Word: ruthless
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...decade, Shakespeare-a graduate of Holy Cross and a World War II Navy veteran-was a senior vice president and second in command at CBS. Then he lost out in a company power struggle. In 1968, he ran Richard Nixon's successful television campaign and gained a cynical, ruthless reputation that made him the villain of Joe McGinniss' book, The Selling of the President 1968. In one incident, McGinniss reports that Shakespeare, when told of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, exulted: "What a break! This Czech thing is just perfect. It puts the soft-liners in a hell...
...other decades of his life, Joe Kennedy was a remarkably shrewd, hearty and charming man. He had the serenity of a man totally devoted to his family and the detachment of a lucidly ruthless financier. He moved with an Irish swagger among Presidents, movie stars and corporation bosses, but bequeathed to his sons some of his East Boston toughness. He frequently concealed his taste for classical music lest it be thought effete. One night in the '30s he was listening to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on a phonograph when a pair of his cronies requested some...
...fate of the topmost liberal leaders, including Dubćek, hung at least partially on a debate between two factions of the ultraconservative majority on the eleven-man Presidium that runs the country. One group, reportedly led by Deputy First Secretary Lubomir Strougal, a ruthless pro-Moscow loyalist, urged that Dubćek and other liberals be placed on trial, perhaps even on charges of treason. The second group, headed by Party Secretary Alois Indra, apparently objected that such kangaroo-court sessions would saddle the regime with a neo-Stalinist label. Ludvik Svoboda, the popular President and elder statesman...
...moved to curb inflation, suppress bandits and warlords, rehabilitate industry and the transportation network, equalize food distribution, establish a tax system and bring the people rudimentary health care. For the first time in anyone's memory, an efficient, honest administration was in charge-though it could also be ruthless and even inhuman in its desire to impose unity on the land. By 1952, Mao had used persuasion and purge to consolidate his power, and China was ready to transform its economy...
...ambitions and possessed extraordinary charm. Yet he was without humor. He could play the guitar. He kept 14 cats. He suffered the torments of migraine, piles and piety-O'Connell at least grants him piety, though he often has been considered a great hypocrite. He was certainly a ruthless schemer all his life. After receiving a bishopric through family connections, at the age of 21, he used his clerical rank and tiny diocese as a steppingstone to power. He maneuvered for years to become First Minister of France, and in his early days was even party to Marie...