Whether built with delicate sensitivity to materials or dull adherence to principles, the glass box became an icon of Cold War capitalism, a symbol of modernist cosmopolitanism befitting a global superpower in the making.

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There is a certain everyman quality that becomes a very strong icon for the reality of war, which is always a tragic reality.

BBC: NEWS | Americas | Picture power: Casualties of war

This was the icon the government used to sell war bonds, and which led to Mr de Weldon being given the commission by Congress to make the Washington sculpture.

ECONOMIST: Felix de Weldon

Like a broad-forces historian, he sets out to explain how a relative latecomer, starting out after Matsushita in the rubble of post-war Tokyo, should become a 20th-century icon with a brand name as well known around the world as Coca-Cola.

ECONOMIST: The complex lives of legal persons