Word: 1950s
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...bright new world. At least that's what doctors--and, more important, their ecstatic patients--are saying about LASIK. That's short for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis), which could well become the most popular elective surgery among baby boomers since they all had their tonsils removed in the 1950s...
Attempts to change the way the cornea focuses light by surgically altering its surface began as early as the 1950s. By the 1970s Soviet doctors routinely used scalpels to reshape the corneas of nearsighted patients in an operation called radial keratotomy. But the surgery, involving a spokelike ring of incisions, never really caught on in the U.S., because the results were so difficult to predict and the healing process was often slow and painful...
Role-playing has a long history in pop music. In the 1950s, a Beaumont, Texas, deejay named J.P. Richardson stepped into his on-air radio persona, the Big Bopper, and scored a hit single, Chantilly Lace. And in the 1970s, David Bowie took on the role of Ziggy Stardust, an otherworldly rock-'n'-roller. Brooks makes it clear he's just playing a role, not living it or attempting some full Andy Kaufmanesque submersion. He may have recorded a rock CD, but he makes no claims that he's a rocker. "I'm a country artist," he says, "and very...
...History of the American Meritocracy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 406 pages; $27), Nicholas Lemann describes the rise to power of the SAT and the keepers of its flame at the Educational Testing Service. Lemann is especially good at describing the "quiet coup d'etat" that the SAT accomplished in the 1950s and '60s, when it booted the Wasp elite by substituting classroom skills for the old-boy network as the key to college admission...
...gender relations might seem odd to you, but it was normal for the 1950s," she said. "There was a 'dean of women,' women had parietal rules that were different from parietal rules...