November 2014 It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know are mean. There are exceptions, but remarkably few. Meanness isn’t rare. In fact, one of the things the internet has shown us is how mean people can be. A few decades ago, only famous people and professional writers got…

California has been the source of much innovation, from agribusiness and oil to fashion and the digital world. Historically much richer than the rest of the country, it was also the birthplace, along with Levittown, of the mass-produced suburb, freeways, much of our modern entrepreneurial culture,…

On the second-to-last day of March, Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin, the former head of the KGB’s foreign intelligence arm and chairman of the KGB — for a single day in the turmoil of the August 1991 coup attempt against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev — died in his central Moscow apartment,…

It's definitely a bubble We're in a bubble now, and like all bubbles unless you're thinking about it the "right" way, you don't see it. That's how bubbles are. It wouldn't be a bubble if it were easy to see. To find it, you have to look at your assumptions and challenge them. And you have to look at…

It was a classic match by any measure, two future Hall of Famers exploring the limits of their talent. Fans ringing the court applauded lustily, and the other players toasted the two men as they walked off at the end. The following day’s New York Times gushed that the match “was declared by…