Word: caustically
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Raisin might be somber, or merely sentimental, if its milieu were not so sharply observed, its speech so flavorful, and its infectious sense of fun so caustic. Much of the laughter wells up around Beneatha, a girl of earnest intellectual fads. When a Nigerian boy friend introduces her to a bit of African lore, she promptly decks herself out as "the queen of the Nile," and whirls across the room to click off a jazz program ("Enough of this assimilationist junk...
...unsealed air pockets and stage mock U-boat fights. Annapolis trained, with an outstanding submariner record in World War II and Korea (Trutta, Tang, Wahoo), Anderson was tapped for duty with Admiral Hyman Rickover's NRB (Naval Reactors Branch) in January 1956. First came an interview with the caustic godfather of the atomic sub. The Rickover Takeover was part of Navy lore, including such props as a chair with shortened front legs, designed to slide an interviewee forward in disease while a deftly flicked Venetian blind let in eye-dazzling bursts...
...Pope. As Secretary of State, he is a combination of prime minister and foreign secretary-a field he has been thoroughly familiar with as Pius XII's Pro-Secretary of State for Extraordinary Affairs. He is a jovial lover of art and music, with a Vatican reputation for caustic wit. His hobby: Villa Nazareth, an orphanage for boys, which he founded...
...tour, Marian fired off fair warning to her father in Massachusetts: "See to it that Boston snubs her off the stage." Marian's letters to papa were a Sunday ritual, and in them she re-created the Washington merry-go-round of her day with Pepysian verve and caustic charm. She could be gossipy ("The Hayes suffer much from rats in the White House who run over their bed and nibble the President's toes"), or just plain lethal ("Not until I had seen and heard Judge Drake of the Court of Claims did I know what...
...most caustic, social satire is brewed from sweet reasonableness, and nothing could be more reasonable than the modest educational proposal that is the basis of a spoofing report from the 21st century by British Sociologist Michael Young. First premise of The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033, published in London, is merely this: every bright child, regardless of his parents' wealth or lack of it, should get the best education he is capable of absorbing. The proposition is hardly alarming, but by the book's end it has left a trail like a runaway milkwagon horse. Among...