Word: magical
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Karenna Gore Schiff Some people live the lives they've been given, and some--in the words of Southern belle turned civil-rights activist Virginia Durr--"step outside the magic circle" of the world they were born into and make it better. It's the latter group that interests Schiff (who is Al Gore's daughter). She vividly profiles nine women, some well known, like labor firebrand Mother Jones, some less so, like Alice Hamilton, one of the first doctors to fight for industrial safety, who asked, "Is it sensible to assume that what is American is necessarily wisest...
...rate. For the next 20 years that rate was mysteriously cut in half, the background for much of the declinist vogue of the '80s. Then in the past decade, when we finally stopped playing with our newfangled computers and figured out how to use them, productivity returned to the magic 3% level of the immediate postwar era when America bestrode the world like a colossus...
...alchemy of children's fiction, there is no more potent formula than magic and growing up. Witness Harry Potter's dual struggle with mundane hormones and unearthly incantations. A century ago, it was Peter Pan's flat declaration that "Every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead," that held childlike imaginations spellbound. As for growing up, Peter famously had neither the time nor the inclination. But whether he likes it or not, Peter is about to enter the 21st century, with the publication of Peter Pan in Scarlet...
...striking is the glass Oval Lingotto, which will house speed skating now and conventions in the future: its transparent top is suspended without pillars to create a sweeping open space. Gae Aulenti, the Italian architect who turned Paris' Gare d'Orsay into a stunning modern museum, has applied her magic to the 1960s-era Palavela skating rink. Preserving its sail-shaped outer structure, she introduced a new "building within a building" independent of the overlapping roof above. Yet the makeover has left intact Torino's graceful arcaded shopping streets, lively 19th century cafés and splendid squares: medal ceremonies...
Directed by Kirk Jones Universal Pictures 2 stars For those of us who grew up whistling “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” Emma Thompson’s new children’s film, “Nanny McPhee,” falls far short of the magic of 1964’s “Mary Poppins.” With warts, a prosthetic nose, and one large bucktooth, the usually classy Thompson plays the title governess in this latest bit of family treacle. Directed by Kirk Jones (“Waking Ned Devine”), the movie begins...