Are some people destined for success, or is the whole idea of destiny a myth, a comforting tale that we tell ourselves? When artists or political leaders become household names, are they just lucky?You might think that the Beatles, probably the most successful popular musicians in the last 50 years, were bound to succeed. But an astonishing new book, “Tune In,” by Mark Lewisohn, suggests otherwise. Without explicitly saying so, Lewisohn’s narrative raises the possibility that without breaks, coi

As historians and journalists downgrade the legacy of President John F. Kennedy on the 50th anniversary of his death this week, ordinary citizens around the globe will remember a cherished figure.More than all but the greatest U.S. presidents ― George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt ― Kennedy is an icon of American political culture. Yet, as New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson observed recently, there has never been a major historical work on the Kennedy presidenc

On Feb. 15, a 13,000-ton rock plunged through the skies above Chelyabinsk, Russia. It shone 30 times brighter than the sun, and hurtled at 68,000 kilometers per hour toward a city of more than a million people.As the rock broke apart during its fiery descent, it dispersed energy equivalent to 500 kilotons of TNT, shattering thousands of windows. Some 1,500 people were injured, and shock waves caused a ribbon of damage extending 88 kilometers on either side of the meteor’s path. Witnesses thought

Call it policy presentation with Chinese characteristics. After the meeting of its leadership last week, China’s Communist Party issued a muddled communique that aroused no great excitement. Then, on the weekend, well ahead of the usual schedule for such announcements, the party released a longer follow-up statement worth getting excited about.It’s radical stuff ― in principle, if not (yet) in policy. Maybe China’s new president, Xi Jinping, aspires to be another Deng Xiaoping after all.The “Dec

The celebration of the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address offers an opportunity not simply to memorialize an extraordinary speech; it provides a model and a mirror for writing and speechmaking today.“It’s only words”: This phrase captures what many feel about writing today. After all, our casual, rapid-fire communiques are tossed off at the push of a “send” button.Within days of the battle of Gettysburg, plans were put in place to establish and dedicate the first national

The idea is deceptively simple: Because President Barack Obama promised Americans they could keep their existing insurance under his new health-care-reform law, Congress should pass a law guaranteeing that they can.In reality, though, Obama was wrong to have made that promise ― and Congress would be compounding his foolishness by forcing insurance companies to keep it. The primary goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is to make the health-care system more efficient and comprehe

I hate to admit it, but the paranoid secularists who for a decade have been saying Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan harbored a secret agenda are being proved right.For years I’ve been gently pointing out to those paranoid secularists that Erdogan has been in power a long time already, and if he was really hiding an Islamist master plan ― as opposed to his declared conservative agenda ― he was doing a good job.Besides, didn’t you hear the man tell Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood leaders the

It used to be the tallest building in America. It used to be the tallest in the world. It used to be the Sears Tower.Now Chicago’s Willis Tower is second, um, banana to New York’s not-yet-completed One World Trade Center, which was declared tallest in the nation Tuesday by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the official arbiter of disputes over the height of skyscrapers.Council members from all over the world huddled here last week to decide whether the tower rising from the rubble

As hundreds of thousands of Filipinos struggled to find food, water, shelter and the bodies of loved ones in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, China quickly dipped into its world-leading $3.7 trillion of currency reserves and came up with … all of $100,000.That was Beijing’s first miserly offer of aid to the storm-tossed Philippines. By Thursday, an international outcry over China’s stinginess shamed it into upping its pledge to a modest $1.6 million worth of relief materials such as tents and blanket