The End of the World: A History,...

The End of the World: A History, Otto Friedrich (Fromm: $11.95). This tour of cataclysms in human history--from the sacking of Rome and the Inquisition to Auschwitz and nuclear war--is guided by the author’s sometimes humorous but more often caustic comments about human nature. Otto Friedrich is not encouraged by our past, and, thus, this is largely a cynical book. Friedrich’s cynicism has less to do with historical realities, however, than with his own colored perspective. Placing humanity between a rock and a hard place, Friedrich is as disturbed by our “widespread desire to avoid thinking about an impending catastrophe” as he is by our tendency to talk about it with “nervous loquacity.” To symbolize our skill at evading thoughts of calamity, Friedrich quotes the parting words of a Strategic Air Command officer who has just given him a tour of a defense facility: “Well, goodby, then, and happy Mother’s Day.” We’re supposed to find this comment absurd, of course, because the officer works at a missile facility. The irony is used so often in these pages, however, that it becomes cheap. Similarly, Friedrich cites our superstitious explanations for disaster but fails to analyze them in any depth: During the Black Death, he writes, astronomers thought crises were caused by a grand conjunction of the three “superior planets,” while town authorities outlawed the wearing of black clothing, gambling and work after noon on Saturdays. A senior editor at Time, Friedrich refrains from exploring questions that might suggest insights into the nature of humans or culture. He mentions, for example, a connection between the erosion of the Aquinas’ Scholastic system and the realization that the church and its priests were unable to fight the Black Death, but he doesn’t look at how a heightened awareness of mortality led to the rapid spread of mysticism, the proliferation of charlatans, witch doctors and seers. Nor is a solid rationale given for placing the Black Death (biological destruction) and the Inquisition (cultural manipulation) under the same rubric. The questions that do grab Friedrich’s attention are more rhetorical: Do “we see Auschwitz as the epitome of life itself, an incarnation of the darkest principles of Machiavelli and Hobbes, or . . . (do) we see it as a mirror image of the true life?” Even here, though, answers are not pursued with philosophical rigor. An exception: Friedrich does seem sufficiently moved by the work of artists such as Petrarch to forgive their superstitions. “She closed her eyes,” wrote Petrarch after his lover suddenly fell ill and died of the plague, “and in sweet slumber lying, / her spirit tiptoed from its lodging-place. / It’s folly to shrink in fear, if this is dying; for death looked lovely in her lovely face.”

The Mythology of North America, John Bierhorst (Quill: $6.95). In the Southwest Indian story of the Emergence, the First World is called Black World. An island floating in mist, it is inhabited by ants and other insect-people until pairs of clouds touch each other, giving life to First Man and First Woman. As prominent in the region as the Book of Genesis is among Euro-Americans, the story is one of many that are told and classified in this thoughtful work, which claims to be the first systematic overview of Indian mythology in 70 years. John Bierhorst’s typology--dividing North American Indian culture into 11 regions--doesn’t generate new, revolutionary insights about mythology; it will, however, open doors for non-specialists, enabling them to see how tribes are affected by climate, technology and nearby cultures. Myths in the Northwest Coast, for example, reflect the tribes’ quest for wealth. For the Eskimos, on the other hand, myths have helped kill time during endless winter nights (a role becoming obsolete with the advent of satellite TV). Types of stories vary greatly between cultures but reasons for storytelling do not. The myths profiled here both instill a sense of security (granting a people trusteeship of the land, for example, with the consent of unseen powers) and prompt reflection on psychological insecurities. An example of the latter is the popular myth about a “Trickster” who falls in love with his own daughter. He pretends to die, advising the young women that as soon as he is dead she will meet a stranger whom she must not fail to take as her husband. After digging out of his grave, the Trickster reappears in disguise and marries his own daughter. Bierhorst recounts these stories with enthusiasm, but this is not a work of interpretation. He does not explore whether the Trickster myth is similar to Freud’s meditations on Oedipus, or whether it reflects, as Jung believed, concealed desires that have been forbidden by normal society. Nor do we find out whether the anthropologist Franz Boas was right when he claimed that many Indian myths are a form of “primitive fiction” rather than a subtle, coded reflections. In any case, it doesn’t matter, for Bierhorst recounts these stories as they were first told--to elicit an individual, subjective reaction.

The New Venturers: Inside the High-Stakes World of Venture Capital, John. W. Wilson (Addison Wesley: $10.95). Journalists, TV and film producers, and (most recently) politicians traditionally have been seen as society’s gatekeepers, selecting from a torrent of ideas and events a few that are worthy of our attention. In these lively pages, John W. Wilson, a senior editor at Business Week, adds a more shadowy group of people to the list: venture capitalists. Playing an even more pervasive screening role, venture capitalists, Wilson writes, “choose from hundreds or thousands of proposals . . . only a handful to receive the infusion of capital that will turn them into living enterprises.” Intending this book to be an objective journalistic overview, Wilson lets such large corporations as Intel voice concern that the small entrepreneurs will create overly competitive situations and damage our ability to compete internationally . It’s clear, however, that Wilson’s heart lies with the underdog: the “ambitious, creative” venture capitalist. Caught up in the enthusiasm inherent in this “high-stakes world,” Wilson doesn’t seem concerned that these new entrepreneurs base their decisions on little more than “hunches and blind intuition.” Many investment decisions, in fact, are made even before a specific product has been sketched on the drafting board--for example, California’s Sequest Corp. (an offshoot of Intel) got investors to give $5.2 million for only a third of its equity with only a “vague notion” of the microcomputer super-chip they planned to sell. With the race for new technology steadily picking up pace, though, educated guesses are about the best we can expect: In the near future at least, it seems impossible for investors to keep track of specific developments in the top four areas now drawing venture capital: computer, communications, electronics and medical research.

NOTEWORTHY: The Makeover, Marcia Biederman (Academy Chicago: $4.95). Muriel Axelrod is a secretary for Lovell Munitions in San Francisco who suspects that her company is illegally exporting arms to South Africa. She becomes involved with a radical group, starts spying on her company, and soon finds her life in danger. Defendant: A Psychiatrist on Trial for Medical Malpractice, Sara C. Charles and Eugene Kennedy (Vintage: $7.95), reflects on the growing wave of malpractice litigation in America while recounting how Sara Charles was sued by one of her patients who attempted suicide. Midair, Frank Conroy (Penguin: $5.95). Widely acclaimed short stories in which men reflect on their past while trying to grow closer to their sons, cope with their fears and expand their awareness. Elementary Education, Mark O’Donnell (Faber & Faber: $6.95). Trendy humor from a “Saturday Night Live” writer organized around the curriculum of an imaginary college.