Is there any possibility of giving international air travel, which we all need and use and hate, a touch of glamour, or even of reliable, soulless efficiency? I suspect future historians will puzzle over our failure. But by then, of course, we shall be in the age of mass space travel, with its fresh and unimaginable crop of horrors.

Indeed it is the protean ability of Western civilization to be self-critical and self-correcting - not only in producing wealth but over the whole range of human activities - that constitutes its most decisive superiority over any of its rivals.

In the past, the U.S. has shown its capacity to reinvent its gifts for leadership. During the 1970s, in the aftermath of the Nixon abdication and the Ford and Carter presidencies, the whole nation peered into the abyss, was horrified by what it saw and elected Ronald Reagan as president, which began a national resurgence.

The planet Earth, though not threatened with destruction by man-made global warming, is by no means indestructible. There are many unpredictable events within our solar system, and still more outside it, that could make Earth uninhabitable by humans.

Too many women don't see themselves in senior leadership and so don't push themselves to advance their careers as their male peer group do.

On March 12, 2004, acting attorney general James B. Comey and the Justice Department's top leadership reached the brink of resignation over electronic surveillance orders that they believed to be illegal.

Good Democrats love America. Good Republicans love America. We need a leader who understands not just the words of unity but the practice of building unity.

Investing in management means building communication systems, business processes, feedback, and routines that let you scale the business and team as efficiently as possible.