May 1974
In This Issue
Explore the May 1974 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
Is the Vice Presidency Necessary?
No, argues historian Schlesinger. It is like the human appendix, a vestigial organ on the body politic. John Nance Garner called the office a lot of things, some of them not as polite as “a spare tire on the automobile of government.”
The Making of the Sub-Saharan Wasteland
How to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help people starve.
Destiny's Forgotten Darlings
In the Beholder's Eye
Getting Real
Examined Lives
The Peripatetic Reviewer
Scars on the Soul
Emlyn 1927-1935
The Romantic Rebellion
Mortgage on America
Alive
Straus
The Riddle of the Pyramids
Viet Journal
The White-Flower-Farm Garden Book
A History of the Devil
Watership Down
Sun Pictures
Moscow: Notes on a Scientific Conference
Innocent Bystander: Int'l Jet Set Hits Watkins Glen
Vietnam: The Cadres and the Villagers
A month after the peace accord was signed in early 1973, a colleague, David Greenway of the Washington Post, and I crossed the lines of the Vietnam war to meet the soldiers and cadres of the National Liberation Front (NLF)–their leadership since 1969 known as the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG). These are the people Americans have known as the Viet Cong. It had occurred to us that we were the first Americans to walk through that region of the Mekong Delta–Chuong Thien province–without orders to kill. The PRG had a strong military force in the area, and the fighting had been almost constant since the cease-fire. As we walked from the road controlled by the Saigon regime (the Government of Vietnam–GVN) into the countryside, we could see GVN helicopters and tactical jets bombing and strafing a few miles away. We eventually found the local guerrillas, and, after some hesitation, they received us with courtesy. After darkness fell, a squad of them accompanied us through a forest and up a river to the headquarters of Ba, the PRG commanding officer for the area.
In Praise of Hands
Honor the simple craftsman, for it is he, not the modern artist or designer, who provides the continuity between past and present. The simple object made to be used, admired, and fingerprinted by all who touch it helps teach us to “mistrust the mirages of history and the illusions of the future.” So says a distinguished poet in this piece of homage to the contemporary craftsmen and craftswomen of the world.
Eagle and Hummingbird
The Quest for Heliotrope
A week in Dublin with the curious, verbivorous Joyceans.
King Gregor and the Fool
The Impeachment Man
Raoul Berger, violinist manque, impeachment scholar par excellence, fiddles his own tune, reports author Wills. His story is a remarkable one: like his groundbreaking study of impeachment, it has a surprise ending.
Diagnosis
Portrait of a Mirage
It takes a heap of loving, some of it a bit odd, to make a tome like this one. A mock remembrance of the days when Bloomsbury was in flower.
Why Ted Kennedy Can't Win, and Other Opinions About the Democrats
