Brown shirts, blue shirts, black shirts: they were the unfortunate rainbow coalition of societies whose civic cultures were in crisis during the dark middle decades of the twentieth century. (firstthings.com)
It was only with the construction of a national railway system in the middle decades of the 19th century, using coal rather than muscle as its source of mechanical energy, that transport could achieve advances to parallel those already long achieved in the branches of industry in which cheap and abundant heat energy was the key to rapid expansion. (energyskeptic.com)
This theme of God's working in history to effect salvation which the community of faith can not effect for itself has had a powerful influence in theology through the middle decades of the 20th century. (religion-online.org)