Word: formula
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...must be borne. Americans did not come to the New World to live like that. They operate on a pushy, querulous assumption of perfectibility on earth ("the pursuit of happiness" -- their own personal happiness). That expectation, which can make Americans charming and unreasonable and shallow, is part of their formula for success. But it has led Americans into absurdities and discontents that others who know life better might never think of. The frontiersman's self-sufficiency and stoicism in the face of pain belong now in some wax museum of lost American self- images...
...HEAD (20th Century Fox) A bizarre comedy about a wisecracking, bodyless scientist and his eccentric brother and how they foil a plot to steal their secret hair-growth formula...
Syrian President Hafez Assad ordinarily is no one's idea of a cooperative statesman, not with his record as a bloodily repressive dictator. But Assad is shrewd enough to sense which way the winds of world power are blowing. So last week he accepted the American formula for a Middle East peace conference. That, in effect, made him the first Arab leader since Egypt's Anwar Sadat to agree to public, direct peace talks with Israel: that is what the conference is supposed to lead to, after a brief ceremonial opening...
...reckless, boundingly readable fifth novel, British writer William Boyd picks up the story at the point where Mallabar, in glamorous, leonine middle age, has lost track of the scruples part of his success formula. His nemesis is Hope Clearwater, who is on the lam from a troubled marriage in England and working as one of several learned acolytes who patiently observe and record the diurnal activities of chimps. She is assigned a small number of animals who have separated from the main group, and almost at once she stumbles on big news. Peaceful primates? Strictly sloganeering. The chimps are capable...
...that will not solve all problems even if it happens. For example, the current draft calls for dual administration of defense plants, with organization, planning and design bureaus under central control and factory management within each republic's jurisdiction. That seems less a clear division of authority than a formula for chaotic conflict...