Word: successful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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English author Lucy Wadham is well positioned to attempt the tricky feat so many other writers have taken on, usually without success: explaining to the rest of the world what makes the French so, well, French. In The Secret Life of France, she uses the insight she has gained from 25 years of living in France to bridge the comprehension gap between the nation in which she was born and the one she's come to love...
...That's one of the safest bets around. The only question is whether she will be in a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), as in the last four years, or with the Free Democrats (FDP), a center-right party out of power for 11. In Merkel's success hangs a tale of significance beyond Germany...
...there's a darker side to ostalgie, a yearning for the old order among elderly Ossis to whom life in reunited Germany hasn't always proved kind. Hubertus Knabe - the director of Hohenschönhausen, a former G.D.R. prison and now a memorial - argues that the success of Die Linke in the eastern states reveals a dangerous form of amnesia. His book Honeckers Erben (Honecker's Heirs) depicts Die Linke as direct descendants of G.D.R. leader Erich Honecker's repressive communist regime. "It's a very human quality to whitewash the past," he says. But he adds the warning...
...That Germany has achieved so much in such a relatively short period after reunification - stability, democracy, prosperity - paradoxically highlights its failings, the sections of society that have been excluded from the success story. Berlin has memorials everywhere, the earnest expression of modern Germany's desire to acknowledge its difficult history. Yet for every memorial, there's also a theme-park rendition of the past. At Potsdamer Platz you can have your picture taken with smiling "border guards" next to remounted Wall panels, decorated with faux graffiti on their eastern faces. "It's disgusting," says Knabe. "And it makes harmless something...
...becomes a "why bother" scenario.' RICK ALEXANDER, a Florida carpenter, one of thousands of Americans who have given up searching for a job after months without success...