Word: horatio
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...what a splendid fellow he was too, in addition to being such a benefactor to mankind (unless you want to hold all the Yankees who have moved to the South against him). A perfectly Horatio Alger kind of guy was Willis Carrier, struggling against odds, persisting, overcoming. Slapped down by the Great Depression, he fought back again to build an enormous concern that to this good day is the world's leading maker of air conditioning, heating and ventilation systems...
...downside to this tale. Scientists now believe the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCS), used in refrigeration systems are largely responsible for blowing a hole in the ozone, and that will cause potentially zillions of cases of skin cancer, cataracts and suppressed immune systems. That's quite a big Oops! for our exemplary Horatio Alger figure...
...story was Horatio Alger with a gun, an ice pick and a dark vision of Big Business. He was nine when the family immigrated from Sicily, where his father had labored in the sulphur pits, to New York City. He took to the streets early, was busted almost at once for shoplifting, later for delivering drugs. Luciano was a tough teenage hoodlum on the Lower East Side when his gang targeted a skinny Jewish kid whose bold defiance won their respect. The encounter led to a merger of Jewish and Italian gangs and a lifelong friendship. When Luciano rebuilt...
This Puritan disdain for ostentation is a cherished tradition. After all, Thomas Paine penned Common Sense hoping to liberate Americans from the grip of ostentatious English aristocrats. In fact, the most poignant lesson in U.S. history teaches that today's Horatio Alger (see Andrew Carnegie) is tomorrow's robber baron (see Andrew Carnegie)--unless, of course, the baron performs a useful public service, such as owning a pro sports team or three, like 60-year-old Ted Turner, who also recently gave a billion dollars to the United Nations for humanitarian causes. Turner was following the tradition of the Astors...
This is not genre writing, agreeable trash to be pigeonholed. If salt-soaked comparison is required, O'Brian's adventures suggest Joseph Conrad's sea tales more than those of C.S. Forester and his Horatio Hornblower. Conrad's prevailing mood is darker; though O'Brian can summon darkness and defeat, he is more arch and owlish. But as Forester did, O'Brian novelizes serially. The precarious lives of two memorable characters, friends and shipmates, thread through his books...