The point of it all: a lifetime of great loves and endeavors

PART I: WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS MAN. 1: Life well lived. Reveries of a newborn father ; Irving Kristol : a great good man ; Ronald Reagan : he could see for miles ; Thomas Jefferson : the sublime oxymoron ; Thank you, Isaiah Berlin ; John Paul II : the power of faith ; George Weidenfeld : Syrian Christians and the English Jew ; Meg Greenfield : my editor, my friend

2: Customs and culture. Why I love Australia ; Rampway to heaven ; Junk rights ; Genius, insanity, innocence ; Two Cromwells : separate and independent realities ; Parenthesis to history ; The Cold War memorials

3: Contests. Suffering a relapse, and loving it ; The tyranny of chess ; Revenge, American-style ; Man vs. computer : still a match ; The greatness gap ; Why do they even play the game? ; Jim Dickson's triumph

4: Cosmos. In sorrow and glory we find our common humanity ; Front-page physics : why the news from beyond is beyond us ; What Sputnik launched ; Pluto and us ; Space : the visionaries take over ; Redeeming Columbia

5: The doctor is in. A doctor's duty ; Why doctors quit ; Sick, tired and not taking it anymore ; The twilight of psychotherapy ; They die with their rights on

6: Matters of life and death. Five lives vs. one principle ; Stem cells : mounting the slippery steps ; The abortion debate : just words ; The price of fetal parts ; What to do for little Charlie Gard

PART II: MAN AND SOCIETY. 7: Look outward. Three pieces of sage advice

8: Against the grain. Apocalypse, with and without God ; When modern medicine fails ; The myth of "settled science" ; Thought police on patrol

9: The too-examined life. Suicide ad absurdum ; Holiday : living on a return ticket ; Shakespeare, ruined ; Illusions of self-love

10: Out of many, one. Assimilation nation ; The tribalization of America ; Counting by race ; Redskins and reason ; Neither ennobling nor degrading ; On lowering the flag

11: Church and state. Civil religion

and no religion ; Just leave Christmas alone ; Religion as taste

PART III: POLITICS, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC. 12: The two last tribes of Israel. The miracle, at 60 ; The Holocaust and Jewish identity ; Demystifying Judaism ; How to fight academic bigotry ; Do we really mean "Never again"?

13: Keeping the world at bay. How to deal with countries gone mad ; The Iranian "moderate" ; Middle East peace and the great Muslim civil war ; The Bush legacy ; Iraq, abandoned ; The climate pact swindle ; Russia rising ; To die for Estonia? ; Trump and the "Madman Theory"

14: Democracy and its discontents. In defense of fanatics ; The death penalty and the Constitution ; Finally getting it right on affirmative action ; The right-to-work dilemma ; Brexit : sovereign kingdom or Little England? ; Trump derangement syndrome : you can't govern by id ; Revolt of the attorneys general ; American democracy : not so decadent after all

15: On liberty. Constitutions, conservatism and the genius of the Founders ; The meaning of human rights

PART IV: COMPETING VISIONS : America's role and the course of world history. 16: Reluctant colossus. When to intervene ; The arrow of history ; Trump's foreign policy revolution

17: The end of "the end of history". After a mere 25 years, the triumph of the West is over ; The coming disillusionment of liberated Europe ; The authoritarian temptation

PART V: SPEAKING IN THE FIRST PERSON. 18: A life without regrets. An anniversary of sorts ; Choosing a life ; A statement of principle ; Beauty and soul ; A note to readers ; Eulogy / by Daniel Krauthammer.