Word: vinci
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...quite suddenly, we learn that the recipient of all of our earnest faith and affection has been a frou-frou all along! Especially for Americans, this comes as utter shock. Dumbledore has suddenly become the best-known gay icon… ever. Never mind Da Vinci, Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Freddy Mercury—these eccentrics and geniuses we can ignore. But Dumbledore will change our image of homosexuality forever...
...Unless you take The Da Vinci Code as a work of history, however, the glory didn't last. The order lost its purpose and credibility when the Muslim warrior Saladin drove the Crusaders from Jerusalem in 1187, setting the Templars on a path of retreat that saw them give up their last Mid-Eastern foothold, in what is now Syria, in 1303. From there, the decline was precipitous: The Templars failed in an effort to take control of Cyprus, and then, in 1307, Philip IV of France found it more convenient to order the arrest and torture of the Templars...
...tale of the Templars remains a gaudy thread woven through the religion, politics and literature of Western civilization, with a recent boost from the embellishments of Dan Brown, who cast the Knights as a key part of the conspiracy to conceal Church secrets in his best-seller The Da Vinci Code...
...example, the stock price of “The Da Vinci Code” rose $43.43 over its expected value with the news that Tom Hanks might appear in the film...
Italy's ongoing wars provide King's book with its narrative structure, but Machiavelli's personal struggles give it drive. After 15 years of service - representing Florence abroad, raising and training its first citizen militia, and collaborating with Leonardo da Vinci on engineering projects - Machiavelli watched his beloved city-state fall to the Spanish in 1512. Under the subsequently installed Medici family, he was imprisoned, tortured by having his shoulders dislocated, and banned from his former offices. He retreated to the countryside with his wife, then pregnant with their seventh child. King doesn't miss the irony: "He understood better...