English man of letters Samuel Taylor Coleridge crafted the phrase “willing suspension of disbelief” to describe what it takes for us to be able to take a fresh look at something. When we settle into our seats in a theater and gaze up at the proscenium, that framed and draped window where a play or movie or opera is about to come alive, we are prepared to be, for a moment, less skeptical. We look up at the frame, and wait. We are in an extremely unusual frame of mind. The first proscenium arc... Read Full Story

The Genius Machine has gotten more than its fair share of great reviews. I don’t post them since they can be found easily. But one came in today, written by Wayne Hurlbert, that is the very model of conciseness. “This book is about a third kind of thinking, one that is directed toward improving an existing idea, thinking through a complete issue, or creating something new,” writes Thought Leaders International founder Gerald Sindell, in his powerful guide to creative thinkin... Read Full Story

I remember many happy times in First Class. I remember when they used to print your name on matchbooks and they’d be miraculously waiting at your seat when you sat down. I remember First Class on Air Canada when they rolled a huge slab of gravlax down the aisle and sliced you off a little, accompanied by a shot of cold vodka. And I remember when the FAA was the real cop of airline safety. They didn’t let anybody get away with anything. Everyone who cares about zero tolerance for e... Read Full Story

Good morning Mr. Henderson — Big day for you, no question. My best wishes go out to you on Day One running the new General Motors. Clean slate, pretty much, except for those legacy issues that might hold you back. A culture of poor vision, poor design, poor assembly, poor service. That’s a lot to change all at once, but you’ll need to do it. At your press conference you said the new GM would be bringing to the market, among other things, great design. That really struck me. I wondered what ... Read Full Story

A few years ago, my son Max and I were at the Guggenheim in New York, spiraling our way down through a show of Very Important Paintings. It was one of those shows that just wasn’t working for either of us. But we like to discuss what we’re looking at, just for the pleasure of comparing perceptions. I suggested we talk about the framing and ignore the art. An added bonus would be that anyone overhearing us would be hard pressed to connect our insights to anything we appeared to be looking at.... Read Full Story

We get letters. So far, and it’s only been a few weeks that my book has been out, the letters have been pretty nice. No one, yet, has told me they took my advice and bankrupted their company, disinherited their kids, or run off with the circus. But it’s only Thursday. There’s still time. A letter arrived last weekend (okay, officially it was an ‘email’ but it was so carefully composed it seemed like an old-fashioned handwritten note from a previous era) that thanked me for having helped the... Read Full Story

Dear friends and family, Rascal passed away last night. Something in her balance Made her different from all the other jackrabbits on the top of her mountain. She had given a short burst of speed, running with a severe list. She quit and lay there waiting to see what would be her fate. Her gaze met mine, and although I would see her pant later in life she was calm, interested. I picked her up in a blanket we had brought and Max held her as we went to the pet store to buy her food and the cag... Read Full Story

Delighted as I was to be greeted Friday morning by David Brooks’s book reviewish column headlined Genius: The Modern View, and as much as I admire Mr. Brooks, I was surprised to discover that he wasn’t writing satirically when he described the path to genius. According to the two new books he was discussing, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle and Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, you can develop your children into geniuses. All it takes is 10,000 hours of focused practice at an early age, plu... Read Full Story

This year is the 50th anniversary of one of the two essential resource books for anyone who wants to write well — E.B.White and William Strunk’s Manual of Style. The other is William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. Zinsser was a student of White’s and later taught thousands of students using The Manual of Style as a guide. When Zinsser began to write his own book, he was careful to make sure what he wanted to create was distinct from his mentors’, and it is. When I began The Genius Machine, I wa... Read Full Story

Ever regret finding a book in a used book store, think about buying it, and then a long time later regretting that you had decided not to? Many years ago I was visiting my hometown, Cleveland, and found a wonderful old bookstore. Suddenly I came across a twenty-some volume set of a complete transcript of the War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg. It was a massive set, and expensive. But it stood for me as the actual first-hand document of one of the ultimate moments in the history of humankind when... Read Full Story