I was taught in kindergarten that a certain man was a great hero. An episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks had even left me with the impression, for several years afterward, that he’d proven that the Earth is round. Some years later, while at the University of Michigan, I was told that that same man was a harbinger of death and destruction. The truth about him is probably something far more familiar to us all: that he was a man with very heroic qualities, as well as very real shortcomings.