Word: lande
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...cancer at 65, it is possible to imagine that he was happy. He had at last devised a machine with which he could endlessly tinker. The little boy, envious of the placid small-town life from which he was shut out, had become mayor--no, absolute dictator--of a land where he could impose his ideals on everyone. The restless, hungry young entrepreneur had achieved undreamed-of wealth, power and honor. Asked late in life what he was proudest of, he did not mention smiling children or the promulgation of family values. "The whole damn thing," he snapped, "the fact...
...much an industry as a loose affiliation of local builders, any one of whom completed an average of four houses a year. What Levitt had in mind was 30 to 40 a day. Before the war, Levitt and his brother Alfred had built a few houses on land their father owned in Manhasset, N.Y. And in 1941 the Levitts won a government contract to provide 2,350 housing units for defense workers in Norfolk, Va. Once the fighting ended, they brought the lessons of that experience to 1,000 acres of potato farms on New York's Long Island...
...which cut his margins to the bone, it was imperative that Wal-Mart grow sales at a relentless pace. It did, of course, and Walton hit the road to open stores wherever he saw opportunity. He would buzz towns in his low-flying airplane studying the lay of the land. When he had triangulated the proper intersection between a few small towns, he would touch down, buy a piece of farmland at that intersection and order up another Wal-Mart store, which his troops could roll out like...
Wolfe treats readers to a vivid, thoroughly realistic portrait of Atlanta life. In the chapter "Lay of the Land," for example, he takes readers from the wealthy Buckhead mansions north of Atlanta, down through the bustling business district and into the slums with one seamless narrative. Current trends and ideas are summarized with pithy aphorisms: Exercise-crazed women become "Boys with Breasts" and get-rich-quick schemes induce "The Aha! Phenomenon." Wolfe entertains readers with his keen ear for dialect and penchant for Dickensian names like Armholster, Peepgass and Armentrout. And of course, when it comes to clothes...
...means of equally ridiculous justifications, everyone in A Man in Full manages to land in hot water somewhere along the way. Wolfe spares no individual or institution his withering critique--he details white Atlanta's visceral fear of Freaknic and urban youths' self-centered apathy in the same breath. Often Wolfe comes across as a bit too cynical; his book virtually ignores (or denies the existence of) the better aspects of humanity. No one in A Man in Full evinces any selfless emotion, for instance, but only a desire for power...