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Books: Facing It

THE PORNOGRAPHY OF POWER by Lionel Rubinoff. 239 pages. Quadrangle. $6.95.

Evil has fallen on bad days. In an age of H-bombs and death camps, its influence in the world has hardly diminished. But men's ways of thinking and talking about evil have altered. The fine old dramatic metaphors, from the Serpent in the Garden to Gustave Doré's sulfurous Lucifer, have lost their power to terrify. Yet modern substitutes are equally unsatisfying. Social scientists reduce evil to data. Intellectuals expose its banality. The public seems able to consider the demonic only in the...

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MICHAEL BREEN, vice president of the Truman Project, a national security leadership institute, on the possible outcome of the U.S. and Israel's tough stance on Iran's nuclear program
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