The Literature Network - The ghost of Ambrose Bierce.(BROKERAGE)

The ghost of Ambrose Bierce.(BROKERAGE)

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From: Risk & Insurance
Date: 20071001
Author:Slattery, Thomas

Insurance, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

This "definition" was one of a series written between 1881 and 1906 by Ambrose Bierce, the American journalist, black humorist and, many would say, cynic. Bierce mysteriously disappeared in Mexico shortly thereafter, never to be seen or heard from again, though no one has ascribed this to an embittered insurance industry operative. His corrosive lexicography was ultimately brought together in a small but classic ...

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