By the end of World War II, we were the most powerful and least damaged of the great nations. We also had most of the money. America's hegemony lasted exactly five years.

I grew up in an era when money was not readily available. We were into the post-Depression years and World War II.

World War II made prosperous the United States, which had been undergoing a depression for a dozen years, and made very rich those magnates and their managers who govern the republic - with many a wink - in the people's name.

Just when you think this war has taken everything you loved, you meet someone and realize that somehow you still have more to give.

A not-too-distant explosion shakes the house, the windows rattle in their sockets, and in the next room the class of 1964 wakes up and lets out a yell or two. Each time this happens I find myself thinking, "Is it possible that human beings can continue with this lunacy very much longer?" You know the answer, of course.

America was probably Europe's equal scientifically by the end of World War I and certainly surpassed it after the chaos of World War II.