Word: prometheans
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When the saber-toothed chieftains of American capitalism wanted models of political or cultural patronage, it was to Lorenzo de' Medici, prototype of city bosses, that they turned. Siena seemed less Promethean, less inventive. Its great moment in painting, by common consent, had come in the late 13th and 14th centuries, with the work of Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers. Then social and economic catastrophe struck in 1348, when the Black Death wiped out more than half its population. While it is true that Sienese painting and sculpture for the next 150 years did not have the extraordinary...
...building and testing of the first atom bomb is one of the century's great stories. So it takes a bit of nerve to turn this modern Promethean tale into a popular thriller, especially if the hero is a Pueblo Indian Army sergeant who is also a prizefighter, jazz pianist and catnip to the ladies...
...America was a more stripped, fundamental and varied place than anything one can find in "regional" painting of the '30s. She made indelible images of the city, such as her views of and from the Shelton Hotel in New York City in the '20s, which convey the hard-edged, Promethean power of Manhattan. O'Keeffe spent part of every year in New York City until 1949, but the landscape she made most completely her own, through more than 50 years of scrutiny and reverie, was that of New Mexico. She went there for the first time...
...find much on, for example, modern history of the countries of the European periphery, such as Italy, Greece, or the Scandinavian countries. Moreover, the development of new fields within the discipline over the past three decades, notably social history and the history of women, has made complete coverage a Promethean task. Offerings from visiting professors are an insufficient solution. There is a point, then, in trying to be diverse, but diversity does not benefit students if the courses they need are only offered once every three years...
Lasch's case against Promethean technology is surprising in its detail but unconvincing on the whole. He suggests that technology has provided us with so many choices as consumers that choices no longer have consequences or indeed meaning: "the freedom to choose amounts in practice to an abstention from choice." This seems doubtful. Are we, in fact, dying as a nation, as a culture, or as individuals from a surfeit of technological riches? Perhaps death from such causes is more common in Lasch's circle than in one's own. Perhaps, indeed, Lasch's acquaintances perish under the stress...