The offer to join the University of California faculty came soon after the New Year, when we had returned to Middletown, Connecticut, after our trip to Washington, D.C., recounted in the last chapter, where we renewed our life-long friendship with my mother, Edythe Polsby (later Mrs. H. X. Salzberger), the well-known capital hostess and short-order cook.

My wife had a slight cold, and so did not join me for the evening at the home of our neighbor, Professor Clement E. Vose, then Chairman of the Wesleyan University Department of Government. Vose was a sparkling raconteur and wit, a fact not known to many people. In consequence they were often puzzled by his conversation. He was in rare form that evening, no doubt stimulated by the presence of several of the wives of the younger faculty, and also by the guest of honor, Professor Samuel Krislov of the University of Minnesota, then on leave and teaching at Columbia. Vose described in detail the process by which he had acquired knowledge of efforts to repeal the 18th Amendment, and this in turn led naturally to a series of toasts to the memories of Messrs. Joseph Choate, John W. Davis, Harrison Tweed, and so on, all of whom had been in the forefront of that important movement.

At the heart of the debates which have resounded around political science these past few years are charges and countercharges as to the “politics” of the contenders. Terms like conservative, liberal and radical are no longer reserved for analysis of positions in the larger society; they have become part of the regular vocabulary with which political scientists evaluate their colleagues. This increase in visible and self-conscious political dissensus extends, of course, throughout the university, but it has left a special mark on political science and the other social sciences where the issues and objects of political disagreement are so enmeshed with the regular subject matter of the discipline.

In spite of all of the discussion, and the now seemingly general recognition that the politics of members of the profession has a lot to do with its development and contributions, we still don't have very much firm information on the distribution of political views among the approximately 6,000 faculty members regularly engaged in the teaching of political science in the United States. There have been a number of studies, of course, of party identification and voting behavior, showing political science to be one of the most Democratic fields in academe.

Like any nervous author, I anxiously awaited and carefully scrutinized each of the reviews of my book (The United Nations Force in Cyprus, Ohio State University Press, 1968). It's been a sobering experience reading the fifteen or so reviews that appeared. I suppose I should be pleased and hold my tongue, since nearly all the reviews are “favorable,” a few even embarrassingly gushy; but if my experience is typical, it seems to me that book reviewing as a form of intellectual communication is in such a poor state that we all ought to be concerned, if not alarmed. So I offer my personal observations and proposals to promote the time-honored purpose of stimulating the consideration and discussion that must precede reform.