Winston Churchill used to advise young people to read “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,” the oft-updated compilation of brief quotes from just about anyone who said something memorable. Of course, Churchill added more than a few of his own. He may have added more to the storehouse of aphorisms than any writer since Shakespeare.

But others have been no slouches. If you want to go back a bit, Napoleon wasn’t unquotable, and such writers as George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde were prolific with wit and wisdom served up in brevity. Mark Twain was a treasury of quotable sayings all by himself. In our time, Steve Jobs has made some pithy additions, and Taylor Swift, in her lyrics, has some arresting and quotable lines.

The quote, to me, is distilled wisdom in a few words, often funny, whether it came from Dorothy Parker, Abraham Lincoln or the Beatles. A picture may be worth a thousand words, a quote believed to have been first formulated by Henrik Ibsen, but a well-chosen aphorism is worth many more than a thousand words.

So, it is thrilling to know that Victoria Yeager, widow of Chuck Yeager, aviation’s greatest hero, has collected his sayings into a book, “101 Chuck Yeager-isms: Wit & Wisdom from America’s hero.”

Yeager came from the small town of Hamlin, W.Va. Even today, it has a population of just over 1,000. Being from one of West Virginia’s famous hollows, Yeager said of it, “I was born so fer up a holler, they had to pipe daylight in.”

When the town erected a statue of Yeager, he said, “There wasn’t a pigeon in Hamlin until they erected a statue of me.”

The journey began modestly with Yeager joining the Army as a private after high school and led to his success as a fighter ace with 11.5 kills — one involved another U.S. aircraft and, hence, the half — but Victoria Yeager told me there were more not officially recognized. She said he may have shot down as many as 15 German aircraft over Europe.

Shot down himself over France in 1944, the Germans watched his parachute float down and went out to find him. Yeager said, “There ain’t a German in the world that can catch a West Virginian in the woods.” And they didn’t.

In an interview for “White House Chronicle” on PBS, Victoria told me that Yeager always insisted that there be fun in everything, whether it was aerial fighting, flying through the sound barrier, or flying aircraft that might kill him. “You gotta have fun in life, whatever I did, I always included fun,” he said.

Yeager, Victoria said, maintained critical aircraft like the X-1, in which he broke the sound barrier himself. That way, he knew and there would be no excuses. He said, “In the end, or at the moment of truth, there are only excuses or results.”

Victoria told me the impression given in the movie “The Right Stuff” of Yeager as a reckless daredevil who rode a horse up to his aircraft, took off, and broke the sound barrier was pure Hollywood. Yeager was a consultant to Tom Wolfe during the writing of the book “The Right Stuff” to ensure accuracy. In fact, Victoria said, it was on the ninth flight that he broke the sound barrier. It is true that the horizontal stabilizer on the plane wasn’t working, but Yeager was able to control the plane with a manual trim tab, she added.

Yeager fought in World War II because it was his duty to fight, as he saw it. After being shot down, he wanted to keep fighting; when the military wanted to send him home, he appealed the decision all the way up to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and won the right to fly in combat again. He said of duty, “You’ve got a job to do, you do it, especially in the military, when I was picked to fly the X-1, it was my duty to fly it, and I did.”

Yeager’s philosophy may have been summed up in this quote, “You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can’t, you do the next best thing; you back up, but you don’t give up.”

That is the spirit that kept Yeager flying for pleasure until his death at 97.

In our carping, whining, blaming times, it is a tonic to read the thoughts and something of the life of a real hero. Thank you, Victoria Yeager, for assembling this book.

The wreckage from COVID continues to litter our lives. We work differently, play differently and are entertained differently.

For all I know, romance isn’t how it was. How can it be? So many fell in love, or just into dating, at work. When Zooming at home, that doesn’t quite cut it.

Customer service of all kinds has been laid waste. Excuse the bitter laughter, but what was for a while called the service economy was sent packing by COVID, as companies in droves found out they could serve less and get the same money.

Let us start with the airlines. If you have had the misfortune to take a flight, you are as likely suffering from your own brand of PTSD. You may get counseling at the YMCA or find a support group online.

First off, booking online. This isn’t for the faint of heart. Some people aren’t computer-wise but don’t think you can call the airlines and get help. That is so last century. You had best find one of the few independent travel agents still in business. This person, you soon learn, will book you on Expedia and charge you a fee for doing the obvious. What price hassle reduction?

The TSA security infuriates us all. More so since COVID, because no one wants to put on the uniform when they can get work where everyone doesn’t hate them.

It didn’t have to be this way. If the airlines and their friendly regulator, the FAA, had just put locks on cockpit doors after the first hijackings in the 1950s, chances are there would have been no 9/11, no TSA, and I could keep my shoes on and TSA hands off. If you like being patted down, get a dog.

Then there is the cash conundrum. On banknotes, it says, “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.” Not anymore. Try using cash at the airline counter. Not since COVID do they take it. I saw a sad situation when a young woman, already pulled up short for having to pay for checking her backpack, was told to convert her cash into a credit voucher at a machine, which has suddenly appeared near the check-in — for another fee, of course. Friendly skies, eh?

Once you have paid extra for luggage, extra for a marginally larger seat, extra to board early, and extra for Wi-Fi, you might think all is well, and it is time for the boarding scrum. No way. The flight is canceled. No pilot. To my mind, that would be a critical job in aviation, and if you have the temerity to run an airline, you might want to have a few extra pilots. Soon, the airlines may ask passengers to pop forward and handle the controls — for a fee, of course.

Banks responded to COVID by closing branches and putting ATM machines in parking lots.

Maybe you have tried to pay your credit card bill when it is already in arrears because the bank card company has stopped sending out paper bills without telling you? Next thing is they are calling you in the middle of dinner to tell you that your credit is being damaged by your being tardy paying. “No problem,” you tell the recorded voice, which has just ruined dinner.

Don’t do that unless you have half a day to spare because you don’t call the bank and speak to someone — it used to be a person, but they are now a “representative” who has just crossed the border and sent to a call center by a Southern governor. They know enough English to tell you they are trying to collect a debt, not solve your problem because you don’t have the paper bill.

You give up. You don’t care about your credit score anymore. You read this person the information from your check and ask them to take the money and do something unsanitary with their card. Over? Hell no. Later, you will get a letter from the “customer relations team” telling you impolitely that your check didn’t clear because you gave them the wrong routing number.

Hotels also have jumped at the opportunity to stick it to you since the COVID outbreak. You have to beg to have your room cleaned, even though you pay hundreds of dollars a night. More begging for towels. When you complain about how you are being treated, they say this is for your safety due to COVID.

The hospitality industry is reeling from COVID. Yes. Reeling it in.

“Journalists can be so good at reporting others, but are seldom good at reporting themselves.”

That is what my friend Kevin d’Arcy, a distinguished British journalist, wrote in an article titled “Living in Interesting Times,” published recently on the website of the United Kingdom Chapter of the Association of European Journalists.

D’Arcy, who has worked for major publications in the U.K. and Canada, including The Economist and the Financial Times, argues, “The biggest change is that the job of journalism no longer belongs to journalists alone. To some extent, this has always been true but largely because of social media, the scale is touching the sky.

“This matters for the simple reason that the public lacks the traditional protection of legal and social rules. There is nobody in control. … The common realm is sinking fast.”

So true. But his argument raises the question: Is journalism itself doing its job these days?

I usually eschew any discussion about journalism — its present state, imagined biases and its future. Dan Raviv, a former correspondent for CBS News on radio and television, told me in a television interview, “My job is simple: I try to find out what is going on, then I tell people.”

I have never heard the job of a journalist better explained.

Of course, the journalist knows other things: the tricks of the trade, like news judgment; how to get the reader reading, the viewer watching, and the listener listening and, it is hoped, keep their attention.

Professionals know how to guesstimate how much readers, viewers and listeners might want to know about a particular issue. They know how to avoid libel and keep clear of dubious, manipulative sources. But journalism’s skills are fading, along with the newspapers and the broadcast outlets that fostered and treasured them.

Publications are dying or surviving on an uncertain drip from a life-support system. Newspapers that once boasted global coverage are now little more than pamphlets. The Baltimore Sun, for example, in its day a great newspaper, once had 12 overseas bureaus. No more.

Three newspapers dominate: The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times. They got out in front and owed their position to successfully pushing their brands on the internet early. Now they have advertising revenue and even more revenue from the introduction of paywalls.

Local news coverage may come back as it once was, but this time through local digital sites. I prefer traditional newspapers, but the future of local news appears to be online.

A major and critical threat to journalism comes from within: It is a dearth of talent. You get what you pay for; publishers aren’t paying for talent, and that is corrosive. Newspaper and regional TV and radio salaries have always been abysmally low, and now they are the worst they have been in 50 years. This is discouraging needed talent.

For more than 30 years, I owned a newsletter publishing company in Washington, and I hired summer interns — and paid them. Some of the early recruits went on to success in journalism, and some to remarkable success.

Later, I got the same bright journalism students — young men and women so able that you could send them to a hearing on Capitol Hill or assign them a complex story with confidence.

The most gifted, alas, weren’t headed for newsrooms but for law school. They told me as much as they were interested in reporting, they weren’t interested in low-wage lives.

Most reporters across America earn less than $40,000. Even at the mighty Washington Post, a unionized newspaper, beat reporters make just $62,000 yearly.

To tell the story of a turbulent world, you need gifted, creative, well-read people committed to the job. The bold and the bright will not commit to a life of penury.

To my friend Kevin, I must say, if we can’t offer a viable alternative to the social media cacophony, if we have a second-rate workforce, if the news product is inadequate and untouched by knowledgeable human editors, then the slide will continue. Editing by computer is not editing. I appreciate editing, and I know how much better my work is for it.

The journalism that Kevin and I have reveled in over these many decades will perish without new talent. Talent will out and, I hope, provide the answers that our trade needs.

The Uber model is changing America. First it made a business out of the family car. Then it made a business out of the spare room or vacation house.

Soon it might make a business out of the roof over your head.

That is the dream of a group of hugely successful entrepreneurs who see roofs as the next big monetization of a widely held capital asset.

This group, which at present chooses to remain anonymous, believes that with the right communications network and smart computer linkage, the nation’s sun-trapping roofs could become a new source of electricity and, if connected to in-home batteries, a virtual power plant of scale and reliability.

What Uber did for ride sharing and what Airbnb did for lodging, these entrepreneurs believe could be done for the electric utility industry.

One of them told me, “A network can be many different things, but in the context of a network of potentially millions of solar rooftops, it means virtually real-time capture and analysis of billions of data points. Only a wireless network, using the latest broadband technologies – similar to those that support our smart phones – can handle that workload.”

Rewind the clock to when solar cells became generally available: Utilities encouraged their use and bought electricity from customers when it was generated, not when it was needed.

At the same time large solar plants began to be developed and owned by the utilities, which worked better for them, and they soured on rooftop solar.

In talking to utilities, I find them to be cool-to-indifferent to rooftop solar but enthusiastic about solar central station generation, particularly if linked with battery storage. Mostly, utilities like solar generation because of its predictability.

The idea of hooking together a vast network of millions of solar panels on roofs with their own batteries puts demand back in the hands of the utilities, giving them the flexibility of having a great new resource.

Also, like the Uber model, there would be variable pricing: In a crisis or a high-demand situation, the utility or the system operator would order power from homeowner batteries at surge prices, benefitting all. Owners of solar rooftop and battery setups would become “citizen solarizers.”

The concept of a vast, on-demand, virtual power plant isn’t entirely speculative. Brian Keane, president of SmartPower, told me that what might be a frontrunner is already being tested in Connecticut.

“All residential customers who choose the ‘Connecticut Green Bank’s CT Storage Solution’ option receive the generous, upfront rebate incentives for agreeing to have their battery drawn from every weekday afternoon during June, July, and August, as well as on high-need ‘critical’ days on the weekends, in September, and for a handful of days during the winter months. Customers will get a payment each year based on the amount of electricity that is drawn from the battery,” Keane explained.

The development of a national virtual power system would enhance something that is happening quietly, which is what I call the “buttressing of the grid.”

It is what might be seen as the tacit acceptance that the grid isn’t going to be rebuilt in any substantial way, but it will be buttressed by new generation and limited new transmission. Uberizing rooftop solar could be an important part of this buttressing – and a gift to the nation both as a source of clean power and citizen involvement.

It remains to be seen whether regional solar networks would be subject to regulation by the federal government or by the states.

Going forward, a rooftop solar installation might be more than a convenience for a household, and a way of signaling green virtue.

A new day is breaking for the nuclear industry in the United States. There are four drivers of the new enthusiasm for nuclear power, which is being felt throughout the utility world.

First, nuclear is “dispatchable.” That is the term for the power you can rely on; power that will be there when you need it, and you can dispatch it.

At present, utilities are struggling with an overload of non-dispatchable power coming from wind and solar generation. That is available only when the wind blows or the sun shines. Fossil fuel and nuclear power are dispatchable — and highly regarded in the industry.

The Texas grid, known as Electric Reliability Council of Texas,  was near catastrophe during the recent extreme heat wave when wind generation, which is a major part of the Texas power portfolio, simply wasn’t there to be dispatched. The ERCOT system has 35,391 megawatts of installed wind power; less than 1,000 megawatts of that were available.

Second, a new range of nuclear power designs is making its way to market, and they have many advantages over the old, large plants of the kind that still produce 20 percent of the nation’s power, all of it dispatchable.

The new reactors, small modular reactors (SMRs), come in various sizes and use differing technologies from today’s jumbo workhorses — and they promise great things.

A panel of nuclear power experts at a recent U.S. Energy Association virtual press briefing, which I organized and hosted, agreed that whether the technology is light water, molten salt or some other choice, SMRs will use less steel and concrete per unit of power produced, and they will require less land.

They have superior, failure-resistant fuel and will be passive, inherently safer, and won’t require their big brothers’ pumps and backup generators. Also, Bud Albright, president of the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council, told the media that these reactors will operate for 60 or more years and require fueling less frequently.

The SMRs come in various technologies and sizes, from NuScale’s 80-MW light water modules being built in Idaho to GE Hitachi Nuclear’s 300-MW reactor, the BWRX-300, being considered by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The modules will offer utilities flexibility in the size of the installation as well as enable individual modules to be repaired while the plant continues to produce power.

Cost remains an open issue. The USEA’s panel was quick to point out that factory manufacturing, standardization of design, and the simplicity of the new offerings would reduce their costs. But they weren’t so sure how these could go.

Jon Ball, executive vice president of GE Hitachi Nuclear, estimated that the BWRX-300 will deliver power at $60 a megawatt hour. That is still well above the cost of wind or solar power. So dispatchability and lifespan are important.

The third driver for a nuclear surge is the Inflation Reduction Act, which has put a new spring into the power generators’ steps. Doug True, vice president and chief nuclear officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the act will level the playing field for nuclear compared to wind and solar.

Louis Finkel, vice president of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, told me he thinks there will be a surge in interest among rural co-ops to build reactors and that some that now are only in the distribution business will be interested in adding generation.

The Inflation Reduction Act makes this possible in several ways, but most important, it extends to not-for-profit utilities, like the co-ops and municipals, the benefits of construction and operating tax credits. These they will receive in the form of a check from the Treasury, which can be as much as 30 percent of the project.

Overall, driving the need for nuclear is that the nation needs more power if it continues its headlong rush to electrification of surface transportation and manufacturing.

The National Academy of Sciences predicts that electricity production will have to grow 170 percent between now and 2050. NRECA’s Finkel points out that the academy’s study doesn’t include coal and gas taken out of production to achieve net-zero emissions in the same timeframe

There would, indeed, seem to be a new day for nuclear.

This last spring, I was in Washington for an awards dinner given by the American Task Force on Lebanon. The talents of the exceptionally gifted Lebanese were on display: The room was filled with accomplished expatriates and immigrants — business leaders, diplomats, physicians, writers and poets, an opera singer — from their troubled Middle Eastern homeland.

But the event’s high point was the recognition of the scientists who had saved countless lives by creating Moderna Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine: four Lebanese Americans.

Among the children of the world’s many diasporas, few have made as large a mark as the Lebanese. Their native country has fewer than 6 million people, including a million or more refugees.

The Washington celebration was in painful contrast to the shambles that is Lebanon today: bankrupt, corrupt, violence-riven, starving and hopeless.

According to Edward Gabriel, a Lebanese American who served as U.S. ambassador to Morocco during the Clinton administration, Lebanon is in danger of sinking so far that it will be a failed state, ungoverned and ungovernable.

Gabriel has just returned from a visit by the American Task Force on Lebanon, and he reports of a country in parlous disarray.

In a paper for the task force, Gabriel stated, “On this day (Aug. 4, 2020) two years ago, over 500 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse at the Port of Beirut exploded, causing more than 220 deaths, 7,000 injuries, 300,000 displaced individuals, and at least $1.5 billion in property damage. Since then, there has not only been a lack of closure for the families of the victims but the very corruption and negligence that caused such carnage and suffering has yet to be addressed by those in power.”

In their meeting with the Lebanese leadership, Gabriel and the task force discussed the urgency of implementing reforms to access IMF funds and get aid from the United States and other allies, including Saudi Arabia. Food is critical as Lebanon imports 90 percent of its grain from Ukraine and Russia.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Lebanon, which stretches along the Mediterranean Sea north of Israel, was a treasure of a country. Its seaside capital, Beirut, was a sparkling jewel, rivaling Monaco in its incandescence.

Beirut in its heyday had all the cache of Tangier and Casablanca and was a destination for the adventurous, the sophisticated, and for artists, journalists and writers. A-listers headed there before that term existed.

It also was a haven for spies and the intelligence services that employed them. Its most famous spy was British double agent Kim Philby, who fled from Beirut to Moscow when he was about to be arrested in January 1963.

As a young reporter in London, I was fascinated by the tales of the high life in Beirut as told by otherwise jaded foreign correspondents. “There’s nothing you can imagine you want that you won’t find in Beirut,” a famous photographer for the Magnum photo agency told me.

It wasn’t just nightlife and sin that drew the world’s press to Lebanon. It was a center of transport, and you could get anywhere from its airport by air or anywhere bordering the Mediterranean by ferry. Yes, Beirut revived world-weary journalists’  appetites, but it also was a very practical place to work.

In 1963 Lebanon, a small country with a small population of 4 million, was a highly successful one, envied and copied. The basic layout of the beach development in Tel Aviv, I was told in Israel, is modeled on that of Beirut.

British intellectuals often cited Lebanon’s religious minority-respectful government as a model for diverse societies as Britain withdrew from its former colonies. Traditionally, the three major religious groups share power this way: The president is always a Maronite Christian, the prime minister is always a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament is always a Shia Muslim.

The fall of Lebanon began with a huge influx of destabilizing Palestinian refugees and was sped up by the arrival of rival terrorist militias, particularly Iran-backed Hezbollah, determined to prosecute a war with Israel.

Lebanon’s brightest prospect is the development of its gas reserves in the Mediterranean. Hezbollah has been frustrating the conclusion of a maritime agreement between Lebanon and Israel, which would enable drilling for natural gas in Lebanon’s offshore fields, where reserves are plentiful and proven.

That and a revival of tourism are Lebanon’s best, slender hopes. Hope is people, like me, will want to go, looking for the ghosts of a giddy nightlife and James Bondian intrigue. I hope to go this year.

It is a dream still associated with the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla: broadcasting electricity, making it available to users without a wire.

Tesla took his plans for sending electricity through the air to the grave with him, having been one of the architects of alternating current, which was the building block of the electrified world.

But Tesla’s dream has never died and, in fact, is alive and well and making progress — although not on the universal scale envisioned by Tesla or his followers. They look on his scheme for electricity broadcast from towers, like radio, as a Holy Grail.

His dream was as improbable as it was alluring.

But on a more down-to-earth level, inductive charging — wireless power transfer — is surging. It has two distinct visions: One is to make wireless charging a reality for small devices. If airport terminals were wired for charging as they are for WiFi, there would be no more sitting on the floor by a plug. The other is for electric vehicles.

Ahmad Glover, the enthusiastic president of WiGL, a small wireless electric transmission company, told me the military is extremely interested in wireless charging. Glover, an Air Force veteran, said the goal is to have forward bases equipped, during operations and in warfighting situations, so that troops can charge their electronics without plugging in. “The less a soldier has to carry the better,” he said.

Glover, who has worked with MIT and Atlantic University engineers and has a contract with the Air Force, sees a day when charging is essentially automatic. The source of the power could be from a solar charger carried by a soldier on the battlefield rather than from the grid or the forward base generator. Glover believes his work will keep U.S. troops discreetly in touch wherever, whenever. He is working on beams and omnidirectional area chargers.

The big marquee application for wireless charging is in transportation. Here, most obviously, inductive charging has applications in public transport. The charger consists of an electromagnetic field radiating from a plate to a receiver under the vehicle. When the vehicle is positioned over the plate, charging takes place. This is known as a static system.

Mobile inductive charging, known as dynamic charging, where a moving vehicle can pick up a charge from the roadway, has been promoted overseas. But there is research money in the federal budget for inductive charging development in the United States.

The big advantage of static charging is that vehicles can be lighter and, therefore, cheaper. Taxis, trolleys, light rail and buses could have smaller, lighter batteries as they will be charged regularly at predictable places, like traffic lights.

South Korea has been developing a charging system for buses where they get a charge every time they stop at a bus stop.

With abundant wind and hydro, Norway is headed for a carbon-free economy. By law, all new cars must be electric by 2025; accordingly, Norway is working to install inductive charging plates for taxis at their stands. A taxi driver will pull into a stand — still common in Europe — and while waiting for the next fare, the car will charge. If the taxi is on the stand long enough, it gets fully charged. Otherwise, it just gets a boost.

The advantages of inductive charging are multiple. First, batteries can be smaller and cheaper, and the vehicle lighter. For utilities, the load is spread over the day, coinciding with the abundance of solar generation.

The ultimate dynamic inductive dream is that cars will refuel as they speed down the highway. Italy has an experimental program installing charging coils in tarmac. Sweden is relatively far along with a similar experiment, and the United Kingdom is funding research.

Nikola Tesla’s dream is turning into reality.

Photo by Limor Zellermayer on Unsplash

Even as Europe has been dealing with its hottest summer on record, it has been fearfully aware that it may face its worst winter since the one at the end of World War II, from 1944 to 1945.

Electricity shortages and unpayable fuel prices for many households are in store for Europe.

Industrial production in Germany, Europe’s economic driver, is threatened, and governments from London to Athens are struggling with how they will help with energy bills right now, let alone in the dead of winter.

Electricity production on the European grid was already strained due to the change from coal and gas generation to renewables.

Germany worsened a tight supply by shutting down its nuclear plants, and the new reliance on wind power was severely questioned by a wind drought last fall, especially in the North Sea.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in March, things went from tightness of supply to impending disaster. Russia, through a complex network of pipelines, is the principal supplier of natural gas to Europe and all petroleum products to Germany. Now it has curtailed normal flows.

Europe is heavily dependent on gas for heating and for making electricity. As things stand, all of Europe is hurting, especially Germany. The country may suffer as dreadful a winter as it did at the end of World War II when there was no coal, the essential fuel at the time.

The unknowns revolve around Russia’s war in Ukraine. These are possible scenarios:

—Russia wins outright; Europe continues sanctions and is punished with gas interruptions. Result: Europe freezes this winter.

—There is a political settlement, the rebuilding of Ukraine begins and the gas flows again.

—Ukraine repulses Russia on the ground; Russia changes regime and abandons the fight.

—The conflict worsens, and NATO is drawn in. Europe rations fuel, including kerosene. It is a wartime footing for all of Europe.

—Germany decides it has had enough and makes a deal with Russia. Ukraine is figuratively thrown under the bus.

While the United States and other gas-producing nations will export all they can to Europe in the form of liquified natural gas, those sources are already heavily committed. The United States, for example, has just seven LNG export terminals. These take years to license and build; the same goes for the receiving terminals and LNG tankers. Additionally, most European receiving terminals are in the West, and the severest shortages are in the East.

It is too late to change one certainty about the coming winter: high food prices everywhere, including in the United States, and starvation in developing countries. Ukraine is exporting grain haltingly, but those shipments are too small and too late. Afghanistan and Somalia are already in a food crisis, starting what is set to be a world run on grain provided in humanitarian relief.

The terrible European winter of 1944 to 1945 is known as the Hunger Winter. Prepare to hear that term resurrected.

The world must brace for the coming winter in the Northern Hemisphere with political uncertainty and weak, inward-looking leaders in many countries. In the United States, the midterm elections are set to produce division. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has lost control of the National Assembly. Britain is seeking a new Tory prime minister to replace Boris Johnson. Italy is facing an election that some forecasts say will go to the isolationist fascists.

The democracies are riven with culture wars and other indulgences as Europe’s crisis is in the making. For much of the rest of the world, a new Hunger Winter looms. Many will be cold this winter, others will be hungry. Untold numbers will die.