[Review of] Jane Katz. Artists in Exile: American Odessey [Odyssey]

The major accomplishment of this collection of first-person reminiscences and third-person authorial interjection is its presentation of an impressive collection of imported talents, all of whom suffer (often gladly) the intellectual and spiritual privations of the West in exchange for its relative economic and social largess. To paraphrase Churchill, democracy (read capitalism ) is the worst form of government except for all the others. This book says this geometrically, with the lines and curves formed by the various interviews forming a final, however planular, shape