Books in Brief

In Place of Folly, by Norman Cousins (Harper, $3). The “folly” in Mr. Cousins’ title is the manufacture of nuclear weapons for purposes of national defense. To make the epithet stick, he devotes a lurid, if obsolete, chapter to atmospheric fallout (superannuated by underground testing), others to the projected horrors of atomic and chemical warfare. His alternative: let America surrender its means of defense, and leave the job of keeping the peace to the United Nations. Might not the Soviets seize the occasion to destroy us? Mr. Cousins is sanguine. After all, Communism “has been made flexible enough to embrace what the Soviet leaders considered to be a larger purpose. The same is probably true on the international level in the making of peace.” Ergo, we can give up our arms, the Kremlin will follow suit, and we shall all live happily ever after in a “structured peace” (whatever that is). In place of folly, Mr. Cousins Would Give Us Absurdity.

m.s. evans

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In Place of Folly, by Norman Cousins (Harper, $3). The “folly” in Mr. Cousins’ title is the manufacture of nuclear weapons for purposes of national defense. To make the epithet stick, he devotes a lurid, if obsolete, chapter to atmospheric fallout (superannuated by underground testing), others to the projected horrors of atomic and chemical warfare. His alternative: let America surrender its means of defense, and leave the job of keeping the peace to the United Nations. Might not the Soviets seize the occasion to destroy us? Mr. Cousins is sanguine. After all, Communism “has been made flexible enough to embrace what the Soviet leaders considered to be a larger purpose. The same is probably true on the international level in the making of peace.” Ergo, we can give up our arms, the Kremlin will follow suit, and we shall all live happily ever after in a “structured peace” (whatever that is). In place of folly, Mr. Cousins Would Give Us Absurdity.

m.s. evans