Many friends of mine are pretty deep in the slough of despond. I occasionally plead with them to make their predictions of catastrophe less hopeless and categorical, but with less success than I wish. I respect their points of view but have decided to look elsewhere for advice, and so have turned to a different set of friends—those sitting on my bookshelves.
Some of these friends have been with me for more than half a century; and they get wiser and more insightful with age. One of the first I turned to is only slightly older than I am: Motivation and Personality, by the academic psychologist Abraham Maslow. The book has a family history: Maslow summered at a lake in Maine in a cabin near one owned by my grandfather, a self-made shoe-factory owner who came to the United States with only the benefit of a grade-school education.
The story goes that Maslow was complaining about his inability to finish writing his magnum opus while…