The way in which the book was able to expose the scope, brutality, and scale of the killings and abuse in the context of Maya culture and sociobiography and within the context of a colonial-style, hyperracist country, was a superb, brilliant way toward making sure it does not happen again, a way to make the world become more committed to seeing to it that genocide against indigenous peoples stops.

The physics of elementary particles in the 20th century was distinguished by the observation of particles whose existence had been predicted by theorists sometimes decades earlier.

My mom's a good baker because she's of the old school. She'd never buy ready-made cookie dough.

But here, again, is the old variance between nature and fortune: each seems to delight in marring the work of the other.