The book is full of stories connected with each of these segments
of my life. I hope different browsers will first look at the table of contents,
then open to a section that appeals to them. Not every reader will find every
chapter of interest. But there are several that will appeal to any reader.
Most people will probably open the first chapter, and it is
the one describing my sabbatical year in Boulder, Colorado. First, it is a
beautiful city, and the building I worked in was located in a most remarkable
location with rugged mountains, trees, wild deer grazing just outside the
windows, etc. There I had the experience of solving a difficult problem in
climate science, which was exciting and even intoxicating. This led to awards
and recognition throughout the field—rare for a newcomer. Invitations flowed to
me including a summer on Cape Cod where world leaders congregated for six
weeks, and I was treated like an equal. While there, I was invited to be a
member of a delegation of American climate scientists to visit to the USSR. In
that fifteen-day trip in September 1976 the delegation consisted of the leading
climate modelers in the US. Not only was the trip interesting and exciting; it
included a hike up a huge glacier in Uzbekistan. I took the cover picture of my
book on that trip. I was one of the guys.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
A close-up
The book is full of stories connected with each of these segments of my life. I hope different browsers will first look at the table of contents, then open to a section that appeals to them. Not every reader will find every chapter of interest. But there are several that will appeal to any reader.
Most people will probably open the first chapter, and it is the one describing my sabbatical year in Boulder, Colorado. First, it is a beautiful city, and the building I worked in was located in a most remarkable location with rugged mountains, trees, wild deer grazing just outside the windows, etc. There I had the experience of solving a difficult problem in climate science, which was exciting and even intoxicating. This led to awards and recognition throughout the field—rare for a newcomer. Invitations flowed to me including a summer on Cape Cod where world leaders congregated for six weeks, and I was treated like an equal. While there, I was invited to be a member of a delegation of American climate scientists to visit to the USSR. In that fifteen-day trip in September 1976 the delegation consisted of the leading climate modelers in the US. Not only was the trip interesting and exciting; it included a hike up a huge glacier in Uzbekistan. I took the cover picture of my book on that trip. I was one of the guys.