Word: betterment
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...wasn't that Dunne lacked status. His grandfather was a grocer who built himself up to community pillar, and his father was a respected surgeon. Dunne went to Princeton University and perfected talking through his nose, the better to honk down the lower orders. But once a Harp always a Harp, a lesson driven home by another old institution, the U.S. Army. German whores, barracks mates with tattoos, the general cynicism toward military routine, all validated his own outlook. Truth be told -- and Dunne tells it -- he is fascinated by life on the wild side...
Zagat counters that several palates are better than one and that his reviewers hardly lack for experience, since they eat out on average 3.5 times a week. Burly and gregarious, Zagat does better than that: about five times weekly, plus table-hopping jags, in which he eyeballs 20 or so establishments just to check out odors, ambience and customer enthusiasm...
...backward. The first bombs missed their objective by a hair's breadth. We turned and could see the bridge already full of smoke. One of the other bombers was more accurate than ours. My pilot bit his lip. The bridge was still standing, but this time our bombs were better aimed. I saw a truck full of soldiers tossed into the air and an armored car fall into the river. The arches of the bridge were precipitated into the river one after another, forcing up high columns of water. Some soldiers floundered in the ruins. Others succeeded in reaching...
...dropping propaganda leaflets on German military installations (among the cautious Britons' other preparations for war: killing all poisonous snakes in the London zoo). The French attempted only one feeble probe against Germany's ill- defended western frontier. And the Poles' own political and military leaders, perhaps considering discretion the better part of valor, were already abandoning Warsaw to its fate...
...were no better and no worse than our fathers, who 25 years earlier had been drawn into the First World War. And we were no better or worse than our children, who today pass judgment upon us. We, like the soldiers of other countries, were trained to obedience. We had not been brought up free to demonstrate our opposition under the protection of a liberal constitution. We had the same sensitivities that all humans have, but during a time of difficult decisions, we lacked political vision...