Robert Justin Goldstein

Kicking the Commies out of Public Housing: The Rise and Fall of the Gwinn Amendment, 1952–1956

In a 1962 book review of a compilation of Federal Appeals Court Judge Henry Edgarton’s rulings, an anonymous writer declared that the so-called ‘‘Gwinn Amendment’’ had ‘‘reached a pitch of vindictiveness which it is difficult to believe of the legislature of any civilized state.’’ The amendment, which has been almost entirely forgotten today, was passed by Congress in 1952 in an attempt to ban members of organizations listed as ‘‘subversive’’ by the US attorney general from residing in federally-subsidized housing. The amendment (and its administration by public housing officials) was rejected on constitutional or other grounds by numerous federal and state courts, and was eventually abandoned for supposedly technical reasons by the Justice Department in 1956, after having consuming thousands of hours of legal time and resulting, at the most, in the eviction of a handful of alleged ‘‘subversives’’ from public housing. The demise of the Gwinn Amendment rather precisely coincided with the general decline of the post-World War II Red Scare and, in fact, helped to put a few nails in its coffin.

Reading Culture and Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century France (review)

ing popular representations of the flâneur: Louis Huart’s Physiologie du flâneur (1841) and Albert Smith’s The Natural History of the Idler upon Town (1848). Each parodies the field guide, the former identifying subspecies of flâneurs, badauds, and musards in Paris, the latter noting London’s distinct categories of idlers, mooners and loungers. Huart’s social satire stays fairly light; the obese flâneur will find it is only comfortable to stroll in Paris “pendant les mois où l’on mange des huîtres” (84). The guidebook advises that the pleasures of flânerie will be lost on the very rich (they won’t enjoy all that walking) and on the poor (one must be able to savor the views of Paris at a leisurely pace, not in hot pursuit by one’s creditors). Among the many variants of flâneur, Huart includes a chapter on “le gamin de Paris”: “il ne dort pas, il se promène toujours, fait des poires sur les murailles, joue des claquettes, et finit sa journée comme il l’a commencée, en flânant” (145). Perhaps of all the satirical subspecies documented in Huart’s Physiologie, this chapter on the figure of the gamin is the most distantly removed from Benjamin’s reckoning of the alienated artist. The omnipresence of the mischievous urban child, ever in motion and always observing the events of the city, recontextualizes how the original notions of flânerie were conceived. At issue for Huart and his contemporaries are questions of how the city is being actively experienced (see, for example, the chapter on identifying false flâneurs, who claim the title but never walk the streets), and not more metaphysical questions of the flâneur’s intellectual and emotional composition, a turn that takes place at the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Smith’s Natural History starts with the acknowledgment that many see the streets outside as mere bricks and mortar. “But we look upon them as cheap exhibitions – al fresco national galleries of the most interesting kind, furnishing ever-varying pictures of character or incident” (209). Thus begins Smith’s slyly crafted meta-spectacle, in which, through both text and illustrations, readers observe flâneurs observing the city. Meticulously annotated and rich in bibliographic resources, Flaneurs & Idlers adeptly responds to seemingly contradictory needs in the field. its concise argument provides those invested in the rapidly multiplying applications of flânerie with a compelling reminder of its origins, while at the same time working against the cliché of flânerie as uniquely Parisian or constrained by any one theoretician. in retracing the flâneur’s steps to his less well known satirical beginnings, Rose offers illuminating perspective on what such satire lays bare: provocative insights on class and the experience of daily life in the nineteenth-century metropolis.

Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain and International Communism, 1945–1950

does not cite the relevant scholarship on Truman’s presidency or the Cold War. Evans refuses to admit that McCarthy made any major mistakes—just minor errors. He especially minimizes McCarthy’s false charge that George C. Marshall was part of a conspiracy to turn over China to the Chinese Communists. While Evans grudgingly admits that McCarthy’s attack went too far, he does not appreciate the fact that this was an aspersion upon the character and patriotism of Marshall—one of the most admired men in America and widely regarded as the ‘‘architect of victory’’ in World War Two. Readers hoping for a scholarly and original examination of McCarthy should look elsewhere. Like Arthur Herman and Ann Coulter, Evans has failed to shake the traditional view of McCarthy.