At turn-of-the-millennium eve, with comment about the state of the world gushing from every media spigot on the planet, by comparison, popular appraisals by academics have been a trickle.

Fact is, despite what cynics may cry to the contrary, better sources of insight into the calamitous century just past are scarce outside the scholarly realm. Potentates of business, politics, religion and popular culture trot out credential-heavy opinions, yet to many their pitches often leave lingering aftertastes of self-interest. To be sure, academics are no more vaccinated against vested pursuits than any of these characters or, for that matter, our favorite pundits on the nightly news. Nor do they pretend to be as long on real-world experience as many who labor in the often degrading trenches of every-day life.

But if it is anything, the perspective that scholars' hard labor at thought and largely unfettered fact-finding brings to public dialogue on issues that matter so deeply to us all is at least compellingly unique and regrettably too often taken for granted.

To wit, this millennial issue, published amid due appreciation of the frighteningly fragile time in which we live, includes five faculty summations of where we are, how we got here, and where we may be headed. These selected essays touch on all the key forces-technology; population growth and its impact on natural resources; world politics; and religion-which are driving the bus, so to speak.

The painted canvas is not all cloudy, as well it could be, given certain realities of human nature that 20th century wags like H. L. Mencken were so deliciously fond of reciting (these are driving the bus, too). Progress in scientific understanding alone has done wonders for environmental awareness worldwide, for example, a subject confined to only the dreamiest poets of yesteryear. We're also told that a steady infusion of Third World muscle will only serve to strengthen tomorrow's U.S.-based economies like it has for decades.

But the new century, our essayists generally agree, will bring challenges that presently we're little prepared for. Humanity's oldest vices-ignorance and greed-may assume forms in the next few decades that likely will test the mettle of mankind as never before. Looming as perhaps the scariest specter is religious intolerance, a human foible now more capable of destroying the world than ever in its ancient, thoroughly depressing history of bloodlust.

Still in all, the saving grace of the human condition, as Mencken reminded us, is life's unquenchable capacity to entertain. That's why we've chosen to spice these arguably grim pages with some choice Menckenisms, on the theory that the unmatchable wit and wisdom of the Sage of Baltimore could make even the condemned crack a smile, a uniquely human reflex that for all we know may be the final hosanna of hope. - Frank Stephenson