Some weeks back, the Dow enjoyed a sharp upswing, prompt­ing a net­work news program's giddy obser­va­tion that the U.S. econ­omy was on a "roller coaster."

Which struck me as an odd sort of thing to say in light of the fact that such dizzy­ing ups -- and downs -- are...

I've always loved the idea of New Year's resolutions -- the clean slate, the fresh start, the opti­mistic resolve -- but for all my ever-so-good intentions, I never quite seem to keep them.

So this year, I'm try­ing some­thing new. Instead of establishing a list of goals and strug­gling (and...

Two years and eight months ago, I found myself abruptly launched into a prolonged transition that continues to this day. The job I'd held for the past five years suddenly disappeared when my boss was tapped to join the fledgling Obama administration as solicitor general. (You may have heard of...

You probably know the feeling: Just when you most need to push ahead, whatever willpower you once possessed is nowhere to be found. As it turns out, this is no coincidence: Just as an overly ambitious workout regime can exhaust our bodies, researchers have found that too many demands can...

Ever hot on the trail of the latest trend, the New York Times now brings us the surprising news that the nation's jobless want to see an end to those pesky unemployment benefits.

Come again, you say? Clearly, you haven't been hanging out with Dan Tolleson, the 54-year-old poster...

Facebook: Good or bad? Is it nurturing our families and communities by bringing us closer together? Or is it a dangerous threat -- a technology that fosters isolation, anxiety and narcissism?

These two perspectives have been squaring off, even as Facebook: The Movie -- aka "The Social Network" -- vies...

I am hardly the target demographic for "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," Yale Law Professor Amy Chua's wildly controversial memoir of extreme parenting, Chinese-style. Single with no kids, I do spend a lot of time with friends' offspring, but given one child's recent observation that I seem more like...

By the time Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl died in 1997, his celebrated Holocaust memoir "Man's Search for Meaning" had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. Frankl, who endured unimaginable hardships in Nazi death camps while also striving to help fellow prisoners find meaning in their suffering, famously...