Books Reviewed

Reviews of Why Men Rebel, The Mugging and The police and the Publi

Hogarth and his Unholy Age

Samuel Johnson, that eighteenth-century English authority on human learning and life, had a surprisingly low regard for painting. But he knew the first great British artist, William Hogarth, and publicly applauded the first art exhibitions in England. Johnson would have found an equally good reason to applaud Bridgewater State College’s Hogarth Festival in October of 1982. This exhibition of twenty-five, beautifully preserved prints was a splendid sampling of Hogarth’s artistic legacy selected from the collection owned by the Judd Family of New Jersey and on loan from Monmouth College, New Jersey through Professor Vincent DiMattio. All in all, the Hogarth Festival afforded spectators a rare opportunity to glimpse the energies and excesses of Henry Fielding’s England and Johnson’s London. To grasp the uniqueness of Hogarth’s artistry is to take into account the more conventional aesthetic standards of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the century’s most famous portrait painter. Reynolds hungered after the epic dignity of the grand style in painting and found nothing of it in Hogarth’s works. Reynolds’ later Discourses held up Michelangelo and the spectacular Sistine Chapel for veneration and imitation: “The style of Michael Angelo, which I have compared to ... the language of the gods, now no longer exists, as it did in the fifteenth century.” No doubt, the differences between Michelangelo of the Sistine Chapel and Hogarth of Leicester Fields, London could not be more dramatic. Whereas the Italian master executed his epic subject of the biblical history of humankind, the engraver captured extraordinary moral insights in the ordinary middle-class culture of England. Hogarth’s contemporaries still respected classical-Renaissance grandeur, but a secular, fact-minded modern sensibility now flourished

Untying a Judicial Knot: Examining the Constitutional Infirmities of Extrajudicial Service and Executive Review in U.S. Extradition Procedure

Consider the following situation. An investment banker embezzles millions of dollars from a bank in Italy and transfers the funds to an account in the United States. While he is vacationing in the United States, federal marshals apprehend him pursuant to a request by the Italian government. They bring him before a federal district court judge sitting as an extradition magistrate in the local federal courthouse. After determining that the evidence presented meets the requisite level of criminality, the judge declares that the banker is properly extraditable and binds the case over to the Secretary of State. The President, however, wishes to express his displeasure with Italy\u27s failure to lend assistance during a recent military maneuver. He sends a memo to the State Department indicating that the banker should not be surrendered to Italy. So as not to embarrass high-ranking officials of the Italian government, the Secretary of State issues a statement specifying that the extradition magistrate incorrectly concluded that sufficient evidence of criminality existed. From the perspective of the hypothetical banker and other individuals accused of committing crimes in foreign jurisdictions, the prospect of this type of executive reprieve would seem a welcome possibility., Recently, though, one individual awaiting extradition from the United States successfully argued in federal district court that the possibility of such review violated accepted principles of separation of powers. Specifically, he argued that the statute governing extradition afforded members of the executive branch the opportunity to review and revise decisions of federal judges sitting as extradition magistrates. While this position has not been adopted in other jurisdictions, it has created uncertainty in current extradition proceedings and has affected the negotiation of several extradition treaties. Moreover, in light of the fact that the statute is nearly one hundred fifty years old, a finding of unconstitutionality was novel and unexpected. Because the opinion declaring the extradition procedure unconstitutional was later vacated at the appellate level for lack of jurisdiction, the appellate court did not reach the issue of whether the procedure violated separation of powers, essentially leaving this an open issue for subsequent consideration. This Note will endeavor to undertake such a consideration

Functional polyesters produced by pseudomonads/

The ability of two different pseudomonads, Pseudomonas oleovorans and Pseudomonas putida to metabolize and produce polymers from functional carbon substrates, in particular phenyl-containing substrates was investigated. A comparison of the two bacteria revealed P. putida to be the superior microorganism in that it produced higher cell yields and polymer yields regardless of the substrate on which it was grown. The bacterial polyester produced when P. oleovorans was grown on a mixture of 5-phenylvaleric acid and nonanoic acid, included both a homopolymer, poly-3-hydroxyphenylvalerate (PHPV) and a copolymer, poly-3-hydroxynonanoate (PHN). The intracellular location of each of these polymers was determined by selective staining of the inclusion body granules with ruthenium tetraoxide. Examination of the stained granules by transmission electron microscopy showed that both types of polyesters occurred sequentially in the same granule. Poly-3-hydroxynonanoate was synthesized first, and was present in the center of the granule, while poly-3-hydroxyphenylvalerate accumulated afterwards around the PHN inclusion body. The enzymes associated with the inclusion bodies were separated using sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). In all cases, two polymerase enzymes of molecular weights of 59 and 55 KD were present, which suggests that the same polymerase enzymes may have been responsible for the production of both PHN and PHPV. In addition, attempts were made to produce a random copolymer containing both alkyl and phenylalkyl repeat unit by varying the growth conditions, but a mixture of two polymers was produced instead. PHPV is a homopolymer and 100% isotactic. However, it does not exhibit crystallinity. Various different annealing experiments carried out on PHPV did not result in the induction of crystallinity. However, a crystalline phenyl-containing polymer, poly-3-hydroxy-5-(4\sp\prime-tolyl)valerate was produced when either P. oleovorans or P. putida was grown on 5-(4\sp\prime-tolyl)valeric acid. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a crystalline phenyl-containing microbially produced polyester. Intracellular degradation studies were carried out on P. oleovorans cells which contained either PHN, PHPV or a blend of PHN/PHPV. Fairly rapid intracellular degradation occurred when PHN was the sole storage polymer. The intracellular degradation rate of PHPV was much slower. However, when both polymers were present as intracellular storage polymer the rate of degradation of PHPV was greater than when PHPV was the sole intracellular storage polymer. It is possible that both polymers are degraded by the same intracellular depolymerase, which is more efficient in the presence of PHN

Theories of Urban Poverty and Implications for Public Housing Policy

Urban poverty has been the subject of sociological and political debate for more than a century. In this article I examine theories of urban poverty and their place in American housing policy. I first discuss theories that have arisen out of the sociological and policy discourse on urban poverty and the research that supports and challenges these theories. I then review current public housing initiatives and discuss the impact of these theories on current housing policy