Books in Brief

Recreation, Leisure, and-Politics, by Arnold W. Green (McGraw-Hill, $5.95). “Sociology” is a four-letter word in my dictionary, but it would never have become so if there were a few more sociologists like Ernest van den Haag and Arnold Green. In this freshly ranging book, Professor Green spares us the dreary paraphernalia of fatuous depth-interviews by bored graduate students; and, if he has not quite brought himself to throwing out the whole kit and caboodle of professional jargon, he keeps it well below the vomiting point. In reaching a conclusion, he is not afraid of appealing to intelligence, literary tradition, direct observation or even common horse sense. Prof. Green’s title is only a sample of his menu. The idea and ideal of “nature,” the rural bias, TV programs, conservationism, equality, tourists, utopias, virtue and exercise, delinquency and camping, entertainment, segregation of the old, teen-age images and automation, all belong to his cluster. In the age of affluence and short-work-weeks, these are topics that thrust themselves forward for scientific analysis, philosophical contemplation and political manipulation. As for that last, a belief in the ability of government to solve the problems of the citizens’ leisure and recreation will have a hard time surviving unscathed a reading of this book.

J. Burnham

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Recreation, Leisure, and-Politics, by Arnold W. Green (McGraw-Hill, $5.95). “Sociology” is a four-letter word in my dictionary, but it would never have become so if there were a few more sociologists like Ernest van den Haag and Arnold Green. In this freshly ranging book, Professor Green spares us the dreary paraphernalia of fatuous depth-interviews by bored graduate students; and, if he has not quite brought himself to throwing out the whole kit and caboodle of professional jargon, he keeps it well below the vomiting point. In reaching a conclusion, he is not afraid of appealing to intelligence, literary tradition, direct observation or even common horse sense. Prof. Green’s title is only a sample of his menu. The idea and ideal of “nature,” the rural bias, TV programs, conservationism, equality, tourists, utopias, virtue and exercise, delinquency and camping, entertainment, segregation of the old, teen-age images and automation, all belong to his cluster. In the age of affluence and short-work-weeks, these are topics that thrust themselves forward for scientific analysis, philosophical contemplation and political manipulation. As for that last, a belief in the ability of government to solve the problems of the citizens’ leisure and recreation will have a hard time surviving unscathed a reading of this book.

J. Burnham