Short, thoughtful chapters dramatise tough emotional and philosophical issues through the lonely intelligence of the child who notices everything: the unappealing smells of her fellow-worshippers; the "army of black hairs" in her teacher's nose.
Mr. Magee is by no means uncritical, yet his thoroughgoing admiration of Wagner and his works will lead some to discount this book reflexively as an apology, especially in the thoughtful final chapter on Wagner's undeniable anti-Semitism.
Its episodic structure would have benefited from a thoughtful concluding chapter on the obsessive, self-contradictory relationship between the United States and its friends-turned-enemies-turned-potential-friends-again across the Middle East.
Wolfowitz, who contributed a thoughtful and unhysterical chapter on the importance of intermediate-range missiles to the Soviet strategy, says he never bought Team B's alarmist contention that the Soviet Union believed it could fight and win a nuclear war.
NSU thanks members of his doctoral committee (Trevor Price, David Jablonski, and Richard Ree) for thoughtful suggestions on this chapter of his dissertation.
So it is disappointing to watch as "Supergods," which never stays with a particular point for very long, comes increasingly unraveled in its final chapters, forgoing thoughtful examination in favor of shout-outs to Mr. Morrison's industry colleagues and an unnecessary, 16-page summary of the "Batman" movie franchise.
Carroll is a thoughtful writer, and his chapters on how bullet journaling can guide people to live more intentional, meaningful lives is a big step above the standard productivity book.
He told that tale in an earlier book, "What Is Life Worth?" It is just one chapter in his thoughtful new book, "Who Gets What: Fair Compensation After Tragedy and Financial Upheaval" (PublicAffairs, $26.99), which chronicles his role across three decades serving as a kind of Solomon after times of national crisis.
