Word: 20th
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite the complexities caused by both U.S. and Soviet interests in the outcome, the Falklands showdown remained the oddity it has been from the beginning: a case of 19th century gunboat confrontation in the late 20th century. The last-minute oscillations between peace and war were a product of the very nature of the face-off. Britain's firm conviction throughout has been that only by means of the steady escalation of both military and diplomatic pressure could Argentina be forced to relinquish a prize that it had taken by an illegal armed invasion. As Prime Minister Thatcher...
...20th century, socialism as a visionary ideal has appealed to such diverse religious thinkers as Protestant Theologian Paul Tillich and the Catholic clergy who advocate a quasi-Marxist "liberation theology" in Latin America. "Any serious Christian must be a socialist," Tillich once said. Yet those who are hostile to capitalism, Novak writes, tend to compare its flaws in practice with a utopian vision of socialism, ignoring the reality that socialism in practice tends to be economically incoherent and politically repressive. Democratic socialism is a doomed dream because it ignores the "necessary connection between economic liberty and political liberty." A democratic...
Emerson was the rhapsodist of beginnings. In the disintegration of Puritanism, he cut loose from the granite Thou Shalt Nots of his forebears, seven generations of New England clergy. The 20th century has apocalyptic fantasies about the end of things. The trajectory of our thoughts tends to be downward. We are transfixed by Auschwitz and Hiroshima and Cambodia and Bangladesh and lesser barbarisms. The 20th century has rarely felt transcendental. What does Emerson's optimism have to say to such a civilization...
...starts out with Byron and winds up in Dachau. To be fair, that is not all of romanticism, but it is the worst of it, and the worst has done the world a good deal of damage. For the 18th century, man was man-size. For the 19th and 20th, his size has been boundless, which has meant that he has had little sense of his own proportion in relation to everything else-resulting either in exaggerated self-pity or in self-exaltation-and practically no stable appreciation of his own worth...
Every publishing venture is a gamble, but this one seems a bigger flyer than most reissued works by 19th century American authors, offered at a late 20th century price. And the Library of America, the new publisher of these four new-old books, has already committed itself to a long roll of future bets. Next fall it will issue beginning collections of Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, and two volumes of Jack London; in a year, it promises another pair of books devoted to Melville and Hawthorne, plus two volumes of the writings of Historian Francis Parkman. The library...