Word: vans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Renoir dancer; N is for an Audubon nest; V is for a Degas violinist. Mayers also offers a matching blue volume (Abrams; $9.95), with works from the Museum of Modern Art in New York: F is for a Jasper Johns flag; N is for a starry night by Van Gogh; G is for an appropriate goat by Pablo Picasso. After all, he was the artist who said it took him a lifetime to paint like a child...
Even so, many of the great Dane's stories have remained in the repertoire because, as Isak Dinesen once observed, he "can be so indescribably simple and touching . . . he is a great magician." Andersen's grandest illusion takes place in The Ugly Duckling (Knopf; $10.95). Illustrator Robert Van Nutt begins by using a primary-school palette. But as the duckling sheds its down and acquires an elegant neck, the dominant hue changes to a formal white, reflecting Andersen's change of mood. The story is sometimes read as a revenge play, but Van Nutt makes it clear that he regards...
...Chris Van Allsburg is a magic realist whose haunting illustrations are full of silence and mystery -- perhaps too much mystery for his slender narratives. In The Stranger (Houghton Mifflin; $15.95), 15 autumnal watercolors all but supplant the story of a nameless figure knocked down by a farmer's pickup. He recuperates at the farm, mute but helpful. As long as the mysterious man is present, the farmer's fields stay green, while all around them leaves turn the color of fire. Winter comes only when the stranger departs. Every year thereafter, the frosty windows bear a Delphic message...
...event marked the most sweeping change in the Vietnamese Communist leadership since the party's founding in 1930. At the Sixth Party Congress in Hanoi last week, three longtime stalwarts resigned because of "advanced age and bad health": General Secretary Truong Chinh, 79, Premier Pham Van Dong, 80, and veteran Politburo Member Le Duc Tho, 76. They are among the last members of the generation of leaders that defeated the French and the Americans on the battlefield. But they failed to reap the benefits of peace, leaving behind a legacy of 800% inflation, widespread unemployment and chronic shortages...
...congress named a new, 13-man Politburo, though the torch has not exactly been passed to a fresh generation: the youngest member is 58, and the incoming General Secretary, Nguyen Van Linh, is 71. A former Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) party secretary, he has been identified with economic reform. Whether he can bring prosperity to his country is another matter. Several veteran Viet Nam observers believe that Hanoi's new leaders remain divided on the wisdom of adopting capitalist measures. Nor do these experts believe that the New Guard will alter the country's foreign policy course. Despite overtures...