SCOTT D. PLATTON Washington, April 9, 2013 To the Editor: According to David Brooks (column, April 9), Margaret Thatcher changed British values for the better, away from cooperation, self-exploration and narcissism to the "vigorous virtues" of ambition, competition and rectitude.
These American ambitions confronted vigorous Japanese resistance.
He is clearly on to something when he writes that photography allowed Jews to express a "vigorous populism that suited their evolving ambition".
But that hope has collided in the ensuing years with a recognition that private ambition and private industry, however vigorous they are, cannot on their own lift India from poverty and malnourishment, insurgencies and creaking infrastructure.
Their legacy is undeniable: it is impossible to imagine the scale and ambition of contemporary art – from the vigorous expression of Georg Baselitz (who saw the 1959 show) to Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst – without the epic precedent of abstract expressionist painting.
Ingenious as it is about art, ambition, hubris and the power of the imagination, this vigorous, sprightly book is ultimately constricted by the narrow idea from which it evolved.
The unruly intellectual ambitions that animate both Mr. Stone's most vigorous work — "Platoon," "Wall Street," "J.F.K".
He declared that through the event "there will be established the vigorous and well-considered peace appropriate to a sporting epoch of high ambition and strong will".
There is a vigorous dance component in "Last Days/First Field," but its choreographer, Jill Sigman, has even bigger ambitions in mind.
Elected in 1901 to the Senate, Neild was a vigorous supporter of old-age pensions, free trade and several other causes, but his ambitions of promotion were never realised.
In the guise of a costume drama — a very handsome one, by the way — "A Dangerous Method" is an intellectually vigorous, occasionally kinky term paper on the riddle of sexual desire and the dangers of scientific ambition.
