Word: dint
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...corruption, vice and violence, few cities could match 19th century San Francisco. Opium dens, brothels, gambling parlors, Shanghai saloons and gangs flourished by dint of maximum bribes to police and minimum legal scrutiny. Civic morality occasionally counterattacked the Barbary Coast and its adjunct, Chinatown; in 1875 authorities formed an elite corps of policemen to check Chinatown's bloody tong wars...
These perennial problems are not the result of a conspiracy to suppress talent but of commercial realities. Statistically, there can be few less promising enterprises than a serious new first novel. By dint of great care and devotion -especially to getting convincing jacket blurbs from established writers-some publishers do make a little money on serious first novels. But even when properly handled, the average sale of a remarkably skillful book is not likely to run over 6.000 hardback copies. The best guess at an average is 3,500, with more than half of that sale coming from public libraries...