Word: distress
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Fast-forward to the early 21st century: the publishing industry is in distress. Publishing houses--among them Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt--are laying off staff left and right. Random House is in the midst of a drastic reorganization. Salaries are frozen across the industry. Whispers of bankruptcy are fluttering around Borders; Barnes & Noble just cut 100 jobs at its headquarters, a measure unprecedented in the company's history. Publishers Weekly (PW) predicts that 2009 will be "the worst year for publishing in decades...
...hoarded the kind of toy soldiers that struck extravagant poses, and left those that stood stiffly at attention to the other children. At the age of nine, Andy did a book of watercolors, full of musketeers and damsels in distress, and romantically titled The Clang of Steel. When he was twelve, Andy staged a memorable performance, Lilliputian-style in a theater that he made himself, of the battle in The White Company, the Arthur Conan Doyle drama of a staunch medieval company of soldiers, which N.C. had illustrated. The old playroom castle still sits in Andy's studio...
...This ruler-knows-best attitude can make Asians act more like subjects than citizens. Militaries - the other power pole in much of Asia - can meddle in politics without much public distress from the masses. Just look at how Bangkok office ladies cheerily handed carnations to the soldiers who carried out a 2006 coup against Thailand's democratically elected leader. When Asians finally do react against their governments, it is often in extremis, anger spilling onto the streets in revolutionary-style rallies...
However, GM, the only suitor to emerge this fall, has said it's no longer interested; another potential suitor, Russian tycoon Oleg Deripeska, is fighting to keep his own empire from being shredded by economic distress. Renault-Nissan, a third potential suitor, is pulling back in the face of what its chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, has warned could be a long global downturn...
Auto dealers are putting out their own message of distress. Annette Sykora, chairwoman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, said that with each passing day, more dealerships are closing and more people are losing their jobs. "We've heard encouraging words from the White House, but time is of the essence," Sykora announced in a written statement on Wednesday. This year alone, 900 dealerships out of 19,700 are expected to close. (See pictures of the most important cars of all time...