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Sunday Movie Roundup (5/28/2017)
Chew on these.
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Why We Study Great Exemplars Of History
You may ask yourself why we study the lives and experiences of great exemplars. When I say “exemplar” I mean a person of substance and distinction, a person of notoriety in some field of endeavor. There are many reasons for this; I will attempt to give a few of them here.
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The Dangers Arising From One’s Subordinates: The Case Of Eumenes
No matter how much ability a commander may have, his purposes will ultimately come to nothing if he is surrounded by discontented or disloyal associates. It was for this reason that, as the historian Sallust relates, the Roman general Metellus decided to send his disloyal subordinate Marius back to Rome. A further example of this…
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“Sallust: The Conspiracy Of Catiline And The War Of Jugurtha” Is Now Available
Click above for purchase information I am pleased to announce that my latest book, an original and extensively annotated translation of Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline and War of Jugurtha, is now available for purchase. It uses a fresh, modern English idiom that preserves the flavor of the historian’s famous epigrammatic style. Fully outfitted for comprehension…
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Linnaeus And The Art Of Classification
One of the great names of eighteenth century science is the botanist Carl von Linné, more commonly known as Carl Linnaeus. His primary importance to history lies in his innovative classification system for living organisms. Before him, there was a chaos of competing names and terms for the swelling corpus of knowledge about plants and animals;…
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Sunday Movie Roundup (5/14/2017)
This was a great week. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: discovering unexpectedly good films in out-of-the-way places is one of the things that keeps my faith in cinema alive. There are good things happening out there; you just have to be persistent and know how to wade through all the sewage.
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“How Do I Convince A Student That His Ideas Are Wrong?” (Podcast)
A reader who is a teacher is troubled by the fact that one of his teenage students firmly believes in fascist government. The teacher seeks advice on how to deal with this situation. He relates this situation to similar experiences he had as a soldier in Afghanistan when he was speaking with local villagers.
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The Great New York City Blackout Of 1977
I saw a program the other day about an event I previously had known little about: the great New York blackout of 1977. Something about the story left me with a distinct feeling of unease. I don’t imagine many readers here are familiar with it, either. Let me describe some of the details.
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Sunday Movie Roundup (5/7/2017)
Some weeks are better than others. I’ve had better weeks, but here are the results. Even disappointing movies are fun to write about.
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A Meeting With Stalin (Podcast)
A former NKVD agent describes a meeting with Joseph Stalin and the special assignment he was given. We reflect on the fact that power and glory are fleeting, and that they can vanish faster than most people believe.
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The Curious Customs Of The Franks: How One Arab Knight Saw The Crusaders
We have recently discussed a story from the life of the learned Ali Ibn Munqidh. His grandson Usama Ibn Munqidh (1095–1188) was a very famous poet, warrior and literary figure in medieval Islam and his memoirs are an almost unique portal of insight on how one culture saw the other. The scholar Philip Hitti describes…
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Language Mastery As A Secret Code: How Sadid Al-Mulk Was Saved From Danger
Mastery of language is indeed a powerful tool. This is especially true when the speakers hail from the same cultural background, and can make use of all those subtleties that would be lost on the non-native. This point is brilliantly illustrated by an anecdote told about Ali Ibn Munqidh, who became emir of the district…
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Sunday Movie Roundup (4/23/2017)
Oklahoma City (2017) Director: Barak Goodman The 1990s seem to have an air of unreality about them now. Looking back, they seem like a time of missed opportunities: failure to reform the financial system, failure to improve the infrastructure, failure to understand the consequences of unrelenting interference in Middle Eastern affairs. The drama of 9/11–and…
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Nature Or Nurture?
In this podcast, a reader has a question about nature and nurture. Which one, he wonders, has the most influence in forming our identities? The answer is complicated, of course. But some general points can be stated. We close with a reading of the Epilogue to my book Thirty-Seven.
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Sunday Movie Roundup (4/16/2017)
Disorder (2015) Director: Alice Winocour This is one of those great, slow-burning movies that slipped under the radar (at least here in the United States). It’s part character study and part suspense drama, but the end result is a very satisfying cinematic experience. Lead actor Matthias Schoenaerts is a great actor whom I’ve admired for a long…
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The Hollow Men (Podcast)
A reader from Italy writes to say he is frustrated and angry with the deceit and fraudulence of a certain political figure on the world stage. We explain why it is best to take a detached, philosophical view of such men, since experience shows that they eventually bring about their own ruin. What matters is…
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C. Licinius Macer’s Advice To His People
I recently came across a passage from a speech appearing in Sallust’s Historiae (III.48). The oration is put in the mouth of the popular tribune Caius Licinius Macer, who was battling the influence of the Roman patricians. It purportedly was delivered in 73 B.C.; Macer’s intention was to rouse the common people to action against…
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Resources Can Come In Unexpected Ways: The Bounty Of Imad al-Dawla
Imad ad-Dawla Ibn Buwaih (A.D. 891-949) was the founder of the Buyid Dynasty in medieval Persia. His name in Persian is given as Ali Ibn Buya, but he is more commonly known as Imad al-Dawla (“pillar of the state”). Ibn Khallikan’s short sketch of his life contains the story related here; this story in turn…
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François-René de Chateaubriand: The Apostle Of Romanticism
The nineteenth century literary, artistic, and intellectual movement we today call “romanticism” is not easily defined, but is generally acknowledged to embrace the following sentiments: an idealized view of the past, the emphasis of feeling and sentiment over rationality, a preference for exotic locales and peoples, and the primacy of emotion. One of the founders—perhaps…
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Joseph Persico’s “Infamy On Trial” (Book Review)
We live in an age of power without responsibility, an age where ambition and hubris are too often permitted to run roughshod over institutional controls and the dictates of common decency. We are too often made to feel helpless in the face of power exercised so far beyond the reach of accountability that many of…
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Sunday Movie Roundup (4/2/2017)
The lineup for this week was not stellar, but not the worst I’ve seen.
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Leadership Questions: Pulling The Trigger, And Dealing With A Passive-Aggressive Boss
Two different readers ask questions from their own personal experience: 1. One man is trying to overcome feelings of discomfort when ordering his men to go places where they may face certain harm. 2. Another man is trying to deal with a boss whose passive-aggressive comments may mean trouble for him.
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Machiavelli’s Principles Of Conspiracies
Machiavelli, in book III, chapter 6 of his Discourses, enunciates the principles of political conspiracies. He considers an understanding of them to be of primary importance. I intend to paraphrase his relevant points here, so that readers without access to the original text may have a better understanding of them. He begins with a point…
Original copy of Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties) published in Holland in 1642. From the collection of Fortress of the Mind.
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