FROM THE SPECIAL BOOKS ISSUE ARCHIVES.

• Position: "The Engineers and the Price System," "Islands in the Street: Gangs and American Urban Society" and "Thinking About Crime"

26

YEARS AGO

December 1996

You can't understand technology without understanding how people think about technology, and, of course, you need to know the bad ideas as well as the good. That's why I want to insert a recommendation of just one influentially bad book, Thorstein Veblen's The Engineers and the Price System (1921). Veblen ably advocates a leading myth of the machine age: the idea that material technology 'advances' because of people's collective efforts, only to be manipulated and hindered by capitalists for the sake of their private profits. This idea represents a profound misapprehension of the ways in which material technology is affected by investment, market prices, and property rights. Veblen recommended that capitalists be replaced by a 'Soviet of technicians' that could 'take care of the material welfare of the underlying population'--a proposal that is either chilling or comic, depending on the way you want to take it, but that is very much in the 20th-century spirit.

STEPHEN COX

Art and Artifacts

30

YEARS AGO

December 1992

To put it simply, [in Islands in the Street: Gangs and American Urban Society, author Martin Sanchez] Jankowski finds it much more fruitful to think of gangs in the context of politics than in the context of crime. Gangs carry on a very taut, intense dance with their communities. Sometimes they are resented for the drugs and violence they bring. But just as often, they are looked upon as neighborhood heroes, particularly when they drive out some alien force, which they often do... . Once formed, however, gangs are very careful to assess their place in the community. In particular, they are cautious not to commit petty crimes-robbery, burglary, auto theft--among the people they know. Instead, they judiciously export their crimes. Within their own neighborhoods, they specialize In services of a strong-arm variety. Gangs will torch buildings for landlords, carry out contracts against undesirables, offer 'protection' to storeowners, and run small gambling rackets (when not yet into dope dealing).

WILLIAM TUCKER

Hangin' With the Homeboys

46

YEARS AGO

November 1976

After a decade during which liberals and the news media closed their eyes to soaring crime rates, crime finally surfaced in the seventies as a live issue. Unfortunately, the response, both in rhetoric and in government programs, generally bore little relation to the actual problem. The virtue of [James Q.] Wilson's book [Thinking About...