Here it is, just over a week left in the semester, and I’m still trying to process the reading I did last summer. I read science and social science, history and novels, biography and memoir. Despite this variety, much of what I read seemed to converge on the same topic—our present crisis, frightening to contemplate—and to arrive at some of the same conclusions. Part of my processing involves gauging how much of this convergence actually happened in the books and how much of it happened inside my own head. Here’s one of those points of convergence: Old ideas will not Read more