For nearly a decade Democrats have sought a religious wedge issue that could separate big chunks of white evangelical voters from their Republican home. Now they've found it, and are thrusting at the Social Darwinist/Ayn Rand underbelly of American conservatism.

Many American Muslims are peaceful and define jihad primarily as an internal struggle to improve.

On sensitive issues, talk isn't cheap - it takes real courage to pry open topics nailed shut.

Lack of understanding, along with outright anti-Christian prejudice, leads to journalistic amazement or horror at the supposed self-deception of those who do see a spiritual realm.

Do we want to know whether Christ was resurrected on Easter? God provides the grace to believe in that, but note: Such belief requires less faith in things unseen than believing that the world as we know it evolved out of nothing.

Political journalists love graduate student intelligence, the ability to make clever allusions in seminars, and in 1999-2000, they hassled George W Bush for not having it. They didn't realise what this book succinctly displays: that the president has something far more important - CEO intelligence, the ability to ask tough questions, garner essential information and make discerning decisions.

Most organizations should be pro-active, but philanthropists concerned with poverty should deliberately be reactive, learning from the efforts of ordinary folks who tired of looking the other way as their communities fell apart.