Word: essay
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...blame Ash for failing to explain the beginnings of the antidomino effect. But in this, the weakest essay of the five, he at least could have mused in a more explanatory...
With Ash's essay from Budapest, we begin to see the true beauty of his accounts--he explains the logistics of the democratic movements in such a way that each step naturally proceeds from the last. Although no one claims to have predicted the changes in Eastern Europe, Ash's hindsight makes the refolutions seem completely logical, almost obvious. In an historical era that almost defies prediction, this is an unusually helpful perspective...
Throughout his personal essays, Ash inserts historical background that is immensely readable, his narration frequently benefiting from personal experience. But Ash's brilliance as a scholar and as an historian shines through in his final essay, in which he attempts to make sense of the amazing scenes depicted in the previous chapters...
...Essay...
...many of our transactions will come down, in the end, to an antic game of charades. English may be the universal language, but it's still less universal than hands and eyes. So even as we become unwitting James Joyces -- coining neologisms by the minute -- when we essay a foreign language, we also become Marcel Marceaus: asking the way to the rest room with our eyebrows or sending back the squid with a paroxysm of mock pain. Ask a man in Tierra del Fuego to point you to The Sound of Music, and he'll instantly reply, "No problem!" (which...