Modernity and its discontents: American Academia and the Survival of Marxist Ideas. By Dario Fernandez-Morera. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996. 294 pp. $62.95.) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. By James C. Scott. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998. 444 pp. $37.50; $16.95, paper.) Conquest and Cultures: An International History. By Thomas Sowell. (New York: Basic Books, 1998. 493 pp. $35.00.)