PART ONEThe Situation Welcome to Turbulent Times!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, … it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

Charles DickensA Tale of Two Cities

These words opened Charles Dickens’s classic book A Tale of Two Cities, written 150 years ago. The passage was Dickens’s elegant attempt to describe the late 1700s as the bridge between two eras; the era of the farm was transitioning to the era of the factory. That transition saw great upheaval, including several major revolutionary wars; it was also a period of extensive invention and discovery. If Dickens were here today he might use ...

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