In late 1994, as I was winding up the first edition of this book, I joined my friend Balbir Mathur for one of our occasional lunches. Balbir, a native of India and a successful American entrepreneur, has spent the last decade on a modest personal quest: relieving world hunger. His classically entrepreneurial approach is a combination of Eastern vision and hard-nosed Western incentive. His charitable organization, Trees for Life Inc., has planted millions of fruit trees in underdeveloped countries and provided materials to teach people in those countries how to use the trees for food, building and clothing materials, and income. It is a rolling revolution in self-help.
He was aware of my quest, 4 years at that point, to try to change the nature of journalism, and after we ordered lunch he asked, "How's it going?"
"Fine," I said.
"You've been at this for 3 or 4 years. Are you seeing any progress?"
"Oh, yeah," I said. "There's ..."
"That's too bad," he interjected.
"What do you mean, Balbir?"
"If this is important change," he said softly, "if its really fundamental and you've been at it only 3 or 4 years and think you're seeing progress, then you're not asking all the right questions and you're not looking in all the right places."
As I write this in early 1997, I understand in ways I could not have understood on that day the wisdom of his advice, and I relate the story here to underscore the point he made.