Diagnosed with ALS in March 2015 and confined to a wheelchair by late 2016, the author occupied himself with meditation, reading and watching operas through Met On Demand. But, an active mind in an increasingly useless body needed some affirmative participation in the world, something less passive. These essays are the result. Ranging from intensely personal to dryly academic (from dying to taxation), they reflect the matters that caught his mind’s attention and as to which he discovered that he had strong opinions. They are individually independent and can stand alone, but there is some substantive overlap. Of course, the world view expressed in each is the same. John majored in economics at Amherst College, receiving a BA, summa cum laude, in 1970. He received his JD, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1973. Following law school, he did post-graduate research at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. In late 1974, John began a 37-year career as a commercial litigator with a major law firm in New York City. His cases spanned many industries and technologies. John retired from the practice of law in 2011, after which he relocated to a small village outside of Cambridge, England. In March 2015, however, John was diagnosed with ALS (motor neuron disease). As a result, he decided to return to the U.S., to live in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, with his daughter Sarah and her Rhodesian Ridgebacks. His son John Eliot and daughter-in-law Megan, with his two grandchildren Hannah and Jeffrey, live nearby.