Word: melvin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Pentagon is a sorely besieged place these days, and Melvin Robert Laird, the tenth U.S. Secretary of Defense, has frequently found himself fighting off attackers who are nearly as tough and persistent as the Viet Cong. One day recently, mulling over reports from Viet Nam, the latest volley of criticism from Capitol Hill, fresh disputes over strategic weapons and new attacks on the ROTC, Laird had had enough. Thumping his desk, he demanded of an aide: "Aren't we ever going to have any good news? Is it always going to be bad?" He topped that with a resigned scholium...
...task of lifelong Politician Melvin Laird to preside over the Pentagon at the most critical and criticized era for the U.S. military in many years. He must manage America's withdrawal from Viet Nam in such a way that an unsatisfactory war does not turn into a debacle. He must find ways to reduce sharply military spending in a time of rising costs at home, continuing challenges to U.S. power abroad, and changing definitions of America's role in the world. He must shake up a Pentagon grown sluggish and wasteful. And he must do it all under the aroused...
There is nothing innocent about Melvin Laird. The sleek, expensive wardrobe, the thin cigar, the grim scowl when offering some dire pronouncement, the somehow roguish smile when lighthearted, make him easy to caricature, easy to suspect of ulterior motives. As a Congressman, he could be sly in good causes and in partisan ones. When he overthrew Charles Halleck as House minority leader, he managed to create the impression that he and Gerald Ford had split the rebel forces. Actually, they were united, and the putative split was a ploy. Once, just after Minority Leader Ford and his eminence grise. Laird...
...Cover. Cartoon by Patrick Bruce Oliphant, whose work has often appeared in TIME but never before as a cover. In the tracing above, the first figure from the left (1) is Defense Secretary Melvin Laird clutching his hard-won ABM, while a general (2) expresses the Pentagon's pleasure. The cigarette-puffing baker (3) is Congress, serving up half a loaf of surtax. Above and to the right stands a G.I. (4) in the process of dropping his equipment into the arms of South Viet Nam's President Thieu (5). Below, Rumania's President Ceausescu (6) listens...
...less than a month, the book has already sold more than 20,000 copies (at $5.95 apiece) and has gone into a third printing, thanks mainly to an outrageous promotion campaign featuring photographs of the heroine's conquests, each posed for by one of the authors. ("Meet Melvin Corby" reads the blurb next to Aronson's picture, "faithful, frustrated, he canceled his men's magazines when Naked Came the Stranger.") Paperback rights have been sold to Dell for a $37,500 minimum (escalating to a possible $127,500 depending on hard-cover sales), and Stuart reports...