Word: westernness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...management skills that international oil firms offer. Venezuela's state-owned oil industry took in foreign partners last year, entering joint ventures with Conoco, Mitsubishi and Shell. Foreign firms have flocked into Colombia to develop the Cusiana and Cupiagua fields, which together constitute the largest find in the western hemisphere since wildcatters struck oil in 1967 in Alaska's Prudhoe...
Today all the hopes, anxieties and contradictions of Russia's fumbling transition from communist monolith to Western-style free market are reflected in this city of 9 million. The crumbling of communism has rendered it a city adrift -- a metropolis that has lost its sense of historic mission and is struggling to find a new identity worthy of its former grandeur. Moscow finds itself seized by a debilitating sort of urban schizophrenia. On one hand, a small but highly visible minority of residents are enjoying the rich possibilities of upheaval. "Life has never been more exciting in this city!" gushes...
Today, however, both these visual keynotes have been replaced by the chaos of capitalism's dikaya zhizn, or "wild life": weather-beaten babushkas who beg from filthy sidewalks, marauding bands of gypsy children, Lycra-skirted strumpets cavorting with Western businessmen, bankers tooling around town in armor-plated Mercedes, mafia moguls in sharkskin suits who dine on Maine lobster with a $238-a-bottle champagne in five-star hotels. A sense of bewilderment plagues Moscow's residents as they attempt to sort out the conflicting claims of their half-remembered, precommunist culture from the hedonistic and corrupting pull of the West...
...have sprung up across Moscow (and which the city government moved in to control earlier this year). These sidewalk clearinghouses offer a bizarre inventory of items, from Pierre Cardin cigarettes to banana-flavored liqueurs, exotic massage oils, cut-rate lingerie, canned ears of baby corn and pirated videos of Western B-movies...
While the novel takes Western readers on a rare journey to the other side of the Vietnam War, Americans may be surprised at the small role they play. Like many NVA vets, Ninh says he never fought against Americans, "except those in helicopters. I only fought against Vietnamese. Our war was mostly brother against brother. That's what is most bitter...