Random Notes

Left Over from May: John Updike’s latest collection of poems is Tossing and Turning (Knopf, $7.95). . . . Frank E. Vandiver’s biography Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing (Texas A&M Press, $35 the two volumes) is carefully researched and more than one thousand pages long.

June Titles: A Government as Good as Its People (Simon & Schuster, $8.95) is a collection of campaign speeches and interviews of President Jimmy Carter, who recently instructed his speechwriters to couch his exhortations in language accessible to ninth-graders. . . . In The Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York (Viking, $10.95), Jack Newfield and Paul Dubrul argue that New York City was done in by its own rulers: bankers, underwriters, lawyers, czars of the public authorities, insurance companies, builders, judges, shyster politicos, and certain union officials. In other words, by all but the people—if there are any left over. . . . Ralph Nader and John Abbotts write vilely, and their book The Menace of Atomic Energy (Norton, $10.95) is consequently almost impenetrable. Nevertheless, the simple thesis readily emerges from the morass: nuclear energy is the most dangerous of man’s inventions since the wheel. . . . In Mediaworld: Programming the Public (Seabury Press, $8.95), John M. Phelan claims that the media have a double nelson on public opinion and popular culture, and that they reduce information to the level of a commodity. . . . Milovan Djilas, the Yugoslav dissident and author of The New Class, has completed a new book about his military adventures in World War II and the rise of Communism in Yugoslavia; it is entitled Wartime (Harcourt Brace, $14.95).

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Left Over from May: John Updike’s latest collection of poems is Tossing and Turning (Knopf, $7.95). . . . Frank E. Vandiver’s biography Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing (Texas A&M Press, $35 the two volumes) is carefully researched and more than one thousand pages long.

June Titles: A Government as Good as Its People (Simon & Schuster, $8.95) is a collection of campaign speeches and interviews of President Jimmy Carter, who recently instructed his speechwriters to couch his exhortations in language accessible to ninth-graders. . . . In The Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York (Viking, $10.95), Jack Newfield and Paul Dubrul argue that New York City was done in by its own rulers: bankers, underwriters, lawyers, czars of the public authorities, insurance companies, builders, judges, shyster politicos, and certain union officials. In other words, by all but the people—if there are any left over. . . . Ralph Nader and John Abbotts write vilely, and their book The Menace of Atomic Energy (Norton, $10.95) is consequently almost impenetrable. Nevertheless, the simple thesis readily emerges from the morass: nuclear energy is the most dangerous of man’s inventions since the wheel. . . . In Mediaworld: Programming the Public (Seabury Press, $8.95), John M. Phelan claims that the media have a double nelson on public opinion and popular culture, and that they reduce information to the level of a commodity. . . . Milovan Djilas, the Yugoslav dissident and author of The New Class, has completed a new book about his military adventures in World War II and the rise of Communism in Yugoslavia; it is entitled Wartime (Harcourt Brace, $14.95).