1.   If there is one lesson to be learned, Schneer concludes, it is that empires come and empires go.

2.   That they were still there when the communist empire went into probate suggests that Acheson, whatever his critics said, got a lot of things right.

3.   That fear of watching his empire go up in smoke had gnawed at him since his debut as an entrepreneur.

4.   The empire has long gone, of course, along with the industrial society that created it.

5.   There goes the empire.

6.   While his empire was going to ruin, he was snapping his wife, children and courtiers, who posed elegantly and disported playfully.