Word: donnish
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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GREAT MOMENTS IN ARCHITECTURE by David Macaulay Houghton Mifflin; $11.95 After Sorel's frontal assaults, David Macaulay's Great Moments in Architecture seems gentility itself. But within its spiderweb style, a donnish whimsy examines the excesses of this and other centuries and finds them wanton. Archaeologists uncover the ruins of a rudimentary civilization: a partially excavated fast-food restaurant with the French fries still intact. An inflatable cathedral is invented for tourists who want a distinguished setting at a moment's notice. The secret of the Pyramids is revealed: the ancient Egyptians wanted to sharpen their giant...
...emblem is an owl. His name is George Smiley and he is by all standards a most incongruous symbol. The man is a perpetual cuckold. He is portly, rumpled, bespectacled, with a tendency to puff when ascending stairs and to polish his glasses with his tie. He is donnish and vague. He is also the premier spy of his time...
...maintenance program. Later, Moynihan was named Ambassador to India by Nixon and Ambassador to the U.N. by Ford. He was expected to be no great shakes as a campaigner, but he seems to be catching on. With his polka-dot bow tie, his artfully rumpled look, appearing a mite donnish and inevitably puckish, he cuts a rare figure on the campaign trail. But then, no one ever accused him of being conventional. Bubbling over with ideas, he sometimes lets his thoughts race ahead of his prudence. But so far he has not made another gaffe on the order of "benign...
...District Attorneys Association in Colorado on crime and terrorism. The inspector general has no magic up his sleeve, just innovative police methods to block what he calls "sophisticated, modern crime." Since taking over as chief of Israel's police force in 1972, Rosolio, a British-accented Sabra whose donnish manner masks a tough law enforcer, has added 5,000 men and women to the force. Though some gripe that Rosolio is "too intellectual," he is convinced that police must generate new ideas about crime prevention and has hired lawyers, psychologists and military men. Even his critics concede that...
Surprisingly, Sutherland leaves out some prominent - and promising -names. Where, for example, is Christopher Marlowe? Lewis Carroll is absent, not to mention his celebrated crushes on Victorian nymphets. And the book shows a predilection for minor clerics and third-rate poetasters that is a bit too donnish for 1975. Yet in the end, the musty, bibliomaniacal quality only adds to the volume's charm. Lord Chesterfield once told his son that "there are very many [books], and even very useful ones, which may be read with ad vantage by snatches and unconnectedly." This is one of them...