My first taste of it in 2014 sharpened me as a music critic by setting my goalposts higher.
Just as Ernest Hemingway in the 1930s sharpened up language with short sentences, so Beckett and Co introduced ambiguity into novels, even traditional ones, and especially into films, television, pop music and advertising.
An open letter by security bigwigs from Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states and other countries publicly bemoaned the decline in transatlantic relations.A muted NATO response to extensive Russian military exercises on the Baltic and Polish borders last autumn sharpened the worries further.
And yet the journey that Helen Shaw, the young white heroine, takes into the hovels of poor Johannesburg displays "the whole panorama of this explosive continent's most explosive corner", wrote one reviewer.Freedom writerThe arrest of her best friend, Bettie du Toit, and the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 sharpened her political courage.
The political climate after 2006 sharpened some informants' perspective that the childcare movement is pursuing "a significant new public system in an era of dismantling public systems"—a radical demand, and one that rejects the state's neo-liberal/neo-conservative orientation.
Touring the state with pop-up galleries for Portrait of Wyoming in 2014 sharpened the the trio's values, introduced them to Wyoming's wider art community, and taught them how to find space for art.
But the stakes are high, with long delays in holding the poll, originally set for 2008, sharpening tensions.
As for making the wealthy pay higher taxes, "he can call it what he wants," Mr. Kerry said last week, sharpening his argument for the fall campaign.
With Oxygen, NBC hopes to do what it did after buying Bravo six years ago: sharpen its focus, incubate brand-defining shows and improve the ratings.
Our fiction reviewers are a feisty pair this week, sharpening their knives for Monica Ali's "In the Kitchen," her latest novel since the 2006 "Alentejo Blue," which was set in a small Portuguese village.
