Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish

Where they come from matters. They're products of particular places and environments.

Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough after all.

The nature of athletic celebrity is increasingly moving away from the actual field of play.

Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.

Basketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice--perfecting their shooting, dribbling, and passing and running plays over and over again--and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. This is the critical lesson of improve, too, and it is also a key to understanding a puzzle of Millennium Challenge: spontaneity isn't random.

We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.