Sublime

Meanwhile the endless computer studies at American had turned up another fascinating fact. Although American carried 25 million passengers a year, something like 40 percent of its business came from about 5 percent of its customers. There were that many repeat customers—“frequent fliers,” one might call them. Any incremental customer was welcome, o

Such anarchy had dogged human taxonomy from the beginning, for scholars could never agree on how many varieties of people existed, where the boundaries between them lay, and which physical traits counted in separating them. Nor have two hundred and more years of racial inquiry diminished confusion on this issue.