Adams paints an engrossing portrait of Bingham, the Honolulu-born missionary's son who combined ruthless ambition, supreme self-confidence and occasional cluelessness.
Mr. Spitzer brings to the real estate world many of the qualities that marked his two decades of political life: unbridled ambition, supreme self-confidence, a go-it-alone approach and a sometimes combative personality — traits not exactly uncommon among fellow developers.
Henceforth, participation in public affairs became the supreme occupation engaging the ambition of Greek man; it was no longer in athletics and elegant leisure activities that his valour, his desire to assert himself and to triumph, would find expression but rather in political action.
This "parallel lives" is Mrs. Reischauer's small monument to the values of family, ambition and that supreme Japanese virtue: hard work.
In her review for NPR, Ann Powers said that A Love Surreal "cultivates the stratospheric vibe" of Coltrane's A Love Supreme and that Bilal's ambition is "grounded in fierce intelligence and a commitment to letting stories unfold all the way to their sometimes sorrowful, sometimes orgasmic end".
The five autonomous sections of this posthumously published novel interlock to form an astonishing whole, a supreme capstone to Bolaño's vaulting ambition.
In typically dramatic language, the official state organ said he attempted to "overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power of our party and state".
Indeed, he produced not only a supreme capstone to his own vaulting ambition, but a landmark in what's possible for the novel as a form in our increasingly, and terrifyingly, post-national world.
The flame feeds off the most highly combustible elements: survival and ambition, caution and creativity, supreme confidence and dark fear".
In a rambling report, the Korea Central News Agency denounced the "despicable human scum Jang, who was worse than a dog'' and said that he had attempted to "overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power".
Not only did Glenn "have courage and ambition, but he also had supreme confidence in himself and his own abilities," qualities that distinguished him from most mortals, said Frank Van Riper, who wrote the 1983 biography "Glenn: The Astronaut Who Would Be President".
