The world may not be getting better and better, but our devices are getting newer and newer.

Stages of life are artifacts. Adolescence is a useful contrivance, midlife is a moving target, senior citizens are an interest group, and tweenhood is just plain made up.

In kindergarten, you can learn how to be a citizen of the world.

Old reference books are like tree rings. Without them, there'd be no way to know what a tree had lived through.

In antihistory, time is an illusion.

My mother married my father in 1956. She was twenty-eight, and he was thirty-one. She loved him with a fierce steadiness borne of loyalty, determination, and an unyielding dignity.

Epidemiologists study patterns in order to combat infection. Stories about epidemics follow patterns, too. Stories arent often deadly, but they can be virulent: spreading fast, weakening resistance, wreaking havoc.