the Triumphalist Decade
Stating the bleeding obvious, perhaps - but there's a huge difference between calling someone triumphalist and calling them triumphant isn't there? It implies singing one's own praises, blowing one's own trumpet (or just trumpeting), being a very unpleasant winner who most people would like to see taken down a peg or two.


As an aside, is triumph by any chance related to "three cheers"?


I still don't know what the original quoted sentence means. For a book about English, I think it stinks
I agree with both points.