Books, Arts & Manners: Is Virtue Dead?

Democracy and Its Critics, by Robert Dahl (Yale University Press, 397 pp., $29.95)

As Americans self-confidently embark upon a third century of democracy, and as the people of Eastern Europe throw off oppression and demand free elections, one of our most influential political scientists— Robert Dahl, Sterling Professor Emeritus at Yale—presents a surprisingly pessimistic interpretation of what democracy means today, and under what conditions it will survive in the next century.