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New York Revisited (1992), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

The works discussed in this article include: City of the World: New York and Its People, by Bernie Bookbinder; New York, New York, by Oliver E. Allen; New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time, by Thomas Bender; The Heart of the World, by Nik Cohn; The Art of the City: Views and Versions of New York, by Peter Conrad; After Henry, by Joan Didion; Literary New York: A History and Guide, by Susan Edmiston and Linda D. Cirino; Our …

Good-Bye To All That: The Rise And Demise Of Irish America (1993), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

The works discussed in this article include: The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley 1874-1958, by Jack Beatty; JFK: Reckless Youth, by Nigel Hamilton; Textures of Irish America, by Lawrence J. McCaffrey; and Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston, by James M. O'Toole.

Reprinted from New England Journal of Public Policy 9, no. 1 (1993), article 9.

Good-Bye To All That: The Rise And Demise Of Irish America, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

The works discussed in this article include: The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley 1874-1958, by Jack Beatty; JFK: Reckless Youth, by Nigel Hamilton; Textures of Irish America, by Lawrence J. McCaffrey; and Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston, by James M. O'Toole.

The Vision Thing, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

In "The Vision Thing," Shaun O'Connell reviews a number of books whose subject matter is not merely the presidential election of 1988, but the impact of image politics in the age of the thirty-second sound bite. He quotes Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death: "Just as the television commercial empties itself of authentic product information so that it can do its psychological work of [pseudotherapy], image politics empties itself of authentic political sustenance for the same reason."

The works discussed in this article include: All by Myself: The Unmaking of a Presidential Campaign, by Christine M. Black …

Recommended Readings, 1988, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Shaun O'Connell reviews a selection of readings for would-be presidents. None of our recent presidents — going back to Dwight Eisenhower — has been a reader of "imaginative literature." While this is not, perhaps, entirely unexpected and may be indicative of the pressures on their time rather than an intrinsic aversion to literature, it should nevertheless at least lead us to ask whether their visions of who we are and our possibilities are limited by their failure to "confront some of the implications raised by serious works of the imagination, works that force us to face mysteries in the world …

Book Reviews: Divided Houses, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

These books are an odd lot, landscapes and structures of eccentric designs: (1) a collection of stories by Frank Conroy, his first book since Stop Time (1967). Where Stop Time was a detailed, narrative autobiography that read like fiction, Midair is an often generalized, fragmented fiction with obvious autobiographical implications; (2) the weird diary of Arthur Crew Inman, over 1,600 pages of his often vile obsessions, handsomely edited and curiously published by Harvard University Press; (3) a study of nuclear anxiety over five decades, in the form of a polemical novel, by Tim O'Brien; (4) a collection of poems, also …