Sublime

Increasing passenger traffic, Brown reasoned, was the one sure way to wean the airlines from postal subsidies. But public confidence could be inspired only by big, financially secure carriers committed to safety, maintenance, and training, not by the fly-by-night operators abounding at the time. Brown changed the rules so that the airlines received

The result in 1909, of course, was no contest. Forty miles of track were swept away, boulders the size of automobiles carried off like pebbles. Even some of the barges that had been purposely sunk to avoid their being dashed to pieces on the shoals had been slung across the sea bottom and destroyed, or buried beneath tons of tide-shifted sands. In

frictionlessly,

He had to drive 110 unnecessary miles per week, 5,500 per year—all because of Moses’ “compromise.” By the 1960’s there were about 21,500 such commuters, and the cost to them alone of Moses’ accommodation totaled tens of millions of wasted hours of human lives.

Because nothing else at Tarawa had made so terrible an impression as the reef, nothing else had so proved its value as the LVTs, a triumph dimmed only by their scant armor, slow speed, and the Navy’s reluctance to bring extras. As a result, the solution for future reefs, according to the 2nd Marine Division’s after-action report, was summed up in t

under 2,000 pounds and under $2,000”—were