Occasionally someone comes along who shows exceptional promise from his or her youth, and then lives up to that promise. But that does not seem to be the common way of things. Who would have thought that a minor painter from Vienna could become the monstrous colossus the world knows as Adolf...

Why people ask for something is at least as important as what they ask for. This is true in many domains of life. I know an executive in a midsize corporation who successfully talked his bosses into setting up a new committee. The reason he gave was that it was needed to oversee some new...

God is never amused at being treated with contempt, nor by having his explicit instructions ignored or defied. For then he would not be God. God is well able to defend himself. In 1 Samuel 5–6, the unfolding account can be as restrained as it is precisely because it is as obvious to the reader...