Word: fad
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...TONTINE, by Thomas B. Costain (2 vols., 930 pp.; Doubleday; $5.95), is Author Costain's eighth novel, a Literary Guild choice for October, and may serve only one useful purpose: to popularize the fascinating gimmick referred to in the title. The tontine (rhymes with "on green"), a fad which keeps reappearing through history, combines the suspense of the $64,000 question with the finances of the pyramid club. In Costain's tontine, begun in England just after the Battle of Waterloo, people in each of eight age groups enter the setup at 100 guineas a head. The money...
...human soul immortal? Is Christianity just a passing fad? Is Freud God? Assistant Professor Alston of the University of Michigan will not answer these questions in "Philosphy 190," but he will examine some of the ways in which the phenomenon of religious belief can be interpreted. St. Thomas Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Santayana, and Freud had various views on this topic, and the ideas will all come out in Emerson...
Lillian's zoom to success is not surprising. She has looks, a brassy voice that -when anybody cares to listen-is both true and spirited, and she can play trombone. The rock 'n' roll fad has probably whirled her up faster than otherwise would have happened, but her sudden good fortune has not made her cocky. "If anything goes off in this business," she says. I'll go back to driving a truck...
...idle over a glass of suds. He has too many other things to occupy his leisure hours: auto trips, sports, do-it-yourself hobbies, home improvement. Moreover, motorists are increasingly conscious of the danger in drunken driving. Other reasons for the decline in beer drinking: reducing diets, the fad for low-calorie soft drinks, rising beverage taxes, which have helped to make the poor man's drink expensive...
Turning back to past glories, especially to the prosperous days of 1900, is a current French fad. To youth this fashion seems only an attempt to camouflage the weaknesses of the present. Whatever his class, the young Frenchman has during the past ten years watched the old institutions crumble, has seen nothing new emerge to take their place. Instead, he has been offered economic stagnation, social emptiness and political hypocrisy, all smothered in flowery oratory and nostalgic festivity...