Word: skiddings
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...liberal Historians Charles and Mary Beard this week provided America in Midpassage (the third volume of their Rise of American Civilization), a condensed but still bulky survey of the last ten years. Into its 977 pages the Beards with evident relish have packed the joltiest jars of the great skid from the boom of 1928 to the gloom of 1939, suggest some new rules for safer driving if the car of state ever climbs back on the road...
...That after a blowout, as after a skid, it is dangerous to put on the brakes until the car has slowed down and come under control...
...Most interesting structural innovation of the DC-4 is its retractable tricycle landing gear, with a large wheel in the nose. Thanks to this forward wheel, DC-4 will always be in flying position, horizontal, tail up. No tail skid is necessary because the tail will never be near the ground. Passengers in sleeper planes will no longer be wakened by the rearward slant at each landing. The plane can take off relatively quickly, can "fly into" a landing. Blind landings will therefore be less dangerous, and, contrary to general belief, fields will not have to be extended for landing...
...American Lumberjack, Holy Old Mackinaw has chapters on lumberjack songs and the changes in logging techniques, on river drives, log thieves, the I. W. W., forest fires, loggers' slang and legends. Author Holbrook's warmest passages are given over to descriptions of the red-light districts, skid roads and loggers' saloons that have flourished from Bangor to Eureka, Calif. Result is that Holy Old Mackinaw is a puzzler, with solid bits of unfamiliar industrial history sandwiched between slightly sophomoric tributes to vanished vice. Author Holbrook's loggers get into so many fights, frequent so many bawdy...
Central character of the novel is Napoleon. Heroine is his Polish mistress, 20-year-old, blonde, serious-minded Marie Walewska. By rubberizing history, pseudonymous English Author Pilgrim contrives a cinematic tale based on the ten months which marked the height of Napoleon's career, the beginning of his skid toward Waterloo as a result of his Spanish campaign...