Word: ironic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...World War II was Winston Churchill. The only Allied leader with military experience in the field as well as experience in government, he was also a superb communicator. Perhaps his finest contribution was his matchless power as a speaker, e.g., his stunning statement at Fulton, Mo., about "the Iron Curtain" that Joseph Stalin was dropping across Eastern Europe, and the unforgettable, even more crucial speech he made before the expected Nazi invasion of Britain: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight...
...first things I did after I became President was make a pilgrimage to Hyde Park. And that's why when Prime Minister Tony Blair came to visit, I took him on a tour of the F.D.R. Memorial. Rather than cling to old abstractions or be driven by the iron laws of ideology, Roosevelt crafted innovations to the circumstances in which he found himself. He sought, above all, practical solutions that worked for people. He called his pragmatic method "bold, persistent experimentation." If one thing doesn't work, he explained, "try another; but above all, try something...
...carefully cultivated air of mystic detachment cloaks an iron will, an inflexible devotion to simple ideas that he has preached for decades...
...enemies and his widowed mother Hoelun chased away from their tribe with her brood, including her eldest, nine-year-old Temujin. The outcasts ate field mice and marmots even as they fought off thieves out for their horses, the most precious of nomad property. Bitterness cultivated a heart of iron. After a half-brother grabbed a fish he had hooked, Temujin would kill the offending sibling in a hail of arrows. He never showed remorse. His mother was furious at the waste of a potential soldier in the revenge she envisioned. "We have no one to fight with...
Moreover, eBay has exposed America as a nation of collectors. Matchbook covers, cast-iron witches' cauldrons, Pez dispensers, pneumatic grease pumps from the 1920s, Three Stooges memorabilia--you name it, some American somewhere collects it. "We define ourselves by our stuff," says Robert Thompson, president of the Popular Culture Association and a Syracuse University professor who specializes in the study of collectibles. In a democracy, with everyone theoretically equal, people want to be different. We don't have a caste system; we've never had a blood-line aristocracy. We've distinguished ourselves by our cars, by the clothes...