Word: contem
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...period from 3000 B.C. to 2000 B.C., for example, shows the Egyptians to be eons ahead of their contemporaries. The Chinese of the period dwelt in houses of mud and thatch, contem porary Britons and Scandinavians lived like troglodytes in barrows, inhabitants of the Americas made do with skin tents, flimsy huts and caves. Technologically, the cultures of the Mediterranean and Middle East were even more advanced. Mesopotamians and the people of the Indus Valley could cast metals to make tools and ornaments-and keep written records. Small wonder that even centuries later, the peoples of the Middle East looked...
...Antonioni, and one of the most gifted younger directors on the world scene (see box, page 54). It will also introduce, in the role of the young girl, a striking new performer: France's sensual, baby-faced Maria Schneider, 20, whose blithely amoral charm perfectly expresses the contem porary...
...living dead man, an intellectual zombie. What he had experienced was a slowing down, a clearing away of the garbage that made it possible to sit for hours with a single thought to play with a thought, to draw it out, and enjoy it like a poem, to contem- plate its fullness, to exhaust it, and then move on to the next...
...whole life becomes permeated by organic chemistry. You lose your sense of humour. You adjust to a cultural vacuum. You dream about organic compounds. You hallucinate laboratories, even blackout. And you save your mind by contem-plating the nondescript charisma of your friends the poisons...
Survival Factor. The best but not necessarily the most truthful. "Throughout his life," Blake warns, "Benjamin Disraeli was addicted to romance and care less about facts." He was invariably the hero of his own self-created myth, and because he could write all his contem poraries under the table, his version of events tended to survive longer than anyone else's. The famous, ponderous six-volume biography by Moneypenny and Buckle, published in 1920, often fell prey to this charm beyond the grave. It also abetted the myth-later given its crudest expression in the George Arliss film...