ustxtxb_obs_2001_08_03_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

Texas Observer VOLUME 93, NO. 15 A Journal of Free Voices Since 1954 Editors: Nate Blakeslee, Karen Olsson Managing Editor: Barbara Belejack Managing Publisher: Jim Ball Circulation Manager: Candace Carpenter Graphic Designer: Julia Austin Poetry Editor: Naomi Shihab Nye Copy Editor: Roxanne Bogucka Development Director: Susan Morris Interns: Will Potter, Sandra Spicher, Chris Womack Advertising Representative: Gene Akins Special Projects: Jere Locke, Nancy Williams Contributing Writers: Gabriela Bocagrande, Robert Bryce, Louis Dubose, Michael Erard, James K. Galbraith, Dagoberto Gilb, Paul Jennings, Steven G. Kellman, Lucius Lomax, Jeff Mandell, Char Miller, Debbie Nathan, John Ross. Staff Photographer: Alan Pogue Contributing Photographers: Jana Birchum,Vic Hinterlang, Patricia Moore, Jack Rehm. Contributing Artists: Beth Epstein,Valerie Fowler, Sam Hurt, Kevin Kreneck, Michael Krone, Gary Oliver, Ben Sargent, Gail Woods. Editorial Advisory Board: David Anderson, Chandler Davidson, Dave Denison, Bob Eckhardt, Sissy Farenthold, John Kenneth Galbraith, Lawrence Goodwyn, Jim Hightower, Maury Maverick Jr., Kaye Northcott, Susan Reid. In Memoriam: Cliff Olofion, 1931-1995 Texas Democracy Foundation Board: D’Ann Johnson, Jim Marston, Bernard Rapoport, Geoffrey Rips, Gilberto Ocafias. The Texas Observer entire contents copyrighted 2001, is published biweekly except every three weeks during January and August \(24 issues profit foundation, 307 West 7th Street, Austin,Texas 78701. Telephone: E-mail: [email protected] World Wide Web DownHome page: www.texasobserver.org . Periodicals Postage Paid at Austin,Texas. Subscriptions: One year $32, two years $59, three years $84. Full-time students $18 per year; add $13/year for foreign subs. Back issues $3 prepaid. Airmail, foreign, group, and bulk rates on request. Microfilm available from University Microfilms Intl., 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Indexes: The Texas Observer is indexed in Access: The Supplementary Index to Periodicals; Texas Index and, for the years 1954 through 1981, The Texas Observer Index. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Texas Observer, 307 West 7th Street, Austin,Texas 78701. The Books & the Culture section is partially funded through grantsfrom the City of Austin under the auspices of the Austin Arts Commission and the Writer’s League of Texas, both in cooperation with the Texas Commission on the Arts. 0 ur finely-tuned journalistic sensors tell us it’s summer here in Texas, and we’re celebrating by bringing you the Summer Books issue. At 40 pages, this is the weightiest edition of the magazine in a long whilewe hope not just in terms of pulp and printer’s ink. The issue opens with longtime contributor Robert Sherrill’s review of Christopher Hitchens’ The Trial of Henry Kissinger. As Sherrill notes, Kissinger’s war crimes have been summarized elsewhere \(and here, in a biting TO essay by Sherrill himself last impact from repetition.”We read lots of books in this office, but seldom anything as powerful as Hitchens’ devastating indictment of the former secretary of state: “His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to heaven. If it is allowed to persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the ancient philosopher Anacharsis, who maintained that laws were like cobwebs; strong enough to detain only the weak, and too weak to hold the strong. In the name of innumerable victims known and unknown it is time for justice to take a hand.” We can only begin to imagine where we would be as a nation today if he had not extended the war in Indochina for the most cynical, political reasons, or where Latin America might be if Salvador Allende’s democratically elected experiment in Chile had been allowed to stand or fall on its own accord instead of being undermined by the U.S. government. Another writer who has written about the cynical use of power while covering the Karen Silkwood case and Three Mile Island for the Village Voice is Anna Mayo. We welcome her to these pages, writing about The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation, Gayle Greene’s biography of the British physician whose research on radiation revolutionized medical practice and challenged international nuclear safety practices. Given the current administration’s incestuous relationship with the nuclear industrial complex, Stewart’s life \(she’s 95 and still going nuclear industry are more important than ever. We welcome back once again Alix Ohlin, writing about Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On A cell biologist by training, Ehrenreich practices the kind of journalism to which we should all aspire. Her story of her attempt to survive by working a series of low-wage jobsas a waitress in Florida, cleaning woman in Maine, Wal-Mart employee in Minnesotahas struck a chord with readers throughout the country and tells us volumes about who we are as a nation today. The issue closes with Alan Pogue’s haunting photographs of Israel and the Occupied Territories, taken during his visit to the Middle East last spring, months before the recent incursion into Hebron. We asked Poetry Editor Naomi Shihab Nye to provide a text, and she graciously offered a long manuscript, from which we selected several excerpts. Alan’s photos and Naomi’s words convey a truth about the Middle East that too often eludes the U.S. media. But rest assured, not all is gloom and doom in these pages. Not hardly, as the saying goes in these parts. In between Kissinger and the West Bank are Terry Southern and Bob Dylan and the English translation of Mexican author Elena Poniatowska’s masterpiece Hasta no verte Jesus mio. And so much more. Read on!. BB EDITORIAL Read All About It 8/3/01 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 3