If W.B.Yeats were looking at the world today, I think his thoughts would be essentially the same as they were in 1919:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

Most of the reviews of Beyond Chaos have received and deserve high praise. I also congratulate Oleg Konovalov on a brilliant achievement because I now have a better understanding of what chaos is…and isn’t. More to the point, I am much better prepared to respond to chaos, whatever its nature and extent may be.

Many years ago, when I attended a grammar school on the South Side of Chicago, I was tormented by bullies older and stronger than I. They were also mean-spirited. One day, one of them began to push me around on the gravel playground, frequently slapping me. As he was about to hit me again, I clenched my fist and hit his nose as hard as I could, breaking it. He howled in pain and his tee shirt began to soak up the blood as his friends took him to the infirmary. No one at the school ever bullied me or my friends again.

I remembered that incident as I began to read Beyond Chaos.

Bullies are cowards. So are many crises if you let them get the best of you.

Yes, quite true: You can’t punch a crisis in the nose

How to avoid them? Clarify the degree of probability of their occurrence and prepare accordingly.

When they do occur, how to manage them? Clarify the details of each reality within the given context.

How to do that? Oleg Konovalov explains HOW, and does so with a unique combination of rigor, precision, passion, and empathy.

His counsel is of incalculable value.

* * *

Here are two suggestions while you are reading Beyond Chaos: First, highlight key passages. Also,  perhaps in a lined notebook kept near-at-hand to  record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to all the quotations that begin each chapter and to each of the end-of-chapter “Practical Tips.”

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.