Word: shrewdness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Like many another existentialist-type thinker, Fowles combines a cosmic pessimism with a reformer's drive to improve the world. Less interesting and less moving on such topics as cybernetics and birth control, he is nonetheless eminently sensible, and his strictures aimed against all dogmatic camps are shrewd: "A Christian says, 'If all were good, all would be happy.' A socialist says, 'If all were happy, all would be good.' A mystic says, 'If all were like me, happiness and goodness would not matter.' A humanist says, 'Happiness and goodness need more...
...public relations. "Instead of a dead hero we've got a live coward!" The situation presents obvious opportunities, and before he succumbs to a cynical conclusion Chayefsky takes some of them firmly in hand. He writes a couple of smartingly satiric scenes and puts together some pretty shrewd pacifist repartee. Naval officer proudly: "He was the first dead man on Omaha Beach!" Civilian innocently: "Was there a contest?" But Chayefsky dissipates the main force of his satire by chasing the main chance for commercial success...
Short of the Goal. Under Sir Alexander Bustamante, 80, a white-maned half-Irishman who organized the island's labor unions in the turbulent 1930s, the government has an ambitious, five-year plan for new schools, hospitals, roads and housing. Shrewd tax benefits have attracted foreign companies to Jamaica -Esso has opened an $18 million refinery, Sterling Drug and International Telephone & Telegraph are building plants. Tourism is thriving, will probably hit about 230,000 people this year. But last year's overall economic growth rate fell short of the plan's intended 5% annual gain, and there...
...days when colonialism was a young and respectable word, Empire Builder Cecil Rhodes dispatched small bands of his agents into the wilds of Africa to make treaties with entire tribes. In 1890 the agents struck a shrewd bargain. In return for ?2,000 sterling a year and the "protection" of the British crown, King Lewanika of Barotseland granted Rhodes a monopoly of the natural resources of his kingdom. As it turned out, the king's domain covered quite a bit of territory, and under charter from Queen Victoria, Rhodes directed his newly formed British South Africa Co. to exploit...
...soldier and fools everyone but perspicacious Sam, who stumbles upon her bathing nude in a river. Among the good guys are O'Hara, an Irish sergeant with a heart of gold; Hobbs, a sly, tall-tale-telling frontiersman; Spie-buck, a 6-ft. 4-in. Shawnee guide; and shrewd, Lincolnesque Colonel Alex Doniphan. The bad guys are legion, ranging from scoundrelly Mexicans to brash American bullies who never learn -they always pick fights with Elaine and end up flat on their backs...