Word: scottishly
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...year-old boys is a question settled beyond doubt by this readable and authoritative biography: he was also, at the very least, the jaunty and flamboyant hero of an extraordinary life story. Frank McLynn's Robert Louis Stevenson (Random House; 567 pages; $30) describes a hardworking idler, a Scottish Calvinist who remade himself as a romantic and (four days out of any seven) a convincing bohemian, a smothered son who remained boyish all his short life, and an invalid who lived a life of arduous travel and physical adventure. (Another frail, literary, boyish adventurer of the time comes to mind...
...upper-middle-class Victorian household was what he evoked years later in the poems of A Child's Garden of Verses. His father Thomas was a mighty builder of lighthouses and breakwaters, and the future author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped saw more of the sea than most Scottish boys. His mother Maggie was a beloved invalid herself, and most of the boy's care was taken over by a kindly but ferociously religious nurse...
Frank McLynn's authoritative biography (Random House; 567 pages; $30) portrays the Scottish author of "Treasure Island" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" as the frail, yet flamboyant hero of an extraordinary short life. An invalid born into a wealthy Victorian family ruled by a strict father, Stevenson grew into a romantic wanderer, searching for a climate his bleeding lungs could tolerate. "McLynn tells his story with grace and skill," says TIME critic John Skow. "Only a dull reader will finish this biography without heading for the library to search out a complete edition of Stevenson's marvelous...
...vague generality under fire, take the typical example, "Hume brought empiricism to its logical extreme." The question is asked, "Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of the age in which he lived?" Our hero replies by opening his essay with "David Hume, the great Scottish Philosopher, brought empiricism to its logical extreme. If this be the spirit of the age in which he lived then he was representative of it." This generality expert has already taken his position for the essay. Actually he has not the vaguest idea of what Hume really said, or in fact what...
...canine genome is at last under way." Scientists have located the genes that cause muscular dystrophy in golden retrievers, and "shaking pup" syndrome in Welsh springer spaniels. They're working on identifying the genes responsible for failure-to-thrive metabolic problems in giant Schnauzers, bleeding disorders in Scottish terriers and Doberman pinschers, and the hereditary deafness that affects about 30% of Dalmatians. And they believe hip dysplasia, the crippling condition that afflicts Jake the golden retriever and his kin, may be the result of several defective genes working in concert -- not an unusual situation with hereditary disorders...