Chapter Five
Ian Fleming gives away the title of Live and Let Die surprisingly early. James Bond has arrived in New York to investigate Mr Big, a powerful criminal leader whom M identifies as a Soviet agent and a known member of SMERSH.[1] Bond wants to go into Harlem
Chapter Four
Near the end of Casino Royale, after Le Chiffre is dead and Bond has survived his torture, James Bond and René Mathis begin an extraordinary conversation about the nature of evil. In the previous chapter, I followed that conversation outward through Fleming's later novels, asking how
Chapter Three
Among Ian Fleming’s fourteen James Bond books, only once does he appear to suspend the narrative long enough to ask directly what evil is. The conversation between James Bond and René Mathis near the end of Casino Royale is unlike anything else in the Bond canon.[1]
By the time Bill Mundell and I traveled together to the Taihu World Cultural Forum in China in 2012, we had already become friends and colleagues. The forum, an international gathering of leaders from government, academia, business, and the cultural sector, gave us an opportunity to continue our conversations about
I had not known of Guy Debord until last Saturday. While wandering through a weekend market in Nashville, I noticed a copy of The Society of the Spectacle lying among a collection of socially oriented books. The title alone was sufficient to arrest my attention. I bought it with no
Chapter Two
James Bond's missions rarely begin with James Bond. They begin in the offices of the Secret Service. Before Bond ever enters M's office, someone has already identified a threat. Intelligence has been collected, reports assembled, priorities weighed, and decisions made. By the time Bond
Graduates of Oxford's Advanced Management and Leadership Programme gathered in Hua Hin, Thailand, to confront a world transformed by technology, geopolitical change, and competing demands on leadership. The reunion raised a consequential question: What remains of an education when the world for which we were prepared has changed?
Chapter One
Certain questions have followed me for much of my life. They have surfaced in different settings and through different people, yet they have always returned me to the same subject: institutions. I have wanted to understand why some endure while others slowly lose their way; why some remain
