Word: heedless
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...shoreline of the U.S. runs for 53,677 miles-and that figure does not include the lengthy coasts of Alaska and Hawaii. But not all is sandy beaches, suntanned bodies, squawking gulls and imposing cliffs. Increasingly, the American coast is becoming a victim of its own magnetism: it attracts heedless development that is fouling its beauty, undermining its ecological importance, and crippling its ability to stand up to nature's winds and waves...
That idealized view gave way to one of America as too rich, too powerful, too heedless of fate. Today Europe's complaint is that America is not rich enough, not powerful enough-and still too heedless of fate. These perceptions of America's early virtue and later vices, of its pre-Viet Nam power and its present weakness, share one quality: they are feverishly overblown...
...Only big business generally ranks lower than Congress.) Until the Abscam evidence is finally evaluated in the courts-and no indictments are anticipated in less than three months-cynics can say that their suspicions have been justified: all too many legislators are heedless of the national interest and also personally corrupt...
While leaders in other Muslim states (Saudi Arabia and Libya, for example) have moderated Western influences, the Shah embraced the West with (as it turned out) a heedless enthusiasm. He set up a secular state, destroying the classic and crucial unity in Islam between church and government. Under the Pahlavis, women were liberated from the traditional chador, permitted to vote and divorce their husbands. The Shah made the mistake of ignoring the mullahs (priests). The U.S., in turn, embraced him, and even had the CIA engineer a coup to restore him to power in 1953. Corruption, dislocations of life...
That's the sort of perverse passion that motivates Deborah Davis's Katherine the Great. While other authors have at least waited until their respective targets were safely settled in their graves before knocking them off their pedestals, Davis spares no such restraint in her heedless rush to profit from the "sins" of Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham. Forget the tales about Graham risking the family newspaper to take on the house that Nixon built. From Davis's perspective, Watergate stemmed not from the dictates of journalistic integrity but from the arrogance of a woman piqued by a presidential spurning...