Word: silk
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...Silk Road Project, a nonprofit arts and educational organization created by world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma ’76, will move its headquarters from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, R.I. to a Harvard property in Allston in July...
...certainly wouldn't be the first time great powers have sparred over this land of lakes and rugged steppe, nestled in the shadow of the towering Tian Shan and Pamir mountain ranges. For centuries, it was part of the main Silk Road highway that connected China to the west; the ancient bazaar city of Osh to this day bears traces of its commercial past. In 751 A.D., near the modern day town of Talas - where it's reported anti-Bakiyev unrest first broke out on Apr. 6 - a vast army sent forth by the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad defeated...
Compare the essays of “Silk Parachute” to those of McPhee’s “New Yorker” colleague, Malcolm Gladwell: although the writers share an interest in people, their processes are polar opposites. McPhee starts with a detailed discussion of a topic, be it “eccentric food” or Europe’s chalk country, and allows his topic to elucidate a truism about society with such finesse that it seems accidental. Rather than spend pages reveling in the significance of what he has found—like Gladwell?...
McPhee’s obsession with setting hints at the true significance of “Silk Parachute”: collected, these essays reveal not only a stunning attention to detail, but also the degree to which McPhee is steeped in the world in which he was raised—the intellectual scene of the American Northeast. When he writes that “Los Angeles might as well be Tokyo” in the East Coast-centered world of lacrosse, he could easily be talking about himself; his entire oeuvre could well be seen as an unsuccessful attempt...
...most resonant piece in “Silk Parachute” can be easy to overlook. Near the end of the book, seemingly an afterthought to the fact-heavy pieces that precede it, “Checkpoints” explores the process of fact-checking at “The New Yorker.” The essay is a triumph of form, weaving together a broad swath of anecdotes and characters without feeling like what it is: a hodgepodge. But more importantly, it offers something unusual and valuable—a clean and frank description of the toil of writing...