print January 1992

John Gotti

(Editor’s note: the following transcript, edited for clarity, was made from a bug planted in the cell of John Gotti, reputed boss of the Gambino crime family, currently awaiting trial on federal racketeering charges in Manhattan. In this transcript Mr. Gotti, who has been held without bail for more than a year, is apparently talking to the ghost of Carlo Gambino.)

WHERE DOES IT END, CARLO? Where? Here I am, imprisoned by the state, denied bail, and my portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Pop gangster John Gotti. Immortalized by pop artist Andy Warhol. Could you have

books September 1991

Nuclear Landscapes

Nuclear Landscapes, by Peter Goin. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, 151 pp., 92 illustrations, $59.95, $29.95 paper.

WHEN I WAS A CHILD growing up in the Bronx, I used to spread out a map of the five boroughs, place the needle leg of a compass at ground zero (Times Square), adjust the pencil leg for one mile, then swivel the pencil leg around, describing the circle that would define the range of blast destruction. In this way I could see if my home would still be standing after, say, a one-megaton nuclear bomb leveled everything within the radius of 40 square blocks.

print March 1991

the New Prometheans

AT A PRESS CONFERENCE following the $6.1 billion sale of MCA, whose subsidiaries include Universal Studios and the Yosemite Park and Curry Company, to Matsushita Electric Industrial, Matsushita president Akio Tanii was asked by an American reporter what Tanii would do if Universal wanted to make a Japan-bashing film. Tanii, perhaps taken aback, responded, “Something like that shouldn’t emerge. Filmmakers must create films that are inspirational. . . . ”

This set off alarm bells in Hollywood. Censorship! Positive-think! (All things the studios would never deem to practice on themselves.) The

Michael Covino