How It's Used

"And then he had to worry about the Criterion, the intellectually ambitious literary and cultural quarterly review that he edited, more or less single-handedly, in his 'spare time'. The review had been launched in October 1922, financed by Lady Rothermere, wife of Harold Harmsworth, first Viscount Rothermere. (Harold had helped his brother Alfred, Lord Northcliffe, establish the press empire whose flagship was the Daily Mail.) [T.S.] Eliot aspired to make the Criterion the most prestigious literary review of the day, promoting his favoured blend of modernist literature and reactionary politics, but he soon discovered the scale of the labour this required. After a while, a typist was taken on to handle some of his correspondence, and there was a brief period during which the poet and translator Richard Aldington acted as his assistant but, as the successive deadlines rolled remorselessly around, it was Eliot who seemed to be responsible for everything from commissioning contributions to correcting proofs and arranging payments."

"Back in [Mel] Brooks's office, as the day wore on and the afternoon sun cast ever-lengthening shadows across his desk, you had to feel a little sorry for the man. The chaos of the writers' room is where Brooks always felt most at home; after all, that crucible of mugging and cigar smoking and can-you-top-this?-ing gave birth to television comedy almost single-handedly, which is one reason he created his own writers' room of sorts when working on 'Blazing Saddles,' 'Young Frankenstein' and his other '70s comedies. Now Brooks is surrounded by Emmys and Tonys and framed posters of his films, as well as a keyboard on which he's been plinking out songs for a possible 'Blazing Saddles' musical. But no people."

"Ryan Miller, Sabres 23-8-3 record, 2.02 goals-against average, .934 save percentage. There are only a few goalies who can single-handedly alter the outcome of a season. Miller is one of them. When he suffered a high-ankle sprain last February, Buffalo lost nine of 12 games and dropped out of the playoff race. This year, the Sabres are atop the Northeast Division."

"[James] Patterson has been a beneficiary of the industry’s shifting economics, but he was also a catalyst for change at Little, Brown and in the world of publishing in general. When Patterson published his breakout book, Along Came a Spider, in 1993, Little, Brown was still a largely literary house, whose more commercial authors included the historian William Manchester, biographer of Winston Churchill. Patterson’s success in the subsequent years encouraged Little, Brown to fully embrace mass-market fiction. But more than that, Patterson almost single-handedly created a template for the modern blockbuster author."

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