Word: write
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...delusion of control. We are not so lucky this time. This is an actual war; there are unplanned events: an unruly enemy, uncooperative allies, magisterial dust storms. That doesn't necessarily mean the war is going badly. For all we know, it may be going splendidly; as I write this, Saddam Hussein may be throwing in the towel...
...time the screaming started over the new borders. No preparations were therefore made to control the inevitable havoc. The result was a bloody birthday gift to newborn India and Pakistan as millions of people were uprooted amid massacres and murder. "I am sick with horror," Nehru would write his friend Mountbatten after visiting one affected area. More horror was to come: refugee camps everywhere and, eventually, war with Pakistan over Kashmir, an enmity, potent as nuclear bombs, that lasts to this day. Five months after independence, the idealism of the struggle for freedom was shattered when a Hindu fanatic assassinated...
...tempo indeed. George Gershwin had agreed to write a symphonic jazz piece for bandleader Paul Whiteman. Gershwin didn't think he had agreed to finish it for a February performance until he read about it in a newspaper a month before the date. So Gershwin got to writing, developing some early musical sketches to a complete score. Almost. By the premiere, he hadn't finished scoring the piano solo. He played it himself, cuing Whiteman when to bring the orchestra back in. An orchestral star was born...
...full and respected partners in the international system, the draft's bellicose terms were tactless. Cheney and Wolfowitz were told to tone them down. But from his perch at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he waited out the Clinton years, Wolfowitz continued to talk and write about Iraq. Like a traveler struggling to keep his campfire burning amid chilly winds, he took every chance to stoke the fire, reminding all who would listen that there was unfinished business on the Tigris, that Saddam remained in power and still had his weapons. In 1997, as Clinton...
...Tiananmen Square, 300,000 people squinted through a yellow haze of soot to see the man who, after two decades of fighting, had routed the American-backed forces of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. As Mao waited, Guo dispatched a comrade to find a piece of red satin and write "Chairman" upon it in gold. That crisis averted, Mao stood on the rostrum above a massive portrait of himself and announced in his peasant brogue, "The central government of the People's Republic of China is established!" "Long live Chairman Mao!" answered the crowd, which began cheering soldiers fresh from battle...