打卡 第四天
一直想用简书写点什么出来，总是没想好写什么，索性坚持下把外文书的阅读当做英文阅读水平的提高吧，将不断更新看此书的体验和学习点滴。
昨天把序言prologue/序言: rock bottom看完,打算记录下看这本书的点滴，这本书豆瓣分数很高，看的人不是很多。
今天是第四天看，开始看 “第一章 rendezvous with destiny”。作者用叙述的方式将历史，显得更加真实，而且本书的副标题为A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972。描写1932年大萧条的句子太现实，很残忍。
一些记录如下：
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY
这是第一章的标题，耐人寻味与命运的约会。里有个应该是源于法语词 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年是美国经济大萧条降临美国的第三个年头，你看这句深信的理念被现实无情的压倒。drag down的解释exert a force with a heavy weight
“现在，失败把勤奋都能压倒，和失败一样。”足见现实的残酷。
“He trusts nobody and nothing, not even himself.”
人们的士气居然到了这种地步...
“In short, the ability to buy did not keep abreast of the volume of goods being turned out.”
abreast解释为alongside each other, facing in the same direction。
Ivy League
查字典才知道，意思是常春藤联盟。
“South Sea stock had plunged to 13.5 percent of its highest quotation.”
股市只有最高价的13.5%， quotation的解释a statement of the current market price of a security or commodity。还有“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. ”
从600台/年到1932年的1台，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.”
为了生活，一天内从律师角色到乞丐角色转变，生活有多艰难！回家看到自家的还在为绝望而斗争着，这是何等的煎熬。
“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.”
整夜排长队去找工作。
“but most outsiders wound up on one of New York’s eighty-two breadlines”
breadlinea queue of people waiting for free food。这个单词挺形象的，等着救济的队伍。
今天就到这里，明天继续。
