American Century

I found "Kremlin May Move to Rein In Democracy" (Feb. 26) to be one of the most chilling examples of what has really been going on in the world during the past year. There was once an American who bore witness to the bread riot that brought down the czar in Russia. In 1917 America, we bore silent witness to the dawn of the American Century. After World War I, the U.S. and its allies embarked on what was to become our de facto foreign policy regarding the conquered: We would help rebuild those nations that waged war on us. We continued this policy after World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam.

What's happening the next few weeks: * The Whitney Museum of American Art today opens "The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-2000." Only the first half of the show, examining the years 1900-1950, will be presented now, with the second half to follow in October. In all, 1,400 works--from painting to design to material on dance and film--will explore the changing American character in the 20th century through the eyes of artists. 945 Madison Ave. Open Tues.-Wed., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Thurs.

Harold Evans remembers his first impression of America. It was 1956, and the then-28-year-old, a reporter and an editorial writer for England's Manchester Evening News, had arrived in New York as a recipient of a Harkness Fellowship, a two-year postgraduate program for study and travel in the United States. " 'Find the real America,' is what they said," Evans recalls, noting that the project ultimately took him from New York to Chicago and on through the South and West--a total of 40 states.

BOOKS An Evening With John Waters The trash cinema icon lets his singular tastes for the outlandish, unsung, arcane and maligned run rampant in one bombastic volume entitled "Role Models." Sturdy is the book that can corral such far-flung influences as Little Richard, artist Mike Kelley, Johnny Mathis and Manson follower Leslie Van Houten. Actress and author Carrie Fisher is more than up to the task of teasing out the finer points of the Waters worldview for a discussion and signing presented by Aloud at Central Library.

SWOOPING, SENSUOUS curves were a specialty of American architect Eero Saarinen (1910-1961), whose TWA Building at New York's J.F.K. Airport vaguely resembles a bird flapping its wings. Like many a great architect, Saarinen was also interested in designing furniture: "I think of architecture as the total of man's man-made physical surroundings," he wrote. "I believe very strongly that the whole field of design is all one thing." So it comes as no surprise that the graceful, sculptural pedestal chair (1957)

Is Japan the new champ? The fashionable subject this year seems to be Japan as superpower, as the Asian nation's economic success has some people talking as if Japan is Mike Tyson and the United States a battered Michael Spinks. "Japan is pushing toward center stage," said historian Paul Kennedy, author of "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," in a recent Time magazine article. "The American century is over," chimed in Clyde Prestowitz Jr.

Religious mutual funds may be gaining in popularity among scandal-weary investors as their secular rivals struggle to lure money in a tough stock market. But Christian money manager MMA Praxis showed this week that it is experiencing some of the same problems the rest of the industry faces. The firm is slapping extra fees on small investors as the company and its rivals cope with the long stock slide, which has chipped away at the fees they earn from managing money. An investor in an MMA Praxis fund whose assets fall below the $2,000 mark will be charged an annual fee of $14, beginning in December.

You're probably not thinking about the history of consumerism as you jostle for that last talking doll on the store shelf. But those Christmas dollars of yours slipping into the cash register are adding to a Promethean American story that continues to transform our world. Certainly this year's numbers alone are staggering: Retail Christmas sales are expected to pass the $51-billion mark, with an estimated $490 spent on gifts per household.

Nations, like men and women, have their intellectual infancy, but it should not go on too long. Every ambitious country must at some point learn to write its name in what the Victorians called the book of ideas. For a set of complex and not always flattering reasons, it is only in our century that America has made almost every branch of human learning its province. One result is that until the 1920s, it remained fashionable for educated Europeans to echo the wounding impertinence of the 19th-Century English wit who asked: "Who reads an American book?"

JUNE Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl Daniel Pinkwater Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pinkwater merges brings a magical realist perspective to YA fiction in the third volume of the series that begins with "The Yggyssey" and "The Neddiad." The Clock Without a Face Gus Twintig McSweeney's This fable for kids includes riddles and a real-live treasure hunt: Nine of the 12 emerald-encrusted clock numbers buried across the U.S. remain to be found.