Word: books
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...time of Widener's construction, book preservation theory was about as watertight as the ship that sank old Harry. Even the most knowledgeable authorities thought that sunlight and fresh air kept old tomes looking new--hence the light courts. But half a century later, enlightened book preservationists sounded the alarm. Since little could be done under Mrs. Widener's guidelines, the family agreed to waive the ban on construction in the 1960s, and minor changes were made...
...Beth and Carrie fall into step behind the black-clad boys. Nearing Quincy St., the girls spot a classmate and her oversized L.L. Bean book...
...brother's cut-rate encyclopedia, suspiciously slim volumes that I would ransack for sixth-grade book report roughage, featured an innovative learning tool under the entry on the Human Body: seven consecutive pages of transparencies, each devoted to a different organic system. Page 1's skin'n'hair'n'nails fit neatly over Page 2's spindly circulation road map which in turn lay on Page 3's inexplicably adipose-yellow GI tracts or Halloween skeleton man, and so on. At a glance, you saw and saw through man instantly, as through, yes, X-ray specs, a three-dimensional simultaneity...
...Such a book would have two parts: first, it would cry, at length, the ailing cry of the Republic, "O tempora! O mores". Then it would, at length, go earnestly about showing us how to improve both our tempora and our mores. This would be a project no less admirable in our day and no more novel than in Cicero's. And maybe, like Cicero, it would point to happier places and simpler times, not as things to go back to but as suggestions for what we can make of what's before us now. Such a book, I think...
...book, like his, that goes farther and accuses irony of corrupting public spirit goes too far. Cowardice, tact and irresponsibility all, as Purdy points out, often enlist irony in disavowing publicly a private conviction. For example, someone might say, "Why do I want to work in investment banking, you said? Oh, for the safe money, of course." Most people, after all, don't want to get caught holding an unfashionable belief. What's the news? But my purpose here is not to defend an everyday kind of hypocrisy. Nor, on the other hand, is it to defend the high tradition...