“... between an event and the media reflection of it, between fact and fiction, is even less stable. In May 1992, for instance, shortly after the Los Angeles riots, the Vice-President of the United States, Dan Quayle, blamed that eruption of violence on the eponymous heroine of the television sitcom Murphy Brown, who was ‘mocking the importance of fathers, by ...”

“... and who relish the depiction of Tina Brown’s New Yorker as a salon for the rich and famous, may still feel that Washington Babylon gives equal opportunity for women a bad name. Dismissing the difference made by the President’s Supreme Court appointments, Cockburn and Silverstein worry not at all about the criminalisation of abortion and ...”

“... and goes on: To recrudesce is to become raw again or renew morbid activity, as a wound or ulcer may, or metaphorically a pestilence. or vice or other noxious manifestation. That being so ... what have Mr Laver and Lord Melbourne done that their appearance should be a r.? Nothing, except fall into the hands of journalists who like POPULARISED TECHNICALITIES ...”

“... to have left the plains of Troy and soared into intergalactic space; at any moment the Klingons may come to fight at Hector’s side. And the verse has become more staccato, the content more trivial. Here is Priam in his palace:   ‘Who’s there?’   ‘Manto, sir.’   ‘Manto?’   ‘Yes, sir. Your youngest son.’   ‘Shine the ...”

“... intended to or not, prefigures all too exactly the experience of reading Landscape and Memory. We may not know where the wide meanders of a river are taking us, but we know they will take us somewhere; reading this book, I felt like one of those Australian explorers who believed that, by analogy with the geography of other continents, there must somewhere be ...”

“... they are treated as irrational, the gene-preserving thesis seems to be called for. However that may be, Posner argues that sexual behaviour, in contrast with preference, is mostly the outcome of rational choice; sex does not dethrone reason. The balance of private costs and benefits determines the relative frequency of different sexual practices: for many ...”

“... could further have made the perfectly reasonable argument that if you are going to lose you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and stick to your principles. But Heffernan and Marqusee believe that the election could have been won and was lost largely because socialist principles were not stuck to. This is surely much more doubtful. Prima facie it ...”

“... of Operations, not so much doctoring the spin as applying snake oil to it, said: ‘This may be Dodge City, but Wyatt is in town.’ According to this model, it seems that the marshals from out of town would sooner shoot it out with ‘the bandits’ than, say, take advantage of superior numbers and firepower to encourage them to throw down their ...”

“... of species togetherness: it’s a warning that by denying kinship with the worst of our kind, we may never know ourselves at all. There have been others like Dahmer, but he’ll do as the worst. Masters quotes Colin Wilson: ‘The study of murder is not the study of abnormal human nature; it is the study of human nature stained by an act that makes it ...”

“... people, is that one day, through the creation of free institutions with sovereign power, Europe may once again cover its true geographical, and even more important, historical dimensions.’ He wants nothing less than a restoration of the Holy Roman Empire, and, in the absence of any obvious candidate for the Imperial Throne, it is clear that in his mind ...”

“... nearly fifty years writing this book, and died before this final edition appeared. Whatever one may think of the result, the author’s dedication is awe-inspiring. Bolloten went to Spain during the Civil War as correspondent of the United Press. He began collecting newspapers, propaganda hand-outs, leaflets, booklets. As he admits, he was at that time ...”

“... The tensions underlying modern masculinity derive from a state of unacknowledged dependence, and may have contributed to the rise of the feminist movement; they are certainly aggravated by it. With the achievement (pace Delphy and Leonard) of many of women’s egalitarian demands, and the loss of biological power implicit in the adoption of birth ...”

“... effects by pitching his rhetoric high, he keeps his voice calm and controlled. His characters may indulge in their own strain of lyricism when they talk, but as a narrator Junger tends to avoid it: The Andrea Gail has a high bow that would force Billy [Billy Tyne, the captain] to oversteer simply to stay on course. One can imagine Billy standing at the ...”

“... this way, and to the consternation of a certain class of cultural crusader for Afrikaans, English may yet assume a central, even critical role in the making of a new, transcendent national identity. Yet becoming detached from one’s ‘ethnic roots’ involves processes every bit as complex and worthy of investigation as those that inform the making of real ...”

“... of the kilogram, it couldn’t lose weight: the universe could only get heavier.) As of last May, the definition of a kilogram is based on Planck’s constant. Metrologists say that by excising the last physical vestige of the SI, they’ve fulfilled the dream of the savants and finally created an immaterial, universal basis for all metrology. But they ...”