Word: vainly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Though Adams had the same prickliness as Give-'Em-Hell Harry, he's just not quite as colorful. From a family of Puritan farmers, Adams was honest and solid, but he could be argumentative, vain and despairing. In John Adams (Simon & Schuster; 751 pages; $35), McCullough does not try to exalt him. Instead he shows how Adams' ability to be sensible and independent made him an important element in the firmament of talents that created a new nation...
...withdraw, in line with a campaign promise to pull out within a year of his election, he was expressing the will of some 70 percent of Israeli voters, who could no longer see any valid purpose in sending their sons and daughters to die in Lebanon in the vain pursuit of security for Israel's northernmost towns. (Despite the occupation, Hizballah had still managed to periodically rain Katyusha rockets on those towns...
...teacher in the upscale Atlanta suburb of Lilburn, she says her problem students have one thing in common: detached parents. Bean's efforts to get their mothers and fathers to attend back-to-school night, help out with research papers or even return her phone calls are often in vain. Those same parents are usually no-shows even at the Little League games that her family frequents. "We end up giving the same kids, who live in beautiful homes, a ride home every night," she says. "These aren't bad parents, but absentee parents...
...happily drive out through Jackson, up over the incredible Teton pass (hammering the little chainsaw engine they put in this pipsqueak car as it tries in vain to find the right gear for going 70 mph up a 10 percent grade). I savagely step on the gas and dare it to blow a gasket, reveling in the guilt-free/worry-free magic of a rental car. I come over the hill into Idaho, not really knowing what to expect. To my left are the shining Rocky Mountains, sun glinting down through the clouds, a tremendous early spring day. To my right...
...certain about my musical opinions. To know that when Michael Stipe sang it was the expression of my inner voice, and then to resent the fact that other people knew about this private meaning, and then to resent yet other people for not knowing about REM. To be so vain I probably thought the song was about me. To have walked around with my discman, wearing the fact that I was listening to the new Sonic Youth as a badge of pride, angling the CD player so that it caught people’s eyes. To be in the mosh...