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I grew up in Lake View, New York, a rock-ribbed Republican suburb of Buffalo.

Of course, with the rock-ribbed conservatives to the chief justice’s right, there may be scant prospect of similar goodwill.

One question Heller plays with throughout the book is whether all this rock-ribbed, superior-feeling sense of the world is covering up for something — and whether we’re missing something important when we long to be saviors.

Bacharach and David’s first hit with Warwick can still startle you with its blend of romantic desperation and rock-ribbed defiance.

They convinced themselves that Adams was the enemy, and then all the evidence fell in place around that rock-ribbed, if highly questionable, conviction.