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The novel tells the story of Agnes Grey, the daughter of a minister, whose family comes to financial ruin. Desperate to earn the money to care for herself, she takes one of the few jobs allowed to respectable women in the early Victorian era – the role of governess to the children of the wealthy. In working with two different families (the Bloomfields and the Murrays), she comes to learn about the troubles that face a young woman who must try to rein in unruly, spoiled children for a living, and about the ability of wealth and status to destroy social values. After her father's death, Agnes opens a small school with her mother and finds happiness with a man who loves her for herself. They have three children at the end of the novel, Edward, Agnes and Mary (Wikipedia)...

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Fiction, Literature

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Excerpt: KING HENRY IV: So shaken as we are, so wan with care, Find we a time for frighted peace to pant, And breathe short-winded accents of new broils To be commenced in strands afar remote. No more the thirsty entrance of this soil Shall daub her lips with her own children?s blood; Nor more shall trenching war channel her fields, Nor bruise her flowerets with the armed hoofs Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes, Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven, All of one nature, of one substance bred, Did lately meet in the intestine shock And furious close of civil butchery Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks, March all one way and be no more opposed Against acquaintance, kindred and allies:...

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The story begins in 1846, at Combe-Raven in West Somersetshire, the country residence of the happy Vanstone family. When Andrew Vanstone is killed suddenly in an accident and his wife follows shortly thereafter, it is revealed that they were not married at the time of their daughters' births, making their daughters Nobody's Children in the eyes of English law and robbing them of their inheritance. Andrew Vanstone's elder brother Michael gleefully takes possession of his brother's fortune, leaving his nieces to make their own way in the world. Norah, the elder sister, accepts her misfortune gracefully, but the headstrong Magdalen is determined to have her revenge. Using her dramatic talent and assisted by wily swindler Captain Wragge, Magdalen plots to regain her rightful inheritance. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia)...

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Literature, Mystery

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Excerpt: Chapter I; ABOUT thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet?s lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income. All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it. She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation; and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage. But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them. Miss Ward, at the end of half a dozen years, found herself obliged to be attached to the Rev Mr. Norris, a friend of her brother-in-law, with scarcely any private fortune, and Miss Frances fared yet worse. Miss Ward?s match, indeed, when it came to the point, was not contemptible, Sir Th...

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Table of Contents: I, 1 -- I, 3 -- II, 10 -- III, 18 -- IV, 26 -- V, 33 -- VI, 39 -- VII, 47 -- VIII, 56 -- IX, 62 -- X, 72 -- XI, 79 -- XII, 85 -- XIII, 90 -- XIV, 97 -- XV, 103...

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Excerpt: Chapter 1; THE family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner, as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old Gentleman?s days were comfortably spent. His attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive; and ...

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Table of Contents: I 1 -- Chapter 1, 3 -- Chapter 2, 6 -- Chapter 3, 10 -- Chapter 4, 13 -- Chapter 5, 17 -- Chapter 6, 19 -- Chapter 7, 22 -- Chapter 8, 24 -- Chapter 9, 27 -- Chapter 10, 31 -- Chapter 11, 35 -- Chapter 12, 38 -- Chapter 13, 42 -- Chapter 14, 47 -- Chapter 15, 50 -- Chapter 16, 55 -- Chapter 17, 60 -- Chapter 18, 64 -- Chapter 19, 67 -- Chapter 20, 73 -- Chapter 21, 78 -- Chapter 22, 84 -- II 91 -- Chapter 23, 93 -- Chapter 24, 97...

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Excerpt: I write this by desire of my brothers and sisters, that if any reports of our strange family history should come down to after generations the thing may be properly understood. The old times at Trevorsham seem to me so remote, that I can hardly believe that we are the same who were so happy then. Nay, Jaquetta laughs, and declares that it is not possible to be happier than we have been since, and Fulk would have me remember that all was not always smooth even in those days....

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Contents CHAPTER I. SAULT ST. PIERRE.................................................................................................. 4 CHAPTER II. TREVORSHAM..................................................................................................... 10 CHAPTER III. THE PEERAGE CASE........................................................................................ 23 CHAPTER IV. SKIMPING?S FARM............................................................................................ 35 CHAPTER V. SPINNEY LAWN .................................................................................................... 44 CHAPTER VI. THE WHITE DOE?S WARNING ....................................................................... 51 CHAPTER VII. HUNTING............................................................................................................ 60 CHAPTER VIII. DUCK SHOOTING........................................................................................... 64 CHAPTER IX. TREVOR?S LEGACY......................................................................................... 70...

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Excerpt: Two Poets by Honore de Balzac, translated by Ellen Marriage.

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Excerpt: CHAPTER I; PRELIMINARY -- CONSIDERING our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,--it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes. Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will endure forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and watertransport of all kinds has grown more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the labors of ...

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Table of Contents: BOOK I 3 -- CHAPTER I ?PRELIMINARY, 3 -- CHAPTER II ?EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES, 7 -- CHAPTER III ?REMINISCENCES, 11 -- CHAPTER IV? CHARACTERISTICS, 19 -- CHAPTER V? THE WORLD IN CLOTHES, 24 -- CHAPTER VI? APRONS, 29 -- CHAPTER VII? MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL, 31 -- CHAPTER VIII? THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES, 34 -- CHAPTER IX? ADAMITISM, 39 -- CHAPTER X? PURE REASON, 43 -- CHAPTER XI? PROSPECTIVE, 47 -- BOOK II 55 -- CHAPTER I ?GENESIS, 55 -- CHAPTER II ?IDYLLIC, 61 -- CHAPTER III ?PEDAGOGY, 68 -- CHAPTER IV? GETTING UNDER WAY, 79 -- CHAPTER V? ROMANCE, 88 -- CHAPTER VI? SORROWS OF TEUFELSDRO? CKH, 97 -- CHAPTER VII? THE EVERLASTING NO, 104 -- CHAPTER VIII? CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE, 110 -- CHAPTER IX? THE EVERLASTING YEA, 118 -- CHAPTER X? PAUSE, 126 -- BOOK III 133 -- CHAPTER I ?INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY, 133 -- CHAPTER II ?CHURCH-CLOTHES, 137...

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The work was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical foment and political conflict immediately after the French Revolution. The title is an ironic reference to Emanuel Swedenborg's theological work Heaven and Hell published in Latin 33 years earlier. Swedenborg is directly cited and criticized by Blake several places in the Marriage. Though Blake was influenced by his grand and mystical cosmic conception, Swedenborg's conventional moral structures and his Manichean view of good and evil led Blake to express a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are equally part of the divine order, hence, a marriage of heaven and hell. The book is written in prose, except for the opening Argument and the Song of Liberty. The book describes the poet's visit to Hell, a device adopted by Blake from Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost....

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Literature, Philosophy, Satire, Poetry

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Excerpt: Prelude. Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa?s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order....

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Excerpt: VOL I. In the morning of life the truthful wooed the beautiful, and their offspring was Love. Like his Divine parents, He is eternal. He has his Mother?s ravishing smile; his Father?s steadfast eyes. He rises every day, fresh and glorious as the untired Sun-God. He is Eros, the ever young. Dark, dark were this world of ours had either Divinity left it--dark without the daybeams of the Latonian Charioteer, darker yet without the daedal Smile of the God of the Other Bow! Dost know him, reader?...

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Contents NOVELS BY EMINENT HANDS ...................................................................................................... 4 NOONDAY IN CHEPE ....................................................................................................................... 5 BUTTON?S IN PALL MALL.............................................................................................................. 9 THE CONDEMNED CELL. ..............................................................................................................12 CODLINGSBY .................................................................................................................................15 PHIL FOGARTY ...............................................................................................................................27 BARBAZURE. ..................................................................................................................................39 LORDS AND LIVERIES. ..................................................................................................................49 CRINOLINE.................................

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman opens a window of history through which we can see a small part of the determined efforts made by women to elevate the circumstances of women in the early 20th century.Diantha Bell is a normal young woman desiring marriage and a home, but also a challenging career in a new territory which raises many eyebrows and sets malicious tongues wagging. Her effort to elevate housework and cooking to a regulated and even scientific business, for the relief of homemakers, is a depiction of the late 19th century movement to promote Domestic Science, or Home Economics, as a means of providing more healthful home life, as well as career paths for women.Diantha's business prospers as she shows her excellent gifts of administration, organization and homemaking. She grows an empire, and brings happiness and wholesomeness to every area of endeavor which she carefully attempts.The improvements in women's opportunities have not been available very long, indeed.This is a good reminder....

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Literature, Fiction, Cookery

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Noli Me Tangere (Latin for Touch Me Not) is a novel by the National Hero of the Philippines, Dr. José Rizal. It was originally written in Spanish, and first published in Germany in 1887. Noli Me Tangere exposed the corruption and abuse of the Spanish government and clergy towards the Philippine people and the ills of the Philippine society. This novel, and its sequel El Filibusterismo were banned in many parts of the Islands. Rizal was later arrested for inciting rebellion, based largely on his writings, and was excuted in Manila. Noli Me Tangere, and the execution of Rizal, indirectly influenced the Philippine revolution from Spain. Today, Noli Me Tangere is required reading in all Philippine Schools. (Summary by JoeD)...

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Literature, Politics

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Excerpt: Introduction to the bride of Lammermoor. The author, on a former occasion, declined giving the real source from which he drew the tragic subject of this history, because, though occurring at a distant period, it might possibly be unpleasing to the feelings of the descendants of the parties. But as he finds an account of the circumstances given in the Notes to Law?s Memorials, by his ingenious friend, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., and also indicated in his reprint of the Rev. Mr. Symson?s poems appended to the Large Description of Galloway, as the original of the Bride of Lammermoor, the Author feels himself now at liberty to tell the tale as he had it from connexions of his own, who lived very near the period, and were closely related to the family of the bride....

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Excerpt: THE SONG OF THE HAPPY SHEPHERD; THE woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy; Yet still she turns her restless head: But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good. Where are now the warring kings, Word be-mockers?--By the Rood, Where are now the watring kings? An idle word is now their glory, By the stammering schoolboy said, Reading some entangled story: The kings of the old time are dead; The wandering earth herself may be Only a sudden flaming word, In clanging space a moment heard, Troubling the endless reverie. Then nowise worship dusty deeds, Nor seek, for this is also sooth, To hunger fiercely after truth, Lest all thy toiling only breeds New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth Saving in thine own heart. Seek, then, No learning from the starry men, Who follow with the optic glass The whirling ways of stars that pass--Seek, then, for this is also sooth, No word of theirs--the cold star-bane Has cloven and rent ...

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Table of Contents: LYRICAL 3 -- CROSSWAYS 5 -- THE SONG OF THE HAPPY SHEPHERD, 5 -- THE SAD SHEPHERD, 6 -- THE CLOAK, THE BOAT, AND THE SHOES, 7 -- ANASHUYA AND VIJAYA, 8 -- THE INDIAN UPON GOD, 11 -- THE INDIAN TO HIS LOVE, 11 -- THE FALLING OF THE LEAVES, 12 -- EPHEMERA, 13 -- THE MADNESS OF KING GOLL, 13 -- THE STOLEN CHILD, 16 -- TO AN ISLE IN THE WATER, 17 -- DOWN BY THE SALLEY GARDENS, 18 -- THE MEDITATION OF THE OLD FISHERMAN, 18 -- THE BALLAD OF FATHER O?HART, 19 -- THE BALLAD OF MOLL MAGEE, 20 -- THE BALLAD OF THE FOXHUNTER, 22 -- THE ROSE 26 -- TO THE ROSE UPON THE ROOD OF TIME, 26 -- FERGUS AND THE DRUID, 26 -- CUCHULAIN?S FIGHT WITH THE SEA, 28 -- THE ROSE OF THE WORLD, 31 -- THE ROSE OF PEACE, 31 -- THE ROSE OF BATTLE, 32 -- A FAERY SONG, 33 -- THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE, 34...

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The Turmoil is the first novel in the 'Growth' trilogy, which also includes The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). In 1942 Orson Welles directed a film version based on volume 2, also titled The Magnificent Ambersons. The trilogy traces the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in a fictional Mid-Western town, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, which did not derive power from family names but by doing things. As George Amberson's friend says, don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things? (Summary adapted from Wikipedia by Gesine)...

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Fiction, Literature

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Excerpt: The writer of a book which copies the manners and language of Queen Anne?s time, must not omit the Dedication to the Patron; and I ask leave to inscribe this volume to your Lordship, for the sake of the great kindness and friendship which I owe to you and yours. My volume will reach you when the Author is on his voyage to a country where your name is as well known as here. Wherever I am, I shall gratefully regard you; and shall not be the less welcomed in America because I am, Your obliged friend and servant....

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Contents PREFACE. ........................................................................................................................................ 6 BOOK I THE EARLY YOUTH OF HENRY ESMOND, UP TO THE TIME OF HIS LEAVING TRINITY COLLEGE, IN CAMBRIDGE.....................................................................................11 CHAPTER I AN ACCOUNT OF THE FAMILY OF ESMOND OF CASTLEWOOD HALL ..................................... 14 CHAPTER II RELATES HOW FRANCIS, FOURTH VISCOUNT, ARRIVES AT CASTLEWOOD........................... 19 CHAPTER III WHITHER IN THE TIME OF THOMAS, THIRD VISCOUNT, I HAD PRECEDED HIM AS PAGE TO ISABELLA ............................................................................................................................................................. 26 CHAPTER IV I AM PLACED UNDER A POPISH PRIEST AND BRED TO THAT RELIGION.?VISCOUNTESS CASTLEWOOD .................................................................................................................................................... 36 CHAPTER V MY SUPERIORS ARE ENGAGED IN PLOTS FOR THE RESTORATION OF KING JAMES II. ...... 42 CH...

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Excerpt: The telephone bell rings with the petulant persistence that marks a trunk call, and I go in from some ineffectual gymnastics on the lawn to deal with the irruption. There is the usual trouble in connecting up, minute voices in Folkestone and Dover and London call to one another and are submerged by buzzings and throbbings. Then in elfin tones the real message comes through: ?Bleriot has crossed the Channel.... An article ... about what it means.?...

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Contents THE COMING OF BLRIOT ......................................................................................................... 5 MY FIRST FLIGHT........................................................................................................................ 10 OFF THE CHAIN........................................................................................................................... 15 OF THE NEW REIGN .................................................................................................................... 20 WILL THE EMPIRE LIVE? ......................................................................................................... 27 THE LABOUR UNREST................................................................................................................ 34 SOCIAL PANACEAS...................................................................................................................... 61 SYNDICALISM OR CITIZENSHIP............................................................................................. 66 THE GREAT STATE ..........................................................

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Excerpt: Prelude; Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa?s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order....

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Table of Contents: Book I ?Miss Brooke, 1 -- Prelude, 1 -- Chapter I., 3 -- Chapter II., 10 -- Chapter III., 16 -- Chapter IV., 25 -- Chapter V., 31 -- Chapter VI., 38 -- Chapter VII., 47 -- Chapter VIII., 51 -- Chapter IX., 55 -- Chapter X., 65 -- Chapter XI., 74 -- Chapter XII., 82 -- Book II ?Old and Young., 97 -- Chapter XIII., 97 -- Chapter XIV., 104 -- Chapter XV., 113 -- Chapter XVI., 124 -- Chapter XVII., 135 -- Chapter XVIII., 142 -- Chapter XIX., 151 -- Chapter XX., 154 -- Chapter XXI., 164 -- Chapter XXII., 170 -- Book III?Waiting For Death., 183 -- Chapter XXIII., 183 -- Chapter XXIV., 192...

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Excerpt: We present the narrative of this report and the recommendations that flow from it to the President of the United States, the United States Congress, and the American people for their consideration. Ten Commissioners--five Republicans and five Democrats chosen by elected leaders from our nation?s capital at a time of great partisan division--have come together to present this report without dissent....

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CONTENTS List of Illustrations and Tables ix Member List xi Staff List xiii?xiv Preface xv 1. ?WE HAVE SOME PLANES? 1 1.1 Inside the Four Flights 1 1.2 Improvising a Homeland Defense 14 1.3 National Crisis Management 35 2. THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM 47 2.1 A Declaration of War 47 2.2 Bin Ladin?s Appeal in the Islamic World 48 2.3 The Rise of Bin Ladin and al Qaeda (1988?1992) 55 2.4 Building an Organization, Declaring War on the United States (1992?1996) 59 2.5 Al Qaeda?s Renewal in Afghanistan (1996?1998) 63 3. COUNTERTERRORISM EVOLVES 71 3.1 From the Old Terrorism to the New: The First World Trade Center Bombing 71 3.2 Adaptation?and Nonadaptation? . . . in the Law Enforcement Community 73 3.3 . . . and in the Federal Aviation Administration 82 3.4 . . . and in the Intelligence Community 86...