Tragic Flaws Research Articles

Comparative Analysis of the Power Between Medea and Oedipus

This paper gives a comparative analysis of the concept of power through two characters in Greek tragedy: Oedipus by Sophocles and Medea by Euripides. Both figures demonstrate a unique use of power, which inevitably leads to tragic endings. Oedipus is a noble king trapped by his own fate. He wields power in the political area but is blinded by his search for truth and self-discovery. This ultimately leads to unexpected personal and social disasters. In contrast, Medea is a strong woman who uses personal as well as her supernatural powers to impose devastating revenge on the unjust patriarchal society that betrayed her. This analysis seeks to reveal the small differences of their power, such as its origins, manifestations, and effects, within their social and narrative contexts. Through the examination of the two characters' different attitudes to power and their outcomes, this paper is a deeper understanding of the nature of power and its significant impact in Greek tragedy, highlighting the tragic flaws and social critiques lied in these books.

Tragic Flaws

AbstractIn many tragic plays, the protagonist is brought down by a disaster that is a consequence of the protagonist's own error, his or her hamartia, the tragic flaw. Tragic flaws are disconcerting to the audience because they are not known or fully recognized by the protagonist—at least not until it is too late. In this essay, I take tragic flaws to be unreliable belief-forming dispositions that are unrecognized by us in some sense. I describe some different types of flaws and consider what we might do about them. Then I examine three types of policies for managing our tragic flaws: doxastic, dispositional, and methodological.

Greed in Hamka's Novel Merantau ke Deli

Merantau ke Deli is a novel written by Hamka published in 1939. The main theme of this novel is about Minangkabaunese culture and the conflict in the marriage of Leman, a Minangkabaunese, and Poniem, a Javanese. Adat law makes Leman married Mariatun, a Minangkabaunese as his second wife. The focus of this study is on the act of Greed performed by Leman and Mariatun. This is descriptive qualitative research based on Miles, Huberman, and Saldana (2014). The theory of Greed stated by Kets De Vries (2016) was used to analyze the data obtained. The results show two kinds of Greed in the novel; the Greed for the woman's beauty and the Greed for poverty. Leman performs the Greed on the woman's beauty to marry Poniem, although it is forbidden for Minangkabaunese man to marry a non-Minangkabaunese woman. Poniem's beauty makes him break the adat law. The greediness of a beautiful woman also happens when he meets Mariatun, a beautiful young woman from the Minangkabaunese tribe. The greediness on poverty showed by Mariatun for taking the batik and also for dominating Leman's poverty. However, the acts of Greed performed by the characters in the novel create tragic flaws in their future life.

How Tragic Flaws Resonate at Scale: Just Ask Shakespeare

What does Hamlet, Daenerys Targaryen and Persona development have in common? As an actress I had an in‐depth understanding of character development but struggled with creating insights from personas. I embarked on a quest to find out why. I interviewed one of the greatest authority's on Shakespeare, John Bell, AO, OBE FRSN about The Bard's greatest gift to storytelling, the invention of personality and characters. I share the realization that came next, how an individual character's tragic flaw can resonate at scale.

Emotions, religion, and morality in Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter

Graham Greene (1904–1991) is critically-acclaimed as one of the best storytellers of the twentieth century. Part of Greene’s distinction lies in his depiction of the ever-conflicted emotions that plague human beings. This emotional complexity is intensified as the Catholic religion conflates with the sensual and sexual values sanctified in the mundane world. Thus, although Greene frequently expressed his irritation at being labeled a Catholic writer, many critics maintain that understanding the close connection between religion, politics, and the theme of betrayal in Greene’s works is crucial. In The Heart of the Matter (1948), Greene presents Major Henry Scobie, an upright assistant police commissioner, who is involved in a triangular love relationship with his wife and a young widow in a West African coastal town. Torn between his sense of responsibility and his passion, Scobie is ensnared in love and guilt at the same time. Scobie’s emotional complexities, coupled with his troubled faith, paradoxically make him a heroic coward with tragic flaws as well as a sinner engulfed in a terrible conflict between passion and faith. This paper aims to discuss the emotional ambiguities of Scobie that arise from the conflations of love and marriage, pity and duty, humanity and divinity, evaluating the morality of Scobie and its implications.

A Journey to Armenia: Visual Reminders of Genocide and Oppression

A Journey to Armenia: Visual Reminders of Genocide and Oppression

Geschichte, Geschichten und Mythen in Dea Lohers Olgas Raum

Over the past few decades, Germany's division and subsequent unification have altered he way the country's history is understood, with Eastern and Western narratives needing to merge into a new master narrative. The different accounts of the life and death of the Jewish-German communist Olga Benario, partner of the Brazilian freedom fighter, Luis Carlos Prestes, serve as a powerful case study for Germany's author Dea Loher. In her theatre play Olga's Room (1994) the empty stage walls are used in such a way as to serve as a screen for history, her stories and myths, before the actors deconstruct these walls themselves by disclosing their own tragic flaws. In the process, the construction mechanisms that lie behind the history and stories are revealed. The audience is thereby pushed into an active reception role, not least when left with the empty space which Olga and the other actors leave one by one. Escapism into a myth is no longer possible; after all, the realisation that violence and general fallibility are profoundly human prevents this folly.

The Dramatic Function of the Plebeians in Coriolanus and Julius Caesar

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the conversation of the plebeians in Shakespeare’s two roman plays Julius Caesar and Coriolanus in order to explore the underlying causes or social conflicts that their conversations deliver. Both Coriolanus and Julius Caesar begin with not politicians but the plebeians. It might mean that they are not just supporting role but one of the leading roles in the plays. Therefore, the writer also would like to regard them as one of the leading roles in the plays. But the character of the plebeians is quite different in comparison with two plays. The common people in Julius Caesar have no opinions of their own and are passive and insolent. In addition, they have the habit of being flattered. On the other hand, the plebeians of Coriolanus are people who can think for themselves so it could possibly be said that they have independent personalities. They seem to have generosity even to their opponent, Caius Martius that is to say Coriolanus. At the beginning of Coriolanus, the plebeians started an riot against the patricians because of corn. Famine in Rome is triggering unrest between the plebeians and the patricians. The plebeians thought that the reason why they could not get corn at the price they want, it is because of that fact the patricians have been hoarding grain for no good reason. Besides, the common people resent the arrogant Martius who openly despised the plebeians so they chose him as a target to be removed for their goal. It is because they decided that Martius is responsible for the scarcity of grain. The dialogue between plebeians is also carrying out the function of revealing the tragic flaws of Martius. Consequently, in spite of his heroic and successful contribution to Rome, his tragic flaws lead to his ruin. Through these facts, the writer surmises that there are two important social problems in Rome. Above all, there were some conflicts and distrust between the plebeians and the patricians. It might come from the plebeians’ expectation of being treated as a citizen supporting the country together with the aristocratic class. At the time, they were becoming aware of the importance of they held as members of Roman society. But It is probably why the plebeians thought that they are not respected by the patricians appreciatively. Historically, the common people’s rights of Roman republic were extended in accordance with the growing contributiveness on their nation such as England under the reign of King James I at that time. Secondly, there was also another problem; the distribution of grain did not work fairly. It means Roman society’s economic system was incomplete and biased against the common people. The conversations of two tribunes are also exposing the weaknesses of the tribune system. Basically, the Roman Republic had three principal political institutions; the Senate, consuls and tribunes. Because tribunes were the representative of the plebeians, they had to protect the rights of citizens and try to mediate between the two sides. But they did not do their duties in the plays. Instead of, the most important concern for them is the maintenance of their tribune-ship. In connection with that, it seems that what Shakespeare emphasizes about the tribunes is not their service to the people but their concern for their own office. The tribunes in Coriolanus, they are vile villain who mislead an innocent common people. Their power depends on the people’s hostility toward the patricians and traditional order. In this sense, the writer wants to say their desire could be flourishing only on the soil of the conflicts between plebeians and patricians. As to prove my point of view, in order to use the conflicts between the plebeians and the patricians, the tribunes stir up prejudice and hatred against the aristocrats. Even though the plays are tragedies and the conflicts are serious, we should expect a positive future of their society. It is because the important thing is not the awareness of the conflict itself but the acceptance that an effort to resolve conflicts is needed for a future reconciliation between opponents.

Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power by Seth Rosenfeld (review)

Reviewed by: Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power by Seth Rosenfeld Bernard F. Dick Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power. By Seth Rosenfeld. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2012. Subversives is a compelling and meticulously documented work of cultural history that moves with the inexorable pace of tragedy, part Greek in its concatenation of events, deceptively unrelated but propelled as if by some strange design; part Shakespearean in its mammoth cast of characters, a mix of protagonists with tragic flaws and antagonists too lacking in self knowledge to elicit pity and fear. It all seemed so simple: Free Speech. Or so the students at the University of California at Berkeley thought in 1964, when in the midst of a protest, a (then) philosophy major injected the voice of reason into what was turning into a shout-out. “My name is Mario Savio,” he declared, thus becoming a Hamlet in a tragedy-by-installments. Blazingly committed, with a crusader’s zeal, Savio only wanted students to enjoy their First Amendment Rights. His zeal set off the Free Speech Movement, which spiraled out of control and devolved into the Filthy Speech Movement. That was how the public perceived it. A notorious dance replete with drugs and sex undermined the cause even more. The students became “The Kids”; the police, “The Pigs,” and a simple plea for due process became a generational conflict. Although curricular reform was needed (e.g., an ethnic studies program), some of the demands made by counter organizations were so ludicrous that they alienated many of the original sympathizers. Rosenfeld did not have to portray Savio as a Hamlet who morphed into a Christ figure; history took care of that. Savio went through his own agony in the garden—depression, homelessness, panic attacks, a failed marriage. But still he managed to graduate summa cum laude with a degree in physics from San Francisco State, from which he later received a master’s. The years of protest took their toll. Savio died of heart problems in 1996, a mere fifty-three. Clark Kerr, Berkeley’s president, was also a tragic scapegoat, but enjoyed a longer life, dying at 92. He was a victim of both history and J. Edgar Hoover, who believed informants’ reports that Kerr was too far to the left. When the Free Speech Movement galvanized Berkeley, Kerr was faced with an impossible situation: how to keep the campus from succumbing to anarchy. When the demonstrations turned ominous, Ronald Reagan, then California governor, argued that they were Communist-instigated. Reagan became a major player in the offstage drama to have Kerr fired. Savio and Kerr could not withstand the juggernaut of the FBI and Reagan, whose [End Page 125] anti-Communist paranoia began in 1946 when he started cooperating with the FBI after becoming convinced of Communist infiltration of the movie business. Ironically, in 1938, according to Reagan’s biographer, Edmund Morris, Reagan, then a liberal with a concern for the marginalized and the dispossessed, considered joining the Communist Party (Dutch, 158). Equally ironic is that, as an undergraduate at Eureka College, Reagan advocated a student strike when programs were in jeopardy because of restructuring. But that was in 1928. One wonders how Reagan’s political career would have fared if he retained his idealism. Subversives is a monumental achievement. Read it and wonder how much talent was lost in the cataclysm that might have been averted if the need for recognition were divorced from the fear of radicalization. One erratum: Larry Parks did not win an Oscar for The Jolson Story (1946), although he was nominated. The best actor Oscar went to Frederic March for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), which the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) found questionable because it implied that WWII veterans had problems adjusting to civilian life. Such were the times. Subversives should be required reading for the social network generation, who don’t know how good they have it. Bernard F. Dick Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck Campus Copyright © 2013 Mid-America American Studies Association

The Buck Stops Here

The title of this article was a sign on President Harry Truman's desk in 1945. Truman knew very well that with authority comes great responsibility. Leaders for ages have known that the ultimate responsibility for their organization stops at their desk. Leaders, managers, or supervisors of an air medical operation can have all the superficial trappings of a safety management system yet still be at risk for catastrophic failures if the organization's leadership culture has tragic flaws. BP and Toyota may be prime examples of organizational failures and misplaced priorities, as evidenced by the high-profile failures of their quality control and safety systems. Theoretically, those corporations had systems in place to prevent either quality control of safety issues but broke down seemingly by failing to listen to those small but critically important voices screaming for attention within the organization.

“My Heart Cleft in Twain”: The Aspects of the Feminine Virtues in Hamlet

The aim of this paper is to reexamine Gertrude's and Ophelia's part in Hamlet as the women who follow and consequently devote themselves to the conventional female roles as a wife and a daughter respectively. The traditional Shakespearean scholarship of criticism has overlooked them to be a simple scapegoat in the male-dominated society. However, they are not the women who intend to desert their love in order to fulfil their own purposes and interests but the ones besieged with the traditional—oppressive in a modern feminist sense—customs of the Renaissance, who should make a sacrifice of their own ego in a passive and submissive way. In the play we come to fully understand that the two female characters' senses of selfhood depend on a traditional pattern of femininity—wife has to follow her husband and daughter must obey her father. Therefore, ironically enough, their tragic flaws can be interpreted in terms of conventional virtues which at the time women have to possess, not of a challenging or subversive power. Although their greatest mistakes are that they are too much engaged in their duties to husband and father without wisdom, the implication of their affection and obedience toward their male mates needs a reconsideration in the context of the traditional concept of women.

Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior, Conservative Statesman (review)

Reviewed by: Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior, Conservative Statesman Justin Nystrom Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior, Conservative Statesman. By Walter Brian Cisco. (Dulles, Va.: Brassey’s Inc., 2004. Pp. 399. $35.00.) After many years of neglect, there has been a recent groundswell of interest in the life of Wade Hampton III, South Carolina's most iconic figure of the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Walter Brian Cisco's new biography comes hot on the heels of Ed Longacre's Gentleman and Solider: A Biography of Wade Hampton III (2003), and it is quite possible that these two works are only the beginning of an overall reevaluation of Hampton's place in nineteenth-century American history. In a public career that spanned over four decades, Hampton had some hand in almost every key political issue of both regional and national significance. He had been one of the South's wealthiest antebellum planters, a Confederate general, a Redeemer, and a New South politician. As such, an astute biography of Hampton [End Page 80] has the potential to tell us much about the experience of elite Southern whites during their convulsive journey from slaveholding antebellum days to the dawning of the New South. Cisco clearly set out to produce an exhaustively detailed portrait of Hampton, and in this regard he has succeeded handsomely. Readers will not go wanting for a lack of information on Hampton's genealogy, family anecdotes, or wartime exploits. The author portrays Hampton as a man of impeccable moral rectitude, courtly honor, dash, and political sagacity. According to Cisco, Hampton was a paternalistic and kind slaveholder, adored by slaves, admired by his peers, and feared by scoundrels of all stripes. During the war, the Carolinian was the forgotten genius among Lee's lieutenants. Because he lacked a West Point education and a Virginia pedigree, the sober and heroic Hampton languished under the flamboyant and even irresponsible leadership of the young J. E. B. Stuart. In peace, argues Cisco, Hampton represented the voice of reason and principle. Equally revered by freedmen and Confederate veterans, Hampton ultimately championed the redemption of South Carolina through the Red Shirt campaign. In his final phase of public service, Hampton fought the good fight against the race-baiting bigotry of "pitchfork" Ben Tillman and the upcountry lowlifes who stood incapable of understanding his white aristocratic vision of racial harmony. Without question, Cisco's treatment of Hampton's war years is the book's strongest component. As a solider, Hampton has long stood in the shadow of other cavalry commanders such as Stuart, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and even John Hunt Morgan. Cisco ably chronicles Hampton's ongoing feuds with Stuart, Robert E. Lee, and even Jefferson Davis—disagreements that had as much to do with Hampton's desire to defend South Carolina from invasion as they did with overall strategy. Like so many tales of the Civil War, this story is full of daring feats, tragedy, and personal sacrifice. Unfortunately, Cisco's work on Reconstruction bears the dated stamp of Dunning school scholarship. The Republican government of South Carolina certainly had tragic flaws, but Cisco's characterization of it as a "coalition of blacks, opportunists, and turncoats" (189), as well as "philistines" (190), will undoubtedly strike many readers as being a bit over the top. In sum, this portrait of Hampton borders on infallibility, if not sainthood, no doubt due to the author's strong admiration of his subject. Unfortunately, such hagiography, combined with a preference for secondary sources on Reconstruction published before 1950, undermines the impact of Cisco's assessment and will undoubtedly limit his audience to those already inclined to agree with his conclusions. This is a shame not only because many valid themes are obscured [End Page 81] by the author's presentation, but because a more nuanced approach to Hampton would have undoubtedly increased our understanding of Southern politics, race, and the challenges faced by the planter class in the second half of the nineteenth century. Justin Nystrom Virginia Tech Copyright © 2007 The Kent State University Press

The Catastrophist

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessThe CatastrophistThomas A. Simpatico M.D.Thomas A. Simpatico M.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Dec 2006https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2006.57.12.1816AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail In The Catastrophist , first-time novelist Lawrence Douglas reminds us that "the world is a hostile place for most life forms." In a manner reminiscent of David Lodge's Changing Places, The Catastrophist is set in the world of academia and spins a comic tale with serious and foreboding undercurrents. Protagonist Daniel Wellington is a respected art historian, recently tenured professor, and rising academic celebrity with a beautiful, intelligent wife. Although he has known nothing but success, he responds to his wife's joyfully announcing her pregnancy and his impending fatherhood with a full-blown existential crisis. He confesses to an artist-ex-wife-turned-mother-of-three "how much easier it would be to have a sweet little child with Down's syndrome who would grow up to bag groceries at Stop & Shop, and would be spared learning what a fraudulent and mentally ill loser his father is." What then follows is an inexorable self-inflicted chain of events that results in the mother of all self-fulfilling prophesies. Our hero, tragically and comically burdened "by imagination, introspection, and disorder," repeatedly provokes the very catastrophes he fears most. As he perceives the chaos he creates as being perpetrated by others, he then wonders, "is humiliation necessarily a crime of intent?"Douglas, a professor of law, jurisprudence, and social thought at Amherst College, can truly turn a phrase. Although I initially experienced some of his language as pedantic, I soon found myself jotting down many of his playful and evocative descriptions in order to read them again. His creative use of language has an artistic efficiency reminiscent of the way a great musician economically uses just the right notes to create a mood or evoke a memory. His talent is evident in the pithy manner in which he describes Daniel's wife, R., whose image and persona are made all the more powerful in the same way an expertly laconic hypnotic induction allows the subject to provide vivid and personal details.Daniel Wellington's tragic flaws have to do with the fact that he envies people who can fully participate in their own lives. The more he envies, the more he becomes isolated and lonely and the more he panics. This leads to the humorously deranged behavior that threatens to alienate him from all that is truly important. Although the book is technically a comedy by virtue of its brilliant academic satire and relatively happy thematic resolution, The Catastrophist is rife with serious and challenging moments. As I read, I thought what a great movie this could be. I then remembered director Garry Marshall's interpretation of Exit to Eden and how it was played for laughs, focusing on base humor at the expense of the essence and tension of Anne Rice's novel. I hope The Catastrophist would not be similarly misrepresented. The Catastrophist is a winner and too witty and haunting a tale to be thought of as summer reading. As I approached the end of the story, I wondered about two things: would Daniel Wellington fall victim to the foreshadowed German aphorism "Better Abel than Cain, but better Cain than zero," and when would the next piece of Lawrence Douglas' fiction become available. Dr. Simpatico is associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Division of Public Psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and medical director of the Vermont State Hospital, Burlington. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 57Issue 12 December, 2006Pages 1816-1816PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES December 2006 Volume 57 Number 12 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 December 2006 Published in print 1 December 2006

Sacrificed at the Alamo: Tragedy and Triumph in the Texas Revolution

Fans of Bruce Winders now have another book to place on their shelves, one that certainly matches, in quality and clarity, other works by the noted historian and curator of the Alamo. Unlike most studies of the famous siege and capture of the Alamo in 1836, Winders spends little time or effort in detailing who exactly was in the fort, where they were when the final assault took place, what their last words must have been, and whether they fell fighting or fleeing. Not that these are not interesting and worthy issues to many, but this author attempts a macro history to explain what brought a small Mexican army and a still smaller Texas one fatefully to San Antonio in February and March of 1836. In doing so, Winders enriches our understanding of the Alamo in dozens of ways.The author first looks at the meaning of republicanism as an ideology, in order to explain how the Anglo-Texans thought war was to be fought. If ever Jacksonian democracy ran amok, it was among these Anglo-Texans attempting to organize a government, pick civilian and military leaders, craft the war’s objectives, and raise an army of military equals. It did not work, which explains much about the strange indecisiveness of those who defended the Alamo. At the same time, the conduct of the Mexican army under Santa Anna sprang from a different historical environment—one that allowed it to move much faster and more decisively than its northern opponents.No nineteenth-century war among those of European descent was complete with-out homage to Napoleon’s shade. Winders finds the Corsican’s influence everywhere in the Texas revolt, with deference to the unique Gulf Coast environment of flat, hot land sloping toward the ocean. Line and column, volley and bayonet, infantry versus cavalry, and traditional tactics for assaulting a fortified stronghold were common subjects in the training of all military officers, and Texas events followed standard military practices hammered out and honed in the long European wars of the first decades of the century.Winders’s macro approach considers many other topics; among the most interesting is that of the Mexican civil war between centralists and federalists. Regardless of what some Texans might have thought, they were very much a part of this. Sacrificed at the Alamo demonstrates that what happened in San Antonio was merely a smaller version of what had happened to defeated federalists in the north a year earlier, in the so-called Rape of Zacatecas. If Mexican military leadership was consistent about anything, it was in its consensus on proper treatment toward defeated rebels. Giving quarter to traitors never seemed to produce the right results.No historical work on the Alamo will escape criticism, and Winders’s book will certainly receive some. His treatment of Santa Anna, for example, still has elements of an older view of the Mexican leader as a bombastic, inept Latin American caudillo. While acknowledging grave and tragic flaws in his character, modern scholarship has moved toward a more charitable view of the Mexican general, one that finds consistency in his political actions, patriotism in his approach to national problems, and decisiveness in pressing a military campaign. For a good and provocative read about the most famous event in Texas War of the 1830s, scholars on both side of the Rio will find Winders’s book well worth the time.

Robert Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence

Robert Mugabe was born in 1924, a black man in one of Africa's most defiantly white-dominated nations: Rhodesia. A revolutionary hero who came to prominence as a guerrilla leader in the 1970s, he has been a key player in Southern Africa ever since. For when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, Mugabe became the public face of a hopeful experiment in African independence--but the next twenty-two years would tell a different story.In this evenhanded yet unsparing study, Stephen Chan explains and interprets a freedom fighter turned tyrant, an idealist whose triumph over the forces of racism and colonialism bore bitter fruit. As a chronicler of Mugabe's career, Chan has superb credentials. A firsthand witness to Zimbabwe's struggle for independence and an advisor to the new nation's early post-independence government, he gives us a masterly portrait of Mugabe: his strengths and victories--and, increasingly, his tragic flaws and destructive failures.The author follows Mugabe from his days as a rebel through his electoral victory, his growing influence in African politics, and his unyielding opposition to apartheid. A teacher for twenty years before he took up arms, he led his country to the highest literacy rate in Africa, at 85 percent, and his avowed socialism promised greater equality of wealth in a new, multiracial Zimbabwe.But a darker picture emerged early with the savage crushing of the Matabeleland uprising, the ruthless elimination of political opponents, and growing cronyism and corruption that betrayed Zimbabwe's hopes and wrecked its economy. A disastrous intervention in the Congo War, catastrophic drought, and a raging AIDS epidemic have culminated in national crisis--and a beleaguered president determined to hang onto power at all costs in the face of growing unrest.Chan's tightly argued and rigorous narrative depicts a triumphant nationalist leader who degenerated into a petty despot consumed by hubris and self-righteousness and driven to such desperate measures as seizing white-owned farms, muzzling the press, and unleashing violence on his political opponents. It's a true African tragedy, with a protagonist who came to personify all that he once reviled--at a cost to his country and his continent that will be reckoned for many years to come.Stephen Chan is Professor of International Relations and Dean of Law and Social Sciences, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London. He advised the early government of Zimbabwe and has published many books on the international relations of Southern Africa.

Reconstruction in United States History Textbooks

ence. That incoherence leads historians ultimately to invoke either inappropriate psychological analyses (of individuals or groups) or literary flourishes about tragic flaws in the American character- all in lieu of probing the historical forces at work. In its abbreviated form, as found in many United States history surveys, that narrative conveys the sense that there were several parallel sequences of events and developments, which were largely unrelated and disconnected. Some historical periods do resist the historian's attempt to impose a coherent narrative because they were, in fact, not coherent. But, given that Reconstruction America had just fought an enormous war, which had focused its energies and resources in ways heretofore unimaginable, and that the forces set loose by that war continued to unfold in the postwar decade, incoherence seems unlikely. Three of the textbooks under review here adhere to the traditional approach. other four project strong conceptual or thematic schemes that lend order and perspective to their narrations. One may disagree with them, but there is something substantive to be debated. But even those texts that have avoided the incoherences of the conventional narrative fail adequately to account for the collapse of especially the betrayal of the political and economic aspirations of the freed people. Of the discussions of Reconstruction in these seven texts, the fourteen-page treatment in A Short History of the American Nation by John A. Garraty and Robert A. McCaughey is the most typical of the conventional narrative of the Reconstruction era; or, perhaps more accurately, it marks an incomplete transition away from what was conventional several decades ago.' Its twelve brief sections signal that its concerns are primarily with formal politics: Presidential Reconstruction, Republican Radicals, The Fourteenth Amendment, The Reconstruction Acts, Congress Takes Charge, The Fifteenth Amendment, 'Black Republican' Reconstruction, The Ravaged Land, The White Counterrevolution, Grant as President, The Disputed Election of 1876, and The Compromise of 1877.

For Democracy: The Noble Character and Tragic Flaws of the Middle Class.

Preface Introduction: Capitalism, Democracy, and Class Balance The Merchant Class and Democracy in Ancient Greece From the Polis to the Nation-State Industry and Democracy High Technology Multinational Capitalism Bibliography Index

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: The American Grocery Store: The Business Evolution of an Architectural Space, by James M. Mayo. (Contributions in American History, No. 150). Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1993, 304 pages. Cloth, $59.95 Supermarkets Transformed: Understanding Organizational and Technological Innovations by John P. Walsh. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993, 184 pages. Cloth $36.00. The Agricultural and Food Sector in the New Global Era, edited by Alessandro Bonanno. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 1933, 203 pages. Paper, $12.95. Gay Cops, by Stephen Leinen. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993, 245 pages. Cloth, $22.95. The Death of Meaning, by George V. Zito. London and Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993, 162 pages. Cloth, $49.95 For Democracy: The Noble Character and Tragic Flaws of the Middle Class, by Ronald M. Glassman, William H. Swatos, Jr., and Peter Kivisto. (Contributions in Sociology, No. 105.) Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1993, 174 pages. Cloth, $49.95. AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, by Paul Farmer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, 338 pages. Paper; $13.00. Paying the Piper: Causes and Consequences of Art Patronage, edited by Judith Huggins Balfe. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993, 336 pages. Paper. Thinking Critically About Research on Sex and Gender, by Paula J. Caplan and Jeremy B. Caplan. New York: Harper Collins, 1994, 125 pages. Paper, $10. Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives, edited by Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPluma, and Moishe Postone. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993, 288 pages. Cloth, $49.95; paper, $16.95. Provisional Irish Republicans: An Oral and Interpretive History, by Robert W. White. (Contributions in Political Science, No. 309.) Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993, 206 pages. Cloth, $55.00. Risky Business: The Political Economy of Hollywood, by David F. Prindle. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993, 189 pages. Cloth, $49.95. The Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility in Industrial Societies, by Robert Erikson and John H. Goldthorpe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, 429 pages, Paper, $19.95. Social Theory and Social Policy: Essays in Honor of James S. Coleman, edited by Aage B. Sbrensen and Seymour Spilerman. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993, 272 pages. Cloth, $59.95. Painful Inheritance: Health and the New Generation of Fatherless Families, by Ronald J. Angel and Jacqueline L. Angel. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993, 264 pages. Cloth, $52.00; paper, $19.95

This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga.

When North and South met among the desolate mountains of northwestern Georgia in 1863, they began one of the bloodiest and most decisive campaigns of the Civil War. The climactic Battle of Chickamauga lasted just two days, yet it was nearly as costly as Gettysburg, with casualties among the highest in the war. In this study of the campaign, the first to appear in over thirty years and the most comprehensive account ever written on Chickamauga, Peter Cozzens presents a vivid narrative about an engagement that was crucial to the outcome of the war in the West. Drawing upon a wealth of previously untapped sources, Cozzens offers startling new interpretations that challenge the conventional wisdom on key moments of the battle, such as Rosecrans's fateful order to General Wood and Thomas's historic defense of Horseshoe Ridge. Chickamauga was a battle of missed opportunities, stupendous tactical blunders, and savage fighting by the men in ranks. Cozzens writes movingly of both the heroism and suffering of the common soldiers and of the strengths and tragic flaws of their commanders. Enhanced by the detailed battle maps and original sketches by the noted artist Keith Rocco, this book will appeal to all Civil War enthusiasts and students of military history.

The Nobel Duel: Two Scientists' 21-Year Race to Win the World's Most Coveted Research Prize

Nicholas Wade has written a great book. It invites comparison with James Watson's landmark essay,The Double Helix, which first laid bare the quirks and neuroses of scientists that adorn, if not fuel, the conduct of biomedical research. Wade's book is the better of the two, though the discoveries that he chronicles are of lesser importance. The story involves the search for the postulated hypothalamic factors that were (correctly) thought to regulate pituitary hormone secretion, and the rivalry between the principal characters, Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally, the scientists who eventually jointly received the Nobel prize for the discoveries. The author has meticulously researched and brilliantly presented the key events and personalities involved. In the masterfully controlled unfolding of the story, the greatness and also the tragic flaws of the protagonists and the system in which they work clearly emerge. With humor and an even hand, Wade dispenses what amounts