Severance and the Bifurcated Self

One of the topics of the times is work-life balance. Should you work all the time, like Elon Musk? Should you embrace the workless life of social media influencers? To be middle class is a mix of the two. Continue Reading...

We Are All Makers

There’s a particular pleasure in reading books about making. Business books are “maker” books, in a sense. So are self-help books. The best of these “maker” books are the ones with lots of anecdotes, where we get to see the principles at work. Continue Reading...

Winston Churchill Continues to Inspire

In 1930, Winston Churchill was heading into the worst part of his political career, doomed to criticize his party’s leadership on foreign affairs only to be ignored, marginalized, disdained. At the same time, he was fast approaching his greatest achievement as a writer, the biography of the ancestor who founded his family, John Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, which would occupy him throughout the decade we call “the wilderness years.” Continue Reading...

Rediscover the Beauty of Weakness

It seems everyone is talking about how there just aren’t enough babies. The worldwide birth deficit has hit Western nations hard: From the U.S. to Europe, nations have slid below the 2.1 children per woman necessary to keep population stable. Continue Reading...