Word: vastness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Then again, preserving such a record may not be worth the vast effort, expense or constraints involved. After all, only history is at stake. But if top officials knew in the back of their minds that future generations were listening in, it might have a salutary effect on the present. Had the judgment of history been hovering over their shoulders, the architects of the Iran- contra affair, for example, might have reflected a moment longer on the long- term implications of their actions. Indeed, the dulling of our historical sense could be one reason that the U.S. needs so many...
Rising abruptly from the eastern Nevada desert, snow-capped Wheeler Peak has long been a regional attraction. Visitors began arriving in 1885, after Rancher Absalom Lehman discovered vast limestone caves in the neighboring foothills. Swinging a sledgehammer to cut paths through forests of stalactites and stalagmites, Lehman then led candlelight tours through the caves for a dollar a head. After President Warren G. Harding declared the caves a national monument in 1922, Manager Clarence Rhodes rented them out for weddings, dances and initiation ceremonies for the Knights of Pythias, who frolicked in clouds of sulfurous smoke wearing costumes...
...origins of human nature. His curiosity takes him to Australia, where he has heard that the continent is entwined by songlines, invisible paths that the aboriginals can read like sheet music. According to their creation myths, Australia was literally sung into existence by ancestral creatures. They wandered over the vast land mass during the dreamtime, giving names to animals, plants, hills and depressions. Re- enactments of these legends are the walkabouts, aboriginal cross-country amblings that not only strengthen ties to the old ways but mark territories. As long as the walker sticks to his own songlines, he can have...
...grader's own mood. "It seems more than obvious to one entangled in the petty quibbles of contemporary Medievalists--at times, indeed, approaching the ludicrous--that, smile as we may at its follies, or denounce its barbarities, the truly monumental achievements of the Middle Ages have become too vast for us to cope with, or even understand; we are too small, and too afraid." Let me offer this as an ideal opening sentence to any question even tangentially nudging on the Middle Ages. And now, you see, having dazzled me, won me by your personal, involved, independently-minded assertion, your...
...whatever means, the vast majority of crime writers reconcile themselves to return engagements. Thus despite the dangers, or at least doldrums, of repetition, series account for most of the current crop of top crime fiction. Perhaps the most impressive cumulative performance comes from Sir John Appleby, the fictional retired head of Scotland Yard and the signature detective of Michael Innes, a.k.a. J.I.M. Stewart, 80, a retired Oxford don who has been crafting wry, sprightly, often fanciful mysteries for more than half a century. The "ex-bobby," as he coyly calls himself, reappears in an umpteenth adventure, Appleby and the Ospreys...