Whatever my regrets about school—lost years, no Ph.D.—I wasn’t yet damaged by judgment. I hadn’t failed badly at anything—like Francis Gary Powers, for example, whose name I heard every day. His U-2 spy plane had been shot down over Russia, and he’d failed to kill himself before being captured. Instead, he confessed to being a spy. President Eisenhower, who claimed the U-2 was a weather plane, looked like a liar.
