Engine oil seems so simple. It's slippery. It keeps metal parts from fusing together. It's messy, especially when it has been squeezed, slung, and sprayed around the inside of a hot engine for ...

"The past," said English novelist L.P. Hartley in his 1953 novel The Go-Between, "is a foreign country; they do things differently there." As far as book openings go, it's pretty solid. Right up there ...