Word: perrin
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Even closer to history, and almost as footnoteworthy, is Robert Perrin's Jewels (Stein & Day; 269 pages; $9.95), a recreation of one of the century's greatest unsolved heists. To the vast displeasure of King Edward VII, to whom they belonged, the so-called Irish Crown Jewels vanished in 1907 from a safe in Dublin Castle, never to be recovered. The crowning insult was that the investigation threatened to embrangle Edward's brother-in-law, the playboy Duke of Argyll, in a homosexual scandal. As a result, the friends of Edward VII "perpetrated a cover-up that...
According to Author Perrin, a BBC journalist, only two minor characters in the book are fictional. His narrative, covering a 21-year span, captures the period with irony, authority and zest. Save for the delicious Daisy Newman, who used her loot to settle into suburban domesticity, virtually everyone who was directly or indirectly involved in the Edwardian caper came to a sad end, despite a noble battle by Sir Arthur Vicars to clear his name. Indeed, his cause became so famous that a relative of Vicars, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, offered at one point to join the fray. Alas...
...while surveys show that compared with America, living costs are up to 73% higher in Switzerland and about 40% higher in West Germany and France, it is also true that European salaries are occasionally richer. A recent study by a U.S. management consulting firm, Towers, Perrin, Forster & Crosby, calculates that the chief executive of a typical medium-size company in Germany earns 50% more than his U.S. counterpart, 40% more in Belgium and The Netherlands, and 20% more in France. Business International, a Geneva research firm, notes that in Switzerland today, a receptionist now gets $19,700 a year...
GIVING UP THE GUN: JAPAN'S REVERSION TO THE SWORD, 1543-1879 by Noel Perrin Godine; 122 pages...
...firearms, thereupon set those skills aside for 200 years. Portuguese sailors brought the first matchlocks to Japan in 1543, and within a few years the Japanese were using their own much improved models with bloody effectiveness. A nationwide revulsion then occurred, not because of the bloodiness, notes Perrin - Japan was one of the most bellicose countries on earth - but because guns gave common soldiers the means to kill noble samurai. By the time Commodore Perry forced the opening of Japan to the West in 1854, only scholars were familiar with the words that described guns...