Word: readers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Since Mayer's last outing, a robust greenback has grown anemic, the U.S. has become the world's largest debtor, and the stock market dropped more than 500 points in one day, symbolically if not literally ending the avaricious '80s. Mayer patiently brings the reader up to speed on the intricacies of trading stocks, bonds, commodities and imaginative financial instruments with names like STRIPS, zero-coupon bonds and "Heaven & Hell" warrants...
...Cardinal of the Kremlin, the new Jack Ryan airing, deals admiringly with Star Wars technology and thus (SDI cynics might object) is precisely as silly as real life. Never mind; Clancy is back on track. The reader is shown, in quick, effective takes of a few pages each, a giant Soviet military laser weapon under construction in the mountains of central Asia, the operation of an elaborate chain of U.S. spy drops and cutouts in Moscow, an Afghan guerrilla team shooting down Soviet helicopters with Stinger missiles, tense cookie pushing at a disarmament negotiation, and two separate KGB interrogations, including...
Such an approach to Picasso renders the book simplistic and biased. Huffington bases a large part of the last sections of the book on her interviews with Francoise Gilot, the woman who left Picasso after bearing him two children. And Huffington is so unabashedly admiring of Gilot that the reader wonders if a biography of her wouldn't have been a more appropriate subject for the author...
...that Huffington makes no interesting points about Picasso the man, only that she wants too much to thrust her conclusions upon the reader. To break down a myth is a difficult thing, though, and Huffington is not an effective enough demagogue to accomplish the task...
...leaves the reader to guess how he would answer the simpler importunities: a "pleasing request to sit on the pavement for two days outside the Russian Embassy," or invitations to memorial services for departed rivals (though these are "more satisfying than learning they have published a new book"). It is the more drearily typical epistles that raise his ire and ironic spirit...