The rise to prominence of the Saudi novel in Arabic is the great man-bites-dog of recent world literature. Saudi Arabia is a country without a free press, where European styles and forms are distrusted and where the female half of the population became literate only in this generation.

Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born revolutionary who is believed by most Arab and Iranian observers to be the inspiration of the attacks in New York and Washington, is the best known of the Islamic militants to have emerged in the past 20 years and the least difficult to fathom.

In rising financial markets, the world is forever new. The bull or optimist has no eyes for past or present, but only for the future, where streams of revenue play in his imagination.

Whatever else it was, Adolf Hitler's short-lived regime was also a colossal industrial process by which the wealth and productive power of much of Europe was wrenched from its normal purposes and converted into a machine for killing.

To be a true leader, I needed to better understand my unique strengths and how to apply them across the company as we grew.

A typical leader has - a natural tendency is to be defensive in the face of a crisis. The first reaction is to blame someone - or something - else. Often, the blame is aimed at something abstract or non-controllable, which often has nothing to do with the crisis but is adjacent to whatever is going on, so it's an easy target.

The United States is not just another country. It has more capacity and potential to influence the world than any other country - and no other country has the resources and mindset to lead a world that is not on autopilot.

Chicago is the largest city in the country without mayoral term limits. This has led to entrenched leaders, a lack of new ideas and creative thinking and a city government that works for the few, not the many.