A reader has some questions about giving his son advice on educational and career choices. He is torn between emphasizing what is “practical” and what he feels “passionate” about. Which one is more important? And if given the option, which one should be emphasized?
I offer six points that might help him in coming to his own conclusions.
The belief in portents and auguries was common before the modern era. We moderns, comfortably ensconced in our towers of science and “rationalism,” are likely to view with extreme skepticism the notion that future events can be foretold. Such a view would appear to some as a superstitious relic from a less enlightened era. Or so we would like to imagine.
One of the most famous naval engagements in American history was the duel fought at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on March 9, 1862 between the ironclad warships USS Monitor and CSS Merrimack (more precisely named the CSS Virginia). I have recently been learning much more about the details of the battle, in Richard Snow’s wonderfully entertaining Iron Dawn: The Monitor, the Merrimack, and the Civil War Sea Battle That Changed History. I listened to the audiobook, and wanted to convey some basic outlines of the story here.
I was informed today that an excellent Portuguese translation of my essay The Engrossed appeared on the site Nuvem de Giz. I very much appreciate the efforts of translator Sr. Daniel Castro, and am grateful that he found the essay to have been worthy of his efforts. The translation can be found here.
Stalin biographer Steven Kotkin relates this ominous anecdote in the second volume of his monumental three-volume study of the Soviet dictator’s life and times. It shows–perhaps more clearly than any other anecdote–just how a man’s fate can hinge on a few critical moments in his life.
In this podcast we discuss three movies: “Good People” (2014), “Smoke and Mirrors” (El Hombre de las Mil Caras)(2016), and the truly unsettling “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (2017).
The name Heinrich Barth is almost unknown today. But he is without doubt the greatest explorer that Germany produced in the nineteenth century, and probably even in the twentieth. Not only did he penetrate completely unknown regions of Africa, but he kept a meticulous record of his travels, to such an extent that his published works are still useful to scholars today. Even in his own day he did not receive the recognition that he deserved; central Africa was then so unknown even to educated Europeans that a balanced appraisal of his work was not possible at the time. Yet a review of his life and travels leaves little doubt that he must be ranked among the bravest and most resourceful of all explorers of the African continent.
Geoffrey of Villehardouin (1160–1212?) is known as one of the first important names in French historiography. Unlike his predecessors, he was not a dry chronicler; he was a historian who participated directly in the events he described, and was reasonably objective by the standards of his day. His book, The Conquest of Constantinople, is a moving and pious account of his involvement in the Fourth Crusade. He was not born a nobleman; he earned his spurs as a knight through loyal service as a soldier and organizer of military campaigns. After his withdrawal from public life, he set out to record the great events he had been a part of, much in the same way that Bernal Diaz (one of Hernando Cortes’s soldiers) and Usama Ibn Munqidh (an Arab knight of the Crusades) would do. Great deeds of valor are rightly celebrated in every culture and in every age, because (as Sallust tells us):
When a writer composes his or her memoirs while in prison awaiting execution, we owe it to ourselves to consider what they have to say. It may be a cliché that the prospect of death focuses the memory and concentration, but it is a cliché that is powerfully true. In Chapter 5 of Thirty-Seven, I discussed the fate of Boethius, who wrote his Consolation of Philosophy while languishing in a dungeon (and awaiting execution) for a crime he did not commit. I recently heard of another last testament written during captivity: the poignant memoirs of Jeanne Manon Roland (1754–1793), known to history simply as Madame Roland.
It is a good thing for us to cultivate our aggressive spirit. Life requires participation, and participation demands endurance and adrenaline; and he who enters battle with a spirit of meek submissiveness is likely to get precisely what he asks for. All this is true. Yet the patient endurance of the pack-mule may be just as valuable as the explosive fury of the panther: the former triumphs by being able to endure, while the latter may find itself fatally exhausted once its initial burst of energy is spent. Life more often demands the ability to absorb punishment than the ability to deliver it to others.
Quintus Curtius 
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