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...agreement may have appeased U.S. publishers, but their counterparts in Europe, along with some European governments, are up in arms over it. More than half the books scanned and digitized by Google are not of American origin, but European books aren't expressly covered by the settlement. This has raised the fear that Google could sell books that are out of print in the U.S. but not elsewhere to U.S. users without paying European rights holders a penny. "It is clearly discriminatory towards E.U. rights holders," Anne Bergman of the European Federation of Publishers wrote to TIME...
Whatever its origin, the Labor Day rule has perennially met with resistance from high-fashion quarters. As far back as the 1920s, Coco Chanel made white a year-round staple. "It was a permanent part of her wardrobe," says Bronwyn Cosgrave, author of The Complete History of Costume & Fashion: From Ancient Egypt to the Present Day. The trend is embraced with equal vigor by today's fashion élites, Cosgrave notes - from Marion Cotillard accepting her 2008 Academy Award in a mermaid-inspired cream dress to Michelle Obama dancing the inaugural balls away in a snowy floor-length gown. Fashion...
Instead, other historians speculate, the origin of the no-white-after-Labor Day rule may be symbolic. In the early 20th century, white was the uniform of choice for Americans well-to-do enough to decamp from their city digs to warmer climes for months at a time: light summer clothing provided a pleasing contrast to drabber urban life. "If you look at any photograph of any city in America in the 1930s, you'll see people in dark clothes," says Scheips, many scurrying to their jobs. By contrast, he adds, the white linen suits and Panama hats at snooty...
...Parisian "keep-right" law dating to 1794). Some say that before the French Revolution, aristocrats drove their carriages on the left, forcing the peasantry to the right. Amid the upheaval, fearful aristocrats sought to blend in with the proletariat by traveling on the right as well. Regardless of the origin, Napoleon brought right-hand traffic to the nations he conquered, including Russia, Switzerland and Germany. Hitler, in turn, ordered right-hand traffic in Czechoslovakia and Austria in the 1930s. Nations that escaped right-handed conquest, like Great Britain, preserved their left-handed tradition...
...unforgettable characters that illustrate the range of issues confronting modern Africa. One essentially tragicomic figure is the Sikh whom Naipaul meets on the plane to Nairobi; on the one hand, the author is repelled by the bumbling, garrulous man, overeager to befriend a stranger who is similarly of Indian origin. Yet Naipaul writes with uncharacteristic feeling for the Sikh’s profound predicament as a British Asian going to Tanzania to try and extricate his own mother. He writes of the outright racism that the Sikh experiences at Nairobi Airport, where British Asians are denied entry into Kenya without...