Word: manias
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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BEYOND THE APATHY and terror of China, however, Butterfield tries to show a little of what everyday life is like--the struggle to get by in the morass of tight control, endless bureaucracy, mania for secrecy, and inefficient economic planning. The key here, he reiterates, is guan-xi, or connections. Tying together China's millions are invisible threads of relation between friends and acquaintances. "It's who you know. . .if you do something for him...then he'll do something..."--this sort of backdoor agreement is the lifeblood of the system, and the real avenue for getting things done...
Passionate but without the headline-grabbing mania of a young reporter, she travelled the United States from 1933 to 1937. Hired by the chief of several federal relief programs, she interviewed recipients of federal assistance. Charged by her boss with giving as honest an account as possible. Hickok spoke with countless needy Americans, along with businessmen, relief workers, and countless standers-by who watched with alarm as America's "golden age of individualism" withered under the exigencies of a depressed economy. Her dispatches, collected in this volume, read effortlessly. Loathe to embellish her account of what she saw or heard...
...approach to preparing for a nuclear war that has been resurrected by the Reagan Administration is the idea of civil defense. The President has budgeted $252 million for the program next year, a 90% increase over fiscal 1982. But unlike the fallout-shelter mania that followed the Berlin crisis of 1961, when the Kennedy Administration spent $257 million (1982 equivalent: $920 million) for civil defense, the Reagan program is focused on "crisis relocation" to evacuate probable target areas, and on contingency plans for resuming normal operations after a nuclear attack...
...develops as each side suspects the other of superior technical performance. Lacking any means to validate this performance, the claims become even more outrageous and expensive ... In Russia, where the spirit and practice of the Potemkin village (a false front, as in motion picture sets) still lives, the national mania for secrecy only makes the problem worse. The possibilities are endless, as is the expense. Even more dangerous is a national leader believing the illusions...
...crazes and entrepreneurs sometimes come together with timing worthy of the Great Wallendas. Such was the case with the fitness mania and Phil Knight, 43. His company, Nike Inc., of Beaverton, Ore., now designs and sells $500 million worth of shoes a year. Nike sells shoes for jogging, basketball, tennis, football, baseball, soccer, volleyball, wrestling, hiking and even just walking...