of marriage, often using "artificial wombs" to carry the fetuses, and
women began generally to disassociate themselves from men.This scenario, titled "Separate--and Doing Fine, Thanks!," is one of
four possible world orders envisioned by authors Pamela McCorduck and
Nancy Ramsey '62 in their book The Futures of Women: Scenarios For the
21st Century (Addison-Wesley, 304 pages, $24).
This book of essays about the strengths and limitations of biography will be
as entertaining to the general reader as it is instructive for students of the
form. Associate Professor of English David Suchoff and his co-editor, UNH
Associate Professor of German Mary Rhiel, attracted contributors (including
Colby Professor Betty Sasaki) who tackle the subject from a variety of
fascinating angles.Gliserman, an associate professor of English at Rutgers University and a
psychoanalyst in private practice, identifies how the presence of the body
becomes a central component of the novel form.
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