Word: manchurian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Sept. 18, 1931, a Japanese army lieutenant meticulously wired 42 cubes of yellow blasting powder and buried the load in the earth 5 ft. from railroad tracks north of the Manchurian city of Mukden (now Shenyang). The explosives would throw a lot of dirt but cause little damage to the rail line. After all, the South Manchurian Railroad was Japanese-owned and linked the empire's economic outposts in predominantly Chinese Manchuria. All the army wanted was an "incident...
...squashed any further moves and hushed up the army's involvement in the killing. In 1931, Tokyo again tried to stop the army. But renegade officers arranged for a geisha to distract and delay the envoy sent by the central government. Overtaken by events and well aware that the Manchurian offensive had won acclaim for the militarist factions in Tokyo, the Japanese government caved in to the army's visions of manifest destiny -- and to its foolhardy insistence on heeding the lessons of World War I at any cost...
...Changsha. Next spring he will produce a novel, tentatively titled Journey to the West, that mixes Chinese myth and actuality. And next month will bring The Great Black Dragon Fire, by veteran journalist Harrison Salisbury. The fire was not fiction; it occurred in 1987, and it burned a Manchurian forest "so large that, like China's Great Wall, it could have been seen from the moon...
...right up there with George V. Higgins, but lately there is too much stuff and not enough funny. Mainly, this third book of the Prizzi series, about the good-guy Mafia assassin Charley Partanna, needs a dose of bran. In Condon's mad early novels -- The Oldest Confession, The Manchurian Candidate -- marvelous characters seethed with venality and obsession. In the current book there is still enough corruption to go around, but not much narrative drive. Condon's Mafia greedsters now own 32% of what there is to own in the U.S., "only five points down on the Japanese." Old, frail...
...rips turbulent drama from the back pages of a high school history book. It serves up an opulent visual sensibility amid exotic locales. And it concludes with a humanism that affirms both continuity and change for the family of man. Can't-miss stuff. Lawrence of Arabia with a Manchurian accent...