Recommendations & Links
Reading feeds the soul. Here are a few books that we recommend reading as well as links to some web sites that we recommend visiting often.
Implications of the Next Big Sort
In our previous post we discussed the Next Big Sort, the one that is happening right now under the noses of sociologists and demographers. That the country is re-sorting itself 20 years after The Big Sort is not as interesting as what this sort will mean for the United States and for the people who are making these moves to the country and the city. 20 years ago, the information revolution made it possible for neighborhoods to become strongly majoritarian by party affiliation as opposed to the fairly even percentages of decades past. We’re predicting here that the Next Big [...]
A Time Before You Die – Lucy Beckett
Friends, this book review is reprinted here with the gracious permission of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, in whose flagship magazine, Gilbert!, this review can be found in the Jan/Feb 2021 edition. Please become a member of the Society, which I am sure you will find intellectually and spiritually fulfilling. Visit www.chesterton.org for information about GK Chesterton and his work, as well as the Chesterton society and membership. Customs and laws. We live by both. Few of us consider whether we are following one or the other, and if so, rarely. But it is important for us to [...]
Restored Film of Children on Serbian Farms in 1920
The video linked below titled Children in Serbia 1920 is haunting. A few thoughts about it after watching several times: First, these children were most likely dressed in their traditional Serbian cultural outfits for the camera, which was very likely the first time they were ever pictured. This technology was rare even on American farms, let alone war ravaged Yugoslavia. The more typical dress was as in the picture above. Second, the notion that children tend livestock at such a young age is odd and foreign and implausible to Westerners. especially in the US and Canada. Please know that it [...]
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
I was very intrigued when I read Georgie Ann Geyer's Buying the Night Flight. This woman traveled alone in a man's world from Egypt to Russia to Cambodia to Cuba in her rise as a foreign correspondent. In reading her autobiography I got the sense of her interaction with her environment and the delicacy it required. In reading Ryszard Kapuscinski's Travels With Herodutos, I saw his fascination with the transcendent nature of the things Herodutos wrote about and Kapuscinski saw centuries later. But in Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, you see one country come alive. You feel like [...]
Newsmaker – Reflections On A Republic’s Threatened Defense
Well, it happened again...I have to find space on my reading list by taking off a book to make room for a book that needs to go on it. My own rule is that to keep the list on one piece of paper (front and back), if I want to add a title to the list, I have to take something else off. That happened last weekend when I finished Bob Gorman's novel Newsmaker. I say novel because, by classification, it is listed as fiction. But we all know that good fiction explores true or likely life situations. That is [...]
How Much Willpower Do You Have?
Roy Baumeister (professor of social psychology at Florida State) and John Tierney (long time science correspondent for the New York Times) call Willpower the greatest human strength in the book's very subtitle. A bold statement, and a challenge to hook both the professional who wants more willpower or the one who thinks he has plenty to go around. The authors tell you up front that 1. you have a finite amount of willpower and 2. that no matter what tasks you perform, you draw from the same reserve. Once it is gone, you are likely toast until you replenish your [...]
Long Lost Gem Refound
Everyone finds them on occasion -- those long lost or never known gems of books that offer profound common sense that we all know we should use, try to use, or actually do use every day. While reading through Maria Popova's outstanding web site, I was so intrigued by her review of William Beveridge's The Art of Scientific Investigation that I bought the book for myself. I'm glad I did because I never could have marked up and tabbed a library copy. C.S. Lewis said, in Essays In Criticism, that we read literature in order to expand our own [...]
Island of the Lost
Island of the Lost By Joan Druett Every now and again, a person ought to be reminded that there have gone before us men and women in far worse circumstances than those we face and who not only survived, but brought others with them through hardship. But we should also learn that hardships are genuinely…hard, and that while some survive to fight another day, many others fall apart and fail. Island of the Lost details such a story which seemingly only providence can provide. […]
A Voyage Long and Strange / Nixonland
A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz Nixonland by Rick Perlstein Who Writes The Narratives Of What We Believe? Have you ever wondered how it is that we come to accept certain versions of history and what we believe about ourselves and those we associate with? I’m not talking about historical or moral relativism. I’m talking about how we come to accept certain narratives about our own history that are not necessarily or even remotely true. History is more shaped to a narrative than just existing as fact. Winston Churchill is known, among his [...]
The Making of Tomorrow / Men of Responsibility
The Making of Tomorrow by Raoul de Roussy de Sales Men of Responsibility by Dirk U. Stikker One of the truths of sociology and business is that we tend to think that what happens today will happen tomorrow and that what we see today somehow happened yesterday and the day before stretching back infinitely. But we know that isn’t true for most things we see. Such is international relations. The world we live in today was purposely and deliberately shaped by men of vision during World War II and in its aftermath. We know that [...]
Ender’s Game
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card “Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember — the enemy’s gate is down. If you step through your own door like you’re out for a stroll, you’re a big target and you deserve to get hit. With more than a flasher.” Ender Wiggins paused and looked over the group. Most were just watching him nervously. A few understanding. A few sullen and resisting.” So begins a short story published in the August 1977 edition of Analog magazine. It was the story of a six year [...]
The Age of Battles
The Age of Battles by Russell F. Weigley One of the most oft-heard comments about history is that those who fail to learn from it are bound to repeat it. I would say that is true only if people actually learned anything from history. Therein lies the hardest part. How do you learn from it and what do we individually take as relevant to our present context in which we make leadership decisions, both personal and corporate? […]
How Do We Know What We Know?
The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis How do we know what we know about history? At some point all of us ought to have wondered how we know what we know about what happened in the past. I first wondered about this concept one day back in 2005 while listening to a story on NPR in which the interviewee, a university professor, repeated, almost off the cuff, the oft heard statement that in the middle ages life expectancy was somewhere in the mid 30 year range. I had recently read a Psalm [...]
Hope is Not a Plan
Hope is Not a Plan edited by Thomas Mowle Upon returning from Baghdad in December of 2004, Tom Ruby stayed in touch with several of his colleagues from the Coalition staff, both civilian and military. They collaborated on a project to bring the inside story of the workings of the staff from inside the Green Zone. […]
The Pope and the CEO
The Pope and the CEO by Andreas Widmer Former Swiss Guard and now internationally known CEO, Andreas Widmer discusses lessons he learned directly from Pope John Paul II while serving in Pope’s personal guard. […]
Stone’s Fall
Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears The real life murder of an Oxford professor in 1663 and its surrounding circumstances doesn’t sound like one of those plots that people immediately think of as the basis for a great novel. But Iain Pears’s Instance at the Fingerpost was a classic that hooked people from all walks of life. The same events, the same murder, as seen through the eyes of four different people, with details of the era making you wonder how people lived back then take the reader on a journey he will never forget. His [...]
The Difference
The Difference by Scott Page Lots of people have heard about the concept of the Wisdom of Crowds. When I read the book of that name by James Surowiecki in 2004, it kinda threw me for a loop. All throughout my professional career up to that point, I had worked under the assumption that expertise was all important. After all, why would anyone ask a non-expert anything about any subject to which the person doesn’t have a clue? On the surface it seems dumb. Lots of smart commentators have said over time that the stupid [...]