Cleopatra and Self-Preservation
“For the last time in two thousand years Cleopatra VII stands offstage. In a matter of days she will launch herself into history, which is to say that faced with the inevitable, she will counter with …
History
Emergence and Power — Four 13th-Century Sisters Who Became Queens
“[S]ome systems … are very sensitive to their starting conditions, so that a tiny difference in the initial push you give them causes a big difference in where they end up, and there is …
Seduced by Logic: Émilie du Châtelet and the Struggles to create the Newtonian Revolution
Against great odds, Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749) taught herself mathematics and became a world authority on Newtonian mathematical physics. I say against great odds because being a woman at the time …
Are Great Men and Women a Product of Circumstance?
Few books have ever struck us as much as Will Durant’s 100-page masterpiece The Lessons of History, a collection of essays which sum up the lifelong thoughts of a brilliant historian. We …
George Marshall’s 1920 Letter on True Leadership
“I am certain in the belief that the average man who scrupulously follows this course of action is bound to win great success.” *** George Marshall must be one of, if not the most under …
The 16 Best Books of 2016
Rewarding reads on love, life, knowledge, history, the future, and tools for thinking. Out of all the books I read this year, here is a list of what I found most worth reading in 2016. 1. The …
Frozen Accidents: Why the Future Is So Unpredictable
“Each of us human beings, for example, is the product of an enormously long sequence of accidents, any of which could have turned out differently.” — Murray Gell-Mann *** What parts of …
Jared Diamond: How to Get Rich
We’re constantly asked for examples of the “multiple mental models” approach in practice. Our standard response includes great books like Garrett Hardin’s Filters Against …
Alex Bellos: Every Number Tells a Story
“We depend on numbers to make sense of the world, and have done so ever since we started to count.” — Alex Bellos *** The earliest symbols used for numbers go back to about 5000 years ago …
Eric Hoffer and the Creation of Fanatical Mass Movements
What is the nature of a true mass movement? In 1951, the American philosopher Eric Hoffer attempted to answer this, and published his first and most well-known work: The True Believer: Thoughts on the …
Lee Kuan Yew on the Proper Balance Between Competitiveness and Equality
Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore and the one responsible for its rise from third world to first in only a generation, is a great source of wisdom. In this excerpt from, Lee Kuan …
Is Human Progress Real or An Illusion?
Against the historical backdrop of nations, morals and religions that rise and fall, “the idea of progress finds itself in dubious shape”, according to Will and Ariel Durant in their …
B.H. Liddell Hart and the Study of Truth and History
B.H. Liddell Hart (1895-1970) was many things, but above all, he was a military historian. He wrote tracts on Sherman, Scipio, Rommel, and on military strategy itself. His work influenced Neville …
Learning From Your Mistakes … When You Win
“Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to …
The Central Mistake of Historicism: Karl Popper on Why Trend is Not Destiny
Philosophy can be a little dry in concept. The word itself conjures up images of thinking about thought, why we exist, and other metaphysical ideas that seem a little divorced from the everyday world. …
What History Teaches us about The Concentration of Wealth
History is economics in action, at least according to Karl Marx. Whether in a group or as an individual, we vie for food, fuel, raw materials and our place in the hierarchy. Even art is often rooted …