There’s an old saw about Washington, D.C., that staffers in their twenties know more about the minutiae of government than their bosses do.

He draws eclectically on studies of baboons, descriptive anthropological accounts of hunter-gatherer societies and, in a few cases, the fossil record. With this biological framework in place, Corning endeavors to show that the capitalist system as currently practiced in the United States and elsewhere is manifestly unfair.

That concertina was a wonder in its way. The handles that was on it first was wore out long ago, and he'd made new ones of braided rope yarn. And the bellows was patched in more places than a cranberry picker's overalls.

[…] the young shoots of the still hardier ivy, nipt and destroyed by an accidental night's frost in the early summer.