Word: traite
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...book's most important characters have talents of a different sort. The common trait shared by all of them is a singleminded devotion to a cause. The conflicts between their beliefs form the book's underlying message. The most important of these is the Counselor himself, a magical figure who has a strange power over men that only he can understand. Then there is Gallileo Gall, a proto Marxist Scot shipwrecked in Brazil, who sees Canudos as the revolutionary commune he left in Paris in 1871. On the other side is Morcira-Cesar, the military leader who vows to eliminate...
...books of non-fiction (The Superlawyers, Korea), suggests that Wilson's character was formed by a harsh, cold father and a childhood spent on the rough edge of poverty in Idaho. Young Wilson showed a flair for manipulating other people, without undue regard for affection or morality; this trait aided his work as an operative for the CIA and the Office of Naval Intelligence. By the mid-1970s, Wilson had achieved a shadowy prominence in Washington. As Goulden tells it, scores of Government officials, Congressmen and Pentagon officers were mesmerized by the not-so-secret agent's lethal...
Jayne Anne Phillips' wondering, musing first novel raises such questions without ever explicitly stating them, in a way that suggests another fine family por trait, last year's During the Reign of the Queen of Persia by Joan Chase. In a man ner that seems simple and straightforward, though its workings are intricate enough, the author sketches the histories of four people in Bellington, a town she places in West Virginia. They are Mitch Hampson, born in 1910, a soldier, heavy-equipment operator, scrambling business man; his wife Jean, born in the mid-'20s, deeper and more...
...sexual differences, but it is the male hormone, testosterone, that makes the man, with his drive and macho behavior. The ambitious female politician or leader can come about only by an inborn androgyny, produced by a high level of that male hormone with its attendant aggressiveness. This male trait, admittedly not a very attractive one, is the single aptitude womanly women just do not have, and this is agreed to by both male and female scientists...
Even in this period of greater peace within herself, MacLaine says, the one constant in her life is change: "My strongest personality trait is the way I keep unsettling my life when most other people are settling down." Romance is sacrificed to her fervor for growth: "I have mostly used relationships to learn, and when that process is over, so is the relationship." Friends and especially lovers can find her exhausting because she peppers them with endless questions, shifts moods in a matter of seconds and demands that everyone keeps up with her. She admits, "My biggest goal right...