Word: splendid
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...Breaks of the Game, Halberstam's splendid new book, comes as a sort of breather after its two mammoth predecessors--The Best and the Brightest, his magnificent study of how arrogance bred disaster in Vietnam, and The Powers That Be, his un-magnificent but still good investigation of the modern media empires. To his credit, Halberstam realizes that basketball, for all its symbolic and actual importance, is not the metaphor for contemporary America. Halberstam's humility, at least about his subject, comes as a welcome surprise...
Indeed, so powerful has that image been that one sometimes forgets how splendid he has been as a character actor. The military martinet of Fort Apache, the cold-eyed outlaw of Once Upon a Time in the West, even the hilariously befuddled herpetologist "Hopsy" Pike of The Lady Eve-they all light up in one's memory as the spirit that animated them flashes in Fonda's eyes. Without raising his voice he gives a bravura performance as he moves from depressed withdrawal to momentary rages, from the struggle to express affection to the struggle not to express...
...seems resigned to his new role as supporting player, although at one point during the opening of Parliament, the Prince turned to his Princess-splendid in a white satin and chiffon gown and diamond tiara-and, according to one observer, was thought to have remarked, "Diana, stop stealing the show...
...Five are the Philadelphia Orchestra, once magnificent but facing an uncertain future in the hands of its new music director, Riccardo Muti, and the New York Philharmonic, a temperamental band, even under Zubin Mehta, that rarely deserves to be included in such fast company. There are worthy, even splendid, orchestras in such cities as Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco that do not deserve also-ran status...
...inflation has not exactly devoured the dream, it has taken a painful bite out of it. Good, even splendid houses are still built; America is not suddenly being driven out into hovels and Hoovervilles. But the number of Americans who can afford first-class housing is dwindling. The median price of a new home has gone from $20,000 in 1965 to $70,000 in 1981. The traditional budget formula said that a family should spend no more than one-quarter of gross income on housing. If they obey that rule, less than 10% of Americans can afford a median...