Word: mania
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Escaping detection on each occasion, the "Mad Buttoner" left further traces of mania in the form of notes in the proctor's room and on the office desk in the Freshman Union. The exam period frustration of the unknown malefactor apparently took the form of cryptic missives and verses on a theme of buttons. "Button, button, who's got the button" was a favorite...
Against these quiet fates, the author sets the civic uproar of Soviet public life, "the elaborate trumpery of our heroic age proudly proceeding across the face of the earth, clanking its medals." It is a time of hysteria, of a paranoid spy mania, and there are rumors that "cancer germs concealed in matches had been infiltrated into the country by a foreign power (you pick your teeth with a match and it's all over with you), or that, under the influence of cosmic rays, women were giving birth to girls (to the detriment of our army...
...secret U.S. intelligence estimates if the Administration denies that Soviet might has "increased considerably." (Grumped Ike to his staff: "We may have to take another look at what we give these people.") Columnist Joseph Alsop called the Eisenhower determination to preserve fiscal responsibility in Government an "obsession" and a "mania." Pundit Walter Lippmann, himself past 70, likened Ike to "a tired old man who has lost touch with the springs of our national vitality...
...title. The Day Nothing Happened telegraphs the gentle punch that Humorist Corey Ford (Has Anybody Seen Me Lately? Never Say Diet) has aimed at the current publishing mania for Day books. He parodies the pompous epiphenomena that accompany such ventures, including the introductory note of martyred scholarship, the bow of punctilio to humble assistants ("My thanks to Mr. F. L. Peters at the Information Booth at Grand Central"). And there is the jacket blurb from a fellow authority in the field: "'The most exciting twenty-four hours since the day I shot Jim Bishop'-A. Lincoln...
...Abelman, though, as Muni portrays him, is magnificent. A sort of lower Flatbush Thoreau, he has spent most of his 68 years fighting the 'galoots' ("people who take, and give nothing in return"), and proving that he, at least, is uncorrupted by the 20th century mania for money. Played by an ordinary actor, Dr. Abelman might have appeared a caricature of some wistful or long dead ideal. But Muni in perfect; he never wastes a gesture or an expression, the timbre of his voice is always exactly appropriate to the speech he is delivering...