Word: setting
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa (1982). Juxtaposing a romance between the narrator, Mario, 18, and his nonblood relative Julia, 32, with the saga of a writer of soap-opera scripts, this novel, set in Peru during the 1950s, displays Vargas Llosa -- now a candidate for the presidency of that troubled country -- in a wry, confessional, accessible mood that may never appear again...
Bruce Springsteen: The River (Columbia, 1980). Born in the U.S.A. was the record that made the Boss a legend, but the bleak majesty of this two-LP set shows the bedrock of his talent...
...good news is that lots of people prospered. This was the age of financial wizards making fortunes in their 20s, and roughly 100,000 Americans became millionaires every year. Michael Milken, the junk-bond king at Drexel Burnham Lambert, set the record by earning $550 million in 1987. The bad news is that while the top 20% of American families' earnings rose more than $9,000 (after adjustment for inflation), to an average of nearly $85,000, the bottom 20% dropped by $576, to a hungry $8,880. The Government estimates that 32 million Americans -- 12.8% of the population -- live...
...magician who set loose these forces is a career party functionary, faithful communist, charismatic politician, international celebrity and impresario of calculated disorder named Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. He calls what he is doing -- and permitting -- a revolution. His has (so far) been a bloodless revolution, without the murderous, conspiratorial associations that the word has carried in the past. In novel alliance with the glasnost of world communications, Gorbachev became the patron of change: Big Brother's better twin. His portraits, like icons at a saint's-day festival, waved amid a swarm of Czechs. The East German young chanted "Gorby! Gorby...
When Franklin Roosevelt set out to rescue capitalism from the Depression, he had little use for rigidly defined objectives. Improvisation corrected by feedback, that was Roosevelt's way. "The country needs bold, persistent experimentation," he declared. "Take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it and try another. But above all try something...