Word: grips
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Seeing the cold war as World War III is not just a metaphor. It helps to explain the current rush to demobilize. We are again in the grip of a postwar euphoria, and our instinct is to do what we have always done: demobilize first, ask questions later...
...diminution of the colossus of the East can only ease the minds of the nations of Eastern Europe that are slipping out of its political grip and those of Western Europe that have fearfully armed against it since the end of World War II. Amid the rejoicing, however, some cautionary notes are in order. A fragmenting giant with an immense nuclear arsenal must be carefully watched for signs of instability. That would be particularly true if the U.S.S.R. unraveled to a point at which a Russian chauvinist republic might control it. Such concerns are real, if premature. As William Webster...
Gorbachev's missile, however, also hit the colonial administration that maintained the Soviet empire. Glasnost naturally entails talking about past injustices and that has led to a new emphasis on ethnic grievances. Local party leaders, feeling the heat from Moscow, discovered that they could keep a grip on their jobs only by throwing in their lot with the nationalist forces in their regions -- actually representing their constituents' interests in dealing with Moscow. In most republics, it has now become good politics for Communist officials to shake a fist at the Kremlin...
Lured by the seemingly inexhaustible demand for junk-bond financing, Drexel's Wall Street rivals rushed into the profitable business. The newcomers included such prominent firms as Goldman Sachs, First Boston, Merrill Lynch and Shearson Lehman Hutton. While Drexel's grip on the market gradually slipped, in 1985 it controlled more than half of the new issues. "Drexel is like a god," Michael Boylan, president of the publishing firm Macfadden Holdings, declared in a magazine article that a Drexel executive proudly framed. "They are awesome. You hate to do business against them...
...easy, far too easy, to poke fun at these idiosyncrasies. What Murdoch can do surpassingly well is move a narrative. Once caught in her grip, the reader flies through myriad complications, signal switches and genuine surprises. The Message to the Planet is not her strongest book. It chronicles the decline of Marcus Vallar, a charismatic man who may have mysterious healing powers. But the central figure is a tiresome young don, Alfred Ludens, who is preoccupied with genius -- he is writing a book about Leonardo -- and obsessed by Vallar. The subplot involves a pigheaded painter and his attempts to maintain...