Word: abyss
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...needs to be put in perspective. Despite his much-vaunted heroism, he failed in many ways to measure up to the standards of either a great writer or a great man.A quick glance into the biographies behind the marbled busts of the literary pantheon is enough to reveal an abyss that separates these two distinctions. The debauched aesthetes of the 19th century, intoxicated with les fleurs du mal and the Baudelairean myth of a mysterious alchemy between vice and lyrical vision, now look frivolous from the vantage point of this more cynical era. Over time, evil has lost much...
...catalog, she wonders why she and others are so interested in the convicts' stories: "Is it a sense of impotence of our effect, of our power to act in the world in a meaningful way? Are these women's stories a life affirmation to counteract the existential abyss that can sometimes fill our horizons in our time?" For Maureen Upfold, the message is simpler: Know who you are and where you came from, and don't waste a second being ashamed of what you find...
...Zimbabwe's Turmoil Prime Minister Robert Mugabe helped "liberate" the people of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe from white rule 30 years ago, but since then he has led them into an abyss of misery. His only goal has been to hang on to power - and while the Western world is shocked by his abuses, no other African leader has had the gumption to unequivocally condemn his tyranny and misrule. Allan de Sousa, Lisbon...
...chief of staff, of misleading him about their role in the scandal, which caused him to effectively lie to the press. When the truth comes out, he receives a whipping at the hands of the White House reporters. "I could feel something fall out of me into the abyss as each reporter took a turn whacking me," he writes. "It was my reputation crumbling away, bit by bit. And my affection for the job eventually followed...
...homeless, according to official sources. Horrific videos from the disaster zone--the twisted bodies of children layered like fossils in the sediment of a pancaked concrete schoolhouse, the desperate decision to amputate the legs of a dying girl pinned in rubble--forced the Chinese people to look into the abyss. And reflected was the image of a more compassionate nation than many had perhaps expected, where tens of millions of Chinese lined up for hours to make sure their donations of cash or food or clothes were accepted and where tens of thousands of others like the Wus left their...