It's like they say in the Internet world — if you're doing the same thing today you were doing six months ago, you're doing the wrong thing. Parents can learn a lot from that.

Here's a confession: I hate parenting books. I hate the ones that are earnest and repetitive.

You don't need a grand plan, you don't need to go back to the ancestors and rewrite the rules. You just need to take small steps and accumulate small wins.

Religion is increasingly a woman's domain in America.

Take a walk with a turtle. And behold the world in pause.

One question hovers over all of us who choose to spend our lives writing: why keep doing this in a world where so many forces are aligned against us?

My name is Bruce Feiler, and I'm an explainaholic. I first heard this word used to describe Isaac Asimov, and I knew instantly that I suffered from the same condition. It's the incurable desire to tell, shape, share, occasionally exaggerate, often elongate, and inevitably bungle a good story.