Word: passel
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Crosby patterned his rhythmical golf swing after that of his boyhood hero, MacDonald Smith, MacDonald was the youngest of a passel of five golfing brothers who emigrated en famille from Carnoustie, Scotland...
...sociology derby. Maccoby's book is an interesting profile of what he calls the new American corporate elite, a series of case studies designed to illustrate exactly just what type of person runs the companies thatrun your life. Maccoby's answer--that American companies are presided over by a passel of hyperactive, hypercool chess players who are only in the business world for the thrill of the sport--may sound a bit farfetched, but his research and analysis are intriguing enough, and his writing breezy enough, to carry his more dubious conclusions. And, if when you finish you still...
Luckily, though, some do. Roger Kahn, a Brooklyn-born sage weaned on decades of Dodger glory, spent the better part of his youth trying, in his own words, "to equate the game in terms of Americana." The result was a fat passel of pseudo-sociological articles that would have warmed the heart of Vance Packard. Only they didn't work. Slowly, Kahn admits, he realized that baseball was one interesting part of American life, but hardly a mystic expression of its inner meaning. Like all fun and games, baseball is best suited to anecdotes, not weighty moralizing, to light yarns...
...roars out of the desert like some mustang of the legendary West - but it is no horse, only modern horse power gone loco. Driverless, with a diabolical will of its own, it invades a Utah town and mows down a bicycling couple, the sheriff and a passel of deputies and a pert young teacher. Among the other victims: plot, dialogue and characterization. Deputy Sheriff James Brolin leads the counterattack, but it is an unequal contest: the car steals all the scenes. The ancient nightmare of machines turning against their masters has in recent years become something of a staple...
...characterizations in Home Free are lamentable, both for their lack of depth, and the author's decision to describe them, rather than having them speak for themselves. This passel of one-dimensional people is hopelessly dull, for none of them is developed beyond the most elementary level. Each is introduced, described, and shown taking a path which either intersects or diverges from Gene's travels. No extra attention is given to making these people more memorable by depicting them in fuller detail. Wakefield's choice to eliminate dialogue is an unfortunate one, since some intelligent conversation between these characters might...