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2242c5f
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Escapism sold books, to be sure, but not nearly as many as were sold by exposing America's flaws and making the average American reader (and book club member) look closely at his or her most cherished social assumptions. Americans might not be eager to accept integration, feminism, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency, and the drug culture- or to shoulder the blame for the existence of these problems- but they were certainly willing to read ..
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Michael Korda |
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429ecba
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It must be nice, Queenie thought, to be one thing or another, to know where you belonged.
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Michael Korda |
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8785896
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obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character," would"
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Michael Korda |
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967667a
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We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. --Irving Townshend, Separate Lives
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Michael Korda |
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4fe10b1
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Lee was a born pedagogue, never happier than when his children were learning to do something the right way. It is a testament to Lee's affection and patience that his children did not rebel. In fact, they appear to have thrived.
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encouragement
parenthood
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Michael Korda |
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15b662c
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Cats don't think they're owned by anybody.
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free
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Michael Korda |
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8135f02
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Ask a book publisher how many copies a book has sold, and he or she, presuming you're not the author, will probably try to remember the size of the first printing, then double it. If you're the author, the publisher will try to remember the number of copies that were shipped and cut that in half in order to avoid encouraging you to expect a big royalty check.
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Michael Korda |
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ea02d28
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Like any man who has two masters with opposing interests, he was torn between them.
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Michael Korda |
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8a385fd
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Lawrence: Clayton, I've decided to go off alone to Damascus, hoping to get killed on the way: for all sakes try and clear this show up before it goes further. We are calling them to fight for us on a lie, and I can't stand it.
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Michael Korda |
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ab8938a
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Writers are always outsiders and probably ought to be, since only outsiders see things clearly: the people who publish them, or make movies, or produce plays are always richer and more powerful, however successful the writer is.
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Michael Korda |
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ac204f8
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Even those who die in terrorist attacks, and have thus had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, are described as "heroes", though given a choice most of them would no doubt have preferred to be somewhere else when the blow was struck."
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Michael Korda |
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9723169
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Lawrence: A man who gives himself to the possession of aliens leads a Yahoo life. In my case my effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes, and destroyed it all for me. At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only.
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Michael Korda |
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7dc45bf
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Lawrence's concern about the loss of twenty Arabs may seem odd during a war in which British war dead would exceed 750,000, but he felt strongly that "Our men were not materials, like soldiers, but friends of ours, trusting in our leadership."
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Michael Korda |
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18d57a2
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Lawrence's detractors, then and now, still argue that this was merely a "pinprick" in "a sideshow of a sideshow" compared with the western front, but it in fact was a modest first effort at a new kind of warfare-- in which an organized, modern, occupying army was forced to deal with small but lethal attacks by an enemy who appeared suddenly out of nowhere, struck hard, and vanished again; in which the ambush, the roadside or railway "improv..
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Michael Korda |
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d6196ab
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It is worth noting that the desert provides every kind of torment-- heat, cold, rain, flash floods, windstorms, biting insects, and sandstorms, sometimes all on the same day.
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Michael Korda |
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876a3d1
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Across some of the harshest and most difficult terrain in the world, led by a man who already had a price on his head.
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Michael Korda |
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5acebed
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My father, Vincent, a rumpled Bohemian who had followed his
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Michael Korda |
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c3207d1
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It is a reflection of a well-known social problem during the Victorian age, when female servants were often made pregnant by the master of the house or one of his sons.
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Michael Korda |
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b276a7a
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No matter how peaceful a situation might seem, you could never be protected from sudden, unexpected violence that might also engulf the stranger.
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Michael Korda |
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a1cc391
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For the first time it was clear to those who listened to Churchill's speech--and the whole country listened carefully--that all of the easy presumptions that had shored up appeasement, among them belief in the French Army, the legendary strength of the Maginot Line, the fighting qualities of the BEF, above all the hope that a deal of some kind might be made with Hitler at the last moment, were all swept away by his stark realism, and by the..
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Michael Korda |
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b382152
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None of this means of course that Robert E. Lee wasn't influenced by his father, or didn't inherit some of his better characteristics. Like Henry Lee, Robert was tall, physically strong, a born horseman and soldier, and so courageous that even his own soldiers often begged him to get back out of range, in vain of course. He had his father's gift for the sudden flank attack that would throw the enemy off balance, and also his father's abilit..
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confederacy
general-lee
henry-lee
robert-e-lee
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Michael Korda |
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e2bad75
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This night, however, she surprised me by getting down on her "poor old knees" (as she always referred to them) beside me and told me to pray with her "for the safety of the British Army in France." Her own palms were pressed tightly together, and there were tears in her eyes behind her gold-rimmed pince-nez. She usually said her prayers long after I had said mine and gone to bed, and she had so far as I know no relatives in the BEF. It was ..
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Michael Korda |
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ee86d90
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I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." He had an instinctive understanding of the fact that the British as a people dislike boasting, and pride themselves not on victory but on being able to "take it."
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Michael Korda |
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9321ed6
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Almost the first thing I learned about being an editor was that it was hard work. To be sure, ditchdiggers and miners have it worse, but for sheer, numbing, endless (I do not, deliberately, say mindless) work, editing books is hard to beat.
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Michael Korda |
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5caedc5
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It was soul-destroying work, apt to turn anyone cynical, for the sad, awful truth was that there was hardly any evidence at all of talent in the slush pile and plenty of proof, for those who needed it, that the country was full of crazy people armed with typewriters--far more of them even than of crazy people armed with guns.
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Michael Korda |
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47e0e20
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And like all the better professions, editing is something of an art, too, if it's done well, and something of a mystery as well. Nobody teaches it, of course; you're born to it, the way a good surgeon is born with the right hands; it's something you either can or can't do, though apprenticeship doesn't hurt.
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Michael Korda |
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d134ff7
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It was the face of a nonreligious ascetic, capable of enduring hardship and pain beyond what most men would even want to contemplate, a true believer in other people's causes, a curious combination of scholar and man of action, and, most important of all, a dreamer.
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Michael Korda |
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8da3bbb
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A man who gives himself to the possession of aliens leads a Yahoo life... . He is not one of them... . In my case my effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes, and destroyed it all for me. At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only.
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Michael Korda |
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18439dc
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Howeitat, Auda's own tribe, where they were feasted with one of those lavish meals that Lawrence loathed so much: hot grease and pieces of mutton on a bed of rice, decorated with the singed heads of the slaughtered sheep.
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Michael Korda |
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b253f51
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Learn to accept your mistakes. Don't be a perfectionist about everything.
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Michael Korda |
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c346bb0
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Don't make waves, move smoothly without disturbing things.
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Michael Korda |
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ebc1d1e
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One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.
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Michael Korda |
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6a6725b
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The more you can dream, the more you can do.
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Michael Korda |