Sublime

he was the dumbest person in their class, admitted as a sort of unofficial poor-white-rural-dweller-oddity affirmative-action representative.)

East Tremont was a sense of continuity, of warmth, of the security that comes—and only comes—with a sense of belonging.

Under the appointed mainland officials served elected Puerto Rican ones, less powerful but much cannier about local affairs. Chief among these was Luis Muñoz Marín, the leader of the island’s dominant party, who towered over the political scene from the 1940s through the 1960s. John Gunther deemed him “the most important living Puerto Rican.”

He had returned to New York years before, with the intention of finding a way to reconnect, if possible, with the only family that remained to him in the world. Instead he had become immured, by fear and its majordomo, habit, in his cabinet of mysteries on the seventy-second floor of the Empire State Building, serenaded by a tirelessly vamping orch

The Robert Moses of 1945 was not the foe of the practical politician but the essence of that peculiar animal. He was the complete realist.

As Ivar explained, the desires of the three parties were clear: American investors wanted high returns, European governments wanted US dollars, and the match industry wanted monopoly power. The resources also were clear: American investors had dollars, European governments had the power to grant monopolies within their territories, and the match in

A biologist is not a detective, but I began to think like a detective.