Word: gibbon
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Down the hall, William Fitz-Gibbon, 50, whose degree in science is from M.I.T., uses an overhead projector to sketch a physics problem about the path of a falling projectile. As he extends the trajectory, 20 students jab at their calculators, shouting the coordinates of the projectile's path. One student looks up from time to time from an Agatha Christie mystery to call out answers. A young girl interrupts the instructor. He has been applying a shortcut formula to the problem, and she points out that his solution will not work in every case...
...setting of his early childhood at the idyllic country mansion called Kilnegh in County Cork; this is followed by an extended description of life at Willie's boarding school--a passage that is too long and distracting, and reads, with its contrived nicknames for masters (Mad Mack, Hopeless Gibbon) and standard schoolboy fare, too much like an inserted set-piece; finally there is the massacre which turns Willie's mother to alcohol and then suicide. This leads to an act of revenge that forces him to remain abroad for most of his life, and which drives his first inquisitive, then...
Thirty years ago, Isaac Asimov completed his Foundation trilogy, a Gibbon-esque look at the decline and fall of an intergalactic empire. Asimov, who abandoned fiction in favor of science, has now expanded his work to a tetralogy with foundation's Edge (Doubleday; $14.95). The last volume of the trilogy ended with a question: Does a mysterious organization, capable of controlling human history, really exist in some secret galactic refuge? Edge opens with an answer: Of course. It then proceeds to describe the rivalry between the altruistic Foundation and two less noble competitors for the heart and mind...
Despite Cozza's apprehensions, Yale's "rebuilding" year will hardly be material for Gibbon. With only four returning starters from last season, the Elis still managed to top the Ivy coaches' preseason poll. And Cozza's youthful corps was ranked ninth nationally in an AP sportswriters' Division I-AA poll, which listed no other Ivy team...
...reasons to read a book-for pleasure, for self improvement, or because you are assigned it" says Emily D. Vermeule, Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor. Vermeule believes that reading the history of countries concurrently with travel falls into the first category. Several summers ago she took along a copy of Gibbon's stately tome. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" on a cruise through the Bosphorous...