The two greatest artistic productions to come out of the American Civil War were Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketch-Book of the War, and Herman Melville’s poetic masterpiece, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War.
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I read recently a fascinating tale of nautical survival. In 1965, six teenage Tongan boys were shipwrecked on the uninhabited island of Ata in the Tongan Archipelago of Polynesia. After stealing a boat, they had encountered a storm which deposited them on the island without any means of communication with the outside world.
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Canto XXVI of Dante’s Inferno takes place in the eighth bolgia (ditch) of the Eighth Circle of Hell. Here reside those guilty of providing fraudulent or deceitful counsel. In life, these souls used their persuasive abilities to harm or destroy others; and, in keeping with Dante’s attention to the principle of contrapasso, their punishment in Hell fits their crimes during life. As they once used their tongues for malicious speech, so in the afterlife are their souls “tongued” forever with flame.
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We begin with a few recommendations on books and resources to use in understanding Dante’s Divine Comedy. Then we switch gears, and get into the meat of the podcast. It seems we become substantially different people every seven to ten years, more or less. We may feel self-conscious or uncomfortable about the things we said, wrote, or believed when we were younger. Is it normal to feel this way? And is it better to preserve a record of one’s thought, or to renounce beliefs one no longer holds? We discuss both sides of the question.
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New York City, like all large cities, has experienced a number of riots in its long history. But the Draft Riots of 1863 surpassed every other upheaval, before or since, in unadulterated ferocity.
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It is at moments of unremitting extremity that we discover our true natures. The tragic loss of the British ship Stella in 1899 provides an illustration of this principle. The story appears in a 1962 volume of nautical lore entitled Women of the Sea by the maritime writer Edward R. Snow; but since the book has long been out of print, it will be retold here in abbreviated form, with Mr. Snow’s account as my primary source.
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Rights and liberties that have been won by past generations will not remain won without active and forceful advocacy by successive generations. Why? Systems of power and control will inevitably regroup and counterattack, and seek to roll back the clock. This is happening all around us now. Those who are unwilling to assert their rights, and unwilling to protect what past generations earned, will find themselves stripped of their patrimony.
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Chapter 23 of Moby-Dick is entitled “The Lee Shore.” It offers some philosophical commentary on the need for travel and direct experience. Melville reflects on the restless, roaming nature of a sailor named Bulkington:
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Let us tell the story of the greatest speech ever delivered by an American president.
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Quintus Curtius 
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