Word: parvenus
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Berlin, the American authorities refused to approve a Soviet version of Tom Sawyer for German schools. The reason was a preface which said: "Twain's scorn is directed primarily against the semi-education of parvenus and refined people who imitate the European way of life. . . . The whole mendacity of the capitalistic class, the hypocrisy and bigotry in the U.S. of his time are attacked without leniency or mercy." However, without U.S. sanction, 400,000 Berlin children go on using Soviet-proposed books because the U.S. has not supplied any schoolbooks...
...second unless the pitcher breaks his leg." Taft is an amalgam of "brain power . . . sincerity . . . majestic wrongheadedness . . . Brobdingnagian bad judgments." Gunther on Bricker: "Intellectually he is like interstellar space-a vast vacuum occasionally crossed by homeless, wandering clichés." Gunther finds U.S. public life full of "poltroons, chiselers, parvenus . . . politicians bloated with intellectual edema." But after all, he says, the U.S. is the "craziest, most dangerous, least stable, most spectacular, least grownup, and most powerful and magnificent nation ever known...