This superbly written collection of essays explores with rare wisdom meaningful aspects of life and the world. The "Life" essays offer original "InSights" into subjects central to all of us: freedom, our universe, the roll of genetic dice, the space program, democracy, train rides, jury duty, happiness, aging, diversity and more. Three other sections deal in some depth, and a degree of "OutRage," with politics, economics and war. In exploring these subjects, the author, now a retired octogenarian and sometime newspaper columnist, draws widely from his professional life in engineering management and foreign affairs. Among many other issues, he tackles presidential elections, the national debt, international diplomacy, the cost of war, the "majesty" of work, comparisons of trickle-down and Keynesian economics, America's crumbling infrastructure, schools, and gun laws. The approach in all the studies is to examine ways in which our special country can truly become the "shining city on a hill" that all Americans yearn for. In summing up the special quality of these essays, one reader has called them a "feast for concerned citizens and inquiring minds." Another adds that they "tell us of a world both as it is, and as it should and could be."