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Author: Les Standiford
Quotes of Author: Les Standiford
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  1. Les Standiford _ The Man Who Invented

    It is worth noting here, that in attracting 100,000 readers to issues of The Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens was reaching an unprecedented portion of his country's audience. While no formal records of literacy rates were kept at the time, Francis Jeffrey {Lord Jeffrey}, the eminent jurist and founder of the Edinburgh Review, wrote in an 1844 issue of that magazine that there might be 300,000 readers among the middle class in England {out of a total population of about 2 million}, with perhaps another 30,000 in the upper classes. And even if the total readership was 500,000, as some commentators have suggested, Dickens was still selling his work to somewhere between one-fifth and one-quarter of the literate public of a nation. Compare those figures with modern-day America, where 200 million or so working, literate adults constitute the potential "book-buying public," and where a sale of 75,000 to 100,000 copies-one-twentieth of one percent-is often enough to put an author high up on the list of New York Times bestsellers.
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  2. Les Standiford _ Meet You in Hell: Andrew

    the value of a personal fortune is better understood in relation to the total gross national product of an individual's era. By that measure, Carnegie was worth $112 billion in his day, far ahead of Bill Gates {$85 billion}, Sam Walton {$42 billion}, or Warren Buffett {$31 billion}.
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  3. Les Standiford _ The Man Who Invented Christmas

    Daniel Maclise {whose 1839 oil of Dickens hangs today at the National Portrait Gallery}.
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  4. Les Standiford _ Bringing Adam Home: The

    The houses there sat on lots of an acre or more, and some neighbors still kept horses. The urban centers of Fort Lauderdale and Miami were nearby, and if you wanted a dose of the city, you could easily get it.
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  5. Les Standiford _ Bringing Adam Home: The

    In his profession, Wright had seen horror stacked on horror, plenty of evidence that there was no shortage of hell right here on earth. As to what had kept him sane in the face of all that he had witnessed, it was a simple sense of purpose. "It is that simple, John," Wright said. "There is evil. And there is good.
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  6. Les Standiford _ Last Train to Paradise: Henry

    One worker housed in Camp No. 10 on Key Vaca was overheard to say, "Building this railroad has become a regular marathon." The remark struck a chord in his fellow workers, who dubbed their camp "Marathon," the name by which the nearby town, the second-largest in the Keys, is known today.
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  7. Les Standiford _ Bringing Adam Home: The

    It's like you've been in a terrible accident and had your arm amputated," she told him. "After a while, the pain goes away, and eventually you even learn to get along without your arm. Some days you're sad that you're missing your arm, and some days you're angry about it, and some days you're okay. But, no matter what, no matter how long it's been, you never stop missing your arm.
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  8. Les Standiford _ The Man Who Invented

    Society." John Forster, who would one day become Dickens's great friend, adviser, editor, and first biographer, wrote in the Examiner that Dickens had excelled particularly in his portraits of the ludicrous and the pathetic, all rendered in an "agreeable, racy style.
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  9. Les Standiford _ Bringing Adam Home: The

    Then why on earth had she never told anyone about these things? Matthews asked. Linda didn't miss a beat. "Because no one ever asked," she said. "You're the first that ever did.
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  10. Les Standiford _ Bringing Adam Home: The

    As even newly elected presidents have learned, trying to correct the conduct of business as usual in the federal bureaucracy is like trying to nudge an ocean liner off its path by standing on a rubber raft and pressing on the liner's hull with your bare hands as it speeds by.
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  11. Les Standiford _ The Man Who Invented

    Dickens believed that a reasonable capitalistic society could be made to recognize its responsibility to all its citizens, and that it was the duty of those most fortunate to share a portion of their gain with those whose grasp had slipped while pulling at their bootstraps.
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  12. Les Standiford _ The Man Who Invented

    To Dickens, true charity was a matter of openhearted benevolence; to use the relief of poverty as a cudgel to beat a recipient into piousness was repellent and evil.
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