A brilliant economist who took office in 2001, Summers has become known for his brutally direct leadership style.

The thug was as brutally direct as ever.

In doing so he helped develop the first distinctly American photographic style - a brutally direct, clear, objective style without gimmicks or tricks.

The U.S. labor movement is not as brutally direct in its slogans.

He brings his trademark intensity to H's character and somehow makes him brutally direct and mysterious at the same time.

Pour out your feelings; be brutally direct.

Now Beef suddenly rounded on her and snapped out one of his brutally direct questions.

The idiom is rough-hewn, brutally direct; much of the 20-minute piece is given over to long, relentlessly churning ostinatos.

Like the children she writes about in her fiction, she can be brutally direct.