My son Mickey was reading a heartbreaking book for his high school English class. The Other Side of the Sky is a memoir of a girl who grew up in war-torn Afghanistan... and her perilous journey to the United States.

Mickey looked up from the book asked, "Why do they make us read depressing...

Fresh out of college in the mid-1990s, I took a traveling sales job. My responsibility was to sell as many industrial tools and supplies as possible. (Yes, that’s just as exciting as it sounds.)

My liberal arts education hadn’t trained me to sell anything. Puzzled yet determined, I...