Word: phenomenon
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Thanks to readers like Davis, who are buying the book by the dozens to give to friends and showing up to hear Pipher, a Lincoln, Nebraska, clinical psychologist, speak, Reviving Ophelia has become a phenomenon. Originally rejected by 13 publishers, the hard-cover book was published in 1994 by Putnam. The book really took off, though, when the paperback came out last March, recently hitting No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, and Pipher's tours on the lecture circuit keep the pot boiling. Explains Linda Grey, president of Ballantine, the paperback's publisher: "Mary is able...
This isn't a new phenomenon. Sexual habits are, of course, fundamental to a society's success. The very reason most societies place value on monogamy is that it helps ensure survival. Polygamy tends to lead to jealousies and quarrels--which are disruptive and can even become deadly--and is probably not conducive to effective child-rearing. It seems reasonable that the institution of marriage evolved in response to this reality. The small communities which characterized early human history faced enough challenges without infighting over women...
Whether it is college guidebooks, computerized college viewbooks, news magazines, newspapers, television or radio, there is more media attention than ever before on the college admissions process. Generally, this phenomenon has been helpful in spreading the word that all colleges and universities are open to students of promise and that there is sufficient financial aid available. In many ways, the media have democratized access to information about higher education. Increasingly Harvard and institutions like it are no longer seen as bastions of privilege--thus encouraging students to apply...
Truth be told, the peasants' consciousness is narrow, hidebound and, from time to time, a big impediment to progress. Yet in China it still remains the dominant way of thinking. People have been used to it for thousands of years, and this phenomenon cannot easily be changed by less than 20 years of opening to the outside. To some extent, China's open-door policy even aggravates the worst part of the peasants' consciousness, for then they begin to see how unfair the reality is, and their world becomes more unbalanced...
Call it the Sleepless in Seattle phenomenon. When screenwriters want to create a really sympathetic man, an unequivocal good guy or just the ultimate romantic lead, they make him a widower, as Tom Hanks was in that 1994 film: no complicated sexual history, no fear of commitment, no ugly divorce to sully viewers' affection for him. (Widows, on the other hand, tend to be women who have suspiciously outlived their husbands, like Kathy Bates in Dolores Claiborne.) Below, the types of widowers in recent movies...