Word: books
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Move over, Zeke Zzzypt of Chicago and Vladimir Zzzyd of Miami. Few have proved more zealous in trying to be the last personal name in a local telephone book than Zachary Zzzzzzzzzra, who has brought up the rear of San Francisco's directory for eight of the past 15 years. Several years ago, when he was just plain Zachary Zzzra, Zzzzzzzzzra discovered to his sorrow that he had been zapped from last place by Zelda Zzzwramp, and so he added another z to his name. Last year, as Zzzzra. he was infuriated when he lost put to Vladimir Zzzzzzabakov...
Zzzzzzzzzra is actually Bill Holland, a 59-year-old painting contractor who uses his telephone name as an advertising gimmick, telling potential customers to look him up in the back of the book in stead of handing out business cards. The listing yields jobs, but it also brings a few zingers: Holland has received crank calls in the middle of the night from as far away as Australia. And his phone bill often totals over $400. "People making illegal calls from phone booths look up the last name in the book and charge them to me," he explains...
They are the most prestigious prizes in the world. Besides a hefty stipend (now $190,000) and a gold medal, they bring instant fame, flooding winners with speaking invitations, job offers, book contracts and honorary degrees. So heady is the honor that Physicist Tsung Dao Lee, who became a Nobel laureate at the precocious age of 31, wondered what he could do for the rest of his life. Indeed, as the time of the announcements approaches each fall, many contenders are so afflicted with Nobel fever they literally jump whenever their telephones ring...
...violin is Yehudi Menuhin's first concern, but not his only one. The 63-year-old virtuoso is an outspoken opponent of energy waste and pollution: to help eliminate both, he is currently test-riding a battery-powered bicycle. Meanwhile at the 31st Frankfurt Book Fair last week, Menuhin received the booksellers' peace prize of $14,000 as "a man who understands music as a medium for peace." Using the medium as a measure of his appreciation, Menuhin rewarded his audience with the chaconne from Bach's Partita in D Minor...
...executions in the late 1960s and early '70s when radical thought held sway in New York City and many other parts of the country as well. As the editor of Commentary and a leader of centrist opinion, Podhoretz was a prime target of the Manhattan Jacobins. In a book recapturing the impassioned polemics of the era in sometimes powerful and sometimes sluggish prose, he tells how he survived the literary pummeling and went on to organize the counterrevolution...