Around 1998, Miep Gies supplied a small note to be appended to the end of a forthcoming biography of Anne Frank. It was completely fitting that Gies have the last word on Anne Frank, given all that she had risked and sacrificed between 1942 and 1944 to provide for and supply Frank’s family as they hid …
If you’re someone who, like most of us, occasionally struggles with temptation or distraction or work aversion, there is a solution. Because the problem isn’t you, exactly, the problem is that you’re not putting yourself in the right situations. Or perhaps, more accurately stated, the problem is that you keep putting yourself in the wrongsituations. As …
Some brilliant advice on office politics from the advertising pioneer David Ogilvy: “In your day-to-day negotiations with clients and colleagues fight for the kings and queens and bishops but throw away the pawns. A habit of graceful surrender on trivial issues will make you difficult to resist on those rare occasions when you must stand …
The Japanese archery master Awa Kenzô was once sick for several months, which took him away from his craft. Finally, when he was able to get out of bed on a cold wintery day, Kenzo met with a few students eager to resume their lessons. As he spoke with them, he was suddenly beset with …
It’s a cultural instinct to wait to get picked. To seek out the permission and authority that comes from a publisher or talk show host or even a blogger saying, “I pick you.” Once you reject that impulse and realize that no one is going to select you—that Prince Charming has chosen another house—then you …
While the Anti-Trump Mandarins of the Commentariat (ATMC, for short) are busy untwisting their knickers after the President’s historic summit meeting with the Tubby Tyrant of North Korea, I have an important real-estate tip to pass along: beach-front property in North Korea. Keep your eye on it. As Trump said yesterday in his wide-ranging press …
Ulysses S. Grant would famously say that he “probably had the least desire for [the presidency] than anyone who ever held it.” That wasn’t exactly true. As his biographer, Ron Chernow, explains, Grant didn’t exactly want the office but he didn’t exactly not want it either. Instead, he had come to feel that he was fated for the …
Of all the historical figures that Marcus Aurelius mentions or uses as an example, Alexander the Great is probably one of the most frequently cited. As on this date Alexander the Great died in the year 323 BC, it’s worth briefly thinking about what Marcus Aurelius thought of Alexander and why he used him as a foil …