Word: firmness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...clients are honest, but they are totally indifferent to the value of money," complains Tom Evans of the oil-rich Arab sheiks whose sumptuous private planes are serviced by his Houston-based firm. One of his customers is Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, president of the United Arab Emirates, who paid $10 million in 1974 for a Grumman Gulfstream II, equipped with royal blue morocco-leather seats and gold seat-belt buckles...
...they supply about 5% of U.S. petroleum imports, but their American lawyers stressed that the bill would not become a matter of state. Said one: "It's a simple private dispute over whether the charges are reasonable." At week's end the sheik had sent the Houston firm $90,000, but Evans was standing firm: payment in full...
...help fight one of the biggest takeover bids in history, McGraw hired Morgan Stanley & Co., the old-line investment banking firm that is expert in defending takeover targets or at least in forcing the bidder to raise the price. There were hints too that McGraw is shopping around for a "white knight," a buyer more to his taste. Not totally convincingly, American Broadcasting Co. denied reports that it had made an offer for McGraw-Hill...
...part of their modernization program, China's leaders are discussing plans with U.S. Steel and a Japanese firm to build a $1 billion iron ore processing complex in the north. Still, the Chinese were taking another step that seemed to weigh against modernization, the showing in several Peking movie houses of Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin's 1936 mournful satire on the brutalizing aspects of overmechanization. The sight of Chaplin trapped on the assembly line could set Chinese citizens pondering the evils, as well as the blessings, of modernization...
Thus begins this daring and unusually complex first novel, part psychological thriller (Can Al reach his friend?), part mystery (What happened to Birdy?). It is also an extended memoir of growing up poor in the 1930s, a detailed portrait of a friendship as firm as it is unlikely and an utterly plausible account of an unbelievable obsession. In classical mythology, Daedalus made wings for a practical reason, so that he and his son could escape the labyrinth. Birdy, it turns out, has built wings too, but craved much more. In his cage, he remembers: "I'm also finding...