Word: maddest
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Writers about the gold rush, one of history's maddest mass movements, have been almost as numerous as prospectors in the Klondike. But perhaps no one has told the story with the same fullness and readable authority as Canadian Journalist Pierre Berton in The Klondike Fever. Author Berton's credentials are convincing. His father staked a claim on Quigley Gulch in 1898, and while it produced only gravel, he stayed on and lived in fabled Dawson City for 40 years. Author Berton himself lived there until he was twelve, admits that it still "haunts my dreams...
...They were, and are, all mad." said Horace Walpole of the noble Gordon family. Perhaps the maddest of the lot was Lord George Gordon,* hero of this excellent study of a neglected piece of British history. He attained notoriety in childhood, dressed up as Cupid at a soiree, by shooting visiting King Stanislaus of Poland in the face with a silver arrow. Unfortunately, destiny cast George Gordon for the leading part in a far more horrendous 18th century shooting match...
...Vienna before World War I, the maddest celebrity in town was Oskar Kokoschka. His morbid plays dramatizing strife between the sexes set off bitter café debates; his portraits turning the light on the psychological "inner life" of his subjects outraged complacent burghers. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne (whose assassination at Sarajevo in 1914 triggered World War I), gave it as his opinion that "this fellow's bones ought to be broken in his body." After the war, which dealt Kokoschka a head wound and a bayoneting, the artist moved to the front rank of avant...
...ofttimes in his maddest mirthful...
...Author Ward manages to get in some sharp verdicts. He doubts that the "Conway Cabal"* against Washington existed at all, he sharply criticizes both sides for cruelty in the Indian campaigns, and he declares the aborted Canadian campaign which Lafayette was supposed to lead in 1778 "one of the maddest of all mad projects...