Word: context
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...thing that sets Kennedy apart, in an international context, is neither his character nor his family: it is that he had a long and productive career as a legislator. The record of his achievements in the Senate, over 47 years, is immense - groundbreaking laws on education, health care, employment, immigration and more. There's an old adage that you want to see neither a law nor a sausage being made, but just as there are brilliant sausage makers, so there are brilliant lawmakers, and Kennedy was one of them - immersing himself in the complex detail of policy, looking for deals...
...Dick Cheney's more memorable lines. "Deficits don't matter," he told Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in 2002. Later, after O'Neill made the conversation public, Cheney elaborated that he meant this "in a political context," not an economic one. But for most of Cheney's time as Vice President, the claim held up pretty well in both contexts. Over O'Neill's objections - he'd be gone soon anyway - the Bush Administration and Congress abandoned a bipartisan commitment to fiscal prudence that had held sway since the early 1990s and went back to running chronic deficits. The result...
...smallest events. “Stairwells make us weep,” he says, “And small kitchens. Sometimes you see a fork and you just want to die. There is no limit to the beauty of things.” What might seem overblown out of context is actually the ardent crescendo at the end of a string of meditations. The lull of this rising and falling of register is at times almost powerful enough to obscure the story. Hoffmann marries, has children, comes to love Japanese culture, and eventually becomes a professor, writing all the while...
...past and takes a faithfully journalistic approach to exposing capitalism gone corrupt. Volpi asks some ambitious questions, but he does not answer them or even presume to–one wonders why he curtailed his analysis and commentary at this cursory level. While this hefty book disappoints in the context of its wandering, subpar storytelling, Volpi’s prolific ideas and occasional bent for powerful language should not preclude him from meeting more success with his next attempt.—Staff writerMonica S. Liu can be reached at msliu@fas.harvard.edu...
...critically ill or he’s very happy.” It is this obsession with digression that will become Bolaño’s signature, but at this early stage in his career it isn’t yet totally effective; it never transcends its context (as it will as early as his next novel, the highly experimental “Nazi Literature in the Americas”), so much as justifies it. “2666” will comprise context that itself is transcendent, but that masterpiece is still over a decade away.The novel excels...