Word: thrall
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...meantime, the U.S. squad is getting jeered not only by its coaches and fans but also by a global audience formerly in thrall to its every NBA-marketed leap. The team is booed lustfully whenever it takes the floor or shows the faintest hint of exuberance--Greek fans chanted "Puer-to Ri-co"--and, yes, politics has a lot to do with it. The rest of the world understands metaphor...
...Jerusalem has a slightly piquant air because we know what the future holds in store for them. An earlier section in Cloud Atlas (Random House; 509 pages) has told us that civilization will destroy itself with its consuming greed and Homo sapiens will return to being primitive again, in thrall to animist spirits...
...wonder about Bill Clinton. So talented, so intelligent, so candid about his demons--and so much in thrall to them, even now. He professes optimism and says he forgives his enemies. "It would be a mistake to treat them the way they treat us," he said at N.Y.U.--good advice, if a double-edged bit of high-mindedness, confirming his supporters' angriest assumptions. His book and attendant commentary seem calculated to reopen old wounds. One wonders how Clinton reacted to the funeral of Ronald Reagan, another optimistic small-town son of a drunk, who served two full terms as President...
...owes debts to Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy. Haruf's words lend weight to the takeout-pizza boxes and so forth of modern Colorado. So is it churlish to point out that behind the facade of its steadfast language, this is a fairly sentimental book? And one too much in thrall to its own lugubrious music, which is no substitute for narrative drive. It's a fine line between gravity and listlessness. Time and again Eventide drifts gently across it. --By Richard Lacayo
...India is a modern democracy - with the world's largest electorate - not a tribal society in the thrall of some famous chieftain and his progeny. As powerful as the Gandhi name may be in the symbolic language of Indian political advertising, the defeat of the Hindu-nationalist government of Atal Behari Vajpayee's BJP had a lot more to do with the economy. By many measures, that's a rising star, with growth rates and a booming tech sector that make it the toast of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Hence Vajpayee's decision to call an early election, advised...