打卡 第四天
一直想用簡書寫點什么出來，總是沒想好寫什么，索性堅持下把外文書的閱讀當做英文閱讀水平的提高吧，將不斷更新看此書的體驗和學習點滴。
昨天把序言prologue/序言: rock bottom看完,打算記錄下看這本書的點滴，這本書豆瓣分數很高，看的人不是很多。
今天是第四天看，開始看 “第一章 rendezvous with destiny”。作者用敘述的方式將歷史，顯得更加真實，而且本書的副標題為A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972。描寫1932年大蕭條的句子太現實，很殘忍。
一些記錄如下：
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY
這是第一章的標題，耐人尋味與命運的約會。里有個應該是源于法語詞 Rendezvous is a very French way to say "meeting" or "date."
“Such men had been raised to believe that if you worked diligently, you would succeed. Now failure was dragging down the diligent and the shiftless alike. ”
1932年是美國經濟大蕭條降臨美國的第三個年頭，你看這句深信的理念被現實無情的壓倒。drag down的解釋exert a force with a heavy weight
“現在，失敗把勤奮都能壓倒，和失敗一樣。”足見現實的殘酷。
“He trusts nobody and nothing, not even himself.”
人們的士氣居然到了這種地步...
“In short, the ability to buy did not keep abreast of the volume of goods being turned out.”
abreast解釋為alongside each other, facing in the same direction。
Ivy League
查字典才知道，意思是常春藤聯盟。
“South Sea stock had plunged to 13.5 percent of its highest quotation.”
股市只有最高價的13.5%， quotation的解釋a statement of the current market price of a security or commodity。還有“引用”的意思
“The American Locomotive Company didn’t need much steel. During the 1920s it had sold an average of 600 locomotives a year; in 1932 it sold one. ”
從600臺/年到1932年的1臺，可怕！
“The smartly dressed young lawyer who always left home at the same time each morning may have been off to sell cheap neckties, magazines, vacuum cleaners, pressure cookers, or Two-in-One shoe polish door-to-door in a remote neighborhood. He may have changed his clothes and gone to another part of the city to beg“Or he may have been one of the millions who looked for work day after day, year after year, watching his children grow thinner and fighting despair in the night.”
為了生活，一天內從律師角色到乞丐角色轉變，生活有多艱難！回家看到自家的還在為絕望而斗爭著，這是何等的煎熬。
“some of the unbelievable stories were true. Men did wait all night outside Detroit employment offices so they would be first in line next morning.”
整夜排長隊去找工作。
“but most outsiders wound up on one of New York’s eighty-two breadlines”
breadlinea queue of people waiting for free food。這個單詞挺形象的，等著救濟的隊伍。
今天就到這里，明天繼續。
