Books in Brief: The Power of the Unknown Citizen

The Power of the Unknown Citizen, by Paul Kresh (Lippincott, $4.95). The thesis is that “the citizen has far more power than he realizes, not only on election day but every day.” The documentation is thumbnail on a couple of dozen obscurities who tipped the scales of justice, or got the streets swept, or purified the Raritan. The book is marred by carelessness (Storm King is not “pristine”: a highway scars its eastern slope; the St. Croix flows “past” Stillwater and Bayport, not Minneapolis and St. Paul; Mr. Kresh should have, on page 202, his “essential agreement” not his “essential argument” with society) and by imbalance (nine-tenths of the heroes are of the Left) and by superficiality (there is no discussion of the central point: How to create and perpetuate a social order in which the individual has real rights, and whence come these rights?). But there’s an edible nut in every husk. I would commend the book for its description of the selection process behind the Letters column of the New York Times and for the simple and dignified biographical sketches of people who did not have to freak out in order to assert their individual being over against the State.

WR

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W. F. Rickenbacker

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The Power of the Unknown Citizen, by Paul Kresh (Lippincott, $4.95). The thesis is that “the citizen has far more power than he realizes, not only on election day but every day.” The documentation is thumbnail on a couple of dozen obscurities who tipped the scales of justice, or got the streets swept, or purified the Raritan. The book is marred by carelessness (Storm King is not “pristine”: a highway scars its eastern slope; the St. Croix flows “past” Stillwater and Bayport, not Minneapolis and St. Paul; Mr. Kresh should have, on page 202, his “essential agreement” not his “essential argument” with society) and by imbalance (nine-tenths of the heroes are of the Left) and by superficiality (there is no discussion of the central point: How to create and perpetuate a social order in which the individual has real rights, and whence come these rights?). But there’s an edible nut in every husk. I would commend the book for its description of the selection process behind the Letters column of the New York Times and for the simple and dignified biographical sketches of people who did not have to freak out in order to assert their individual being over against the State.