Hillbilly Culture and America’s Future

I just finished reading an intriguing memoir about a segment of American society that is virtually ignored.  Writer J.D. Vance chronicles his life story in Hillbilly Elegy.  Vance highlights the terrible consequences of bad ideas passed from generation to generation.  These bad ideas include eschewing education, using violence as a means to settle disagreements, drug […]

Continue reading about Hillbilly Culture and America’s Future »

“What would you have me do?  Seek for the patronage of some great man and like a creeping vine on a tall tree crawl upward where I cannot stand alone?  No thank you!  Dedicate as others do, poems to pawnbrokers?  Be a buffoon in the vile hope of teasing out a smile.  On some cold […]

Continue reading about Cyrano De Bergerac »

Have you ever wondered why the United States has had 14 banking crises since the country’s inception, whereas Canada has had none?  Or why Mexico and Brazil has some of the riches natural resources on the planet yet the majority of its populations live in poverty.  I just finished reading an interesting book that answers […]

Continue reading about The Historical Roots of Banking Systems »

I always look to the ancient Greeks for wisdom.  Since they were the inventors of literature and philosophy, I decided to read the tragedy Antigone.  A tyrant named Creon commands a woman, Antigone to not give her brother the dignity of a burial.  Or she will be executed.  Not only does Antigone not follow Creon’s […]

Continue reading about Sophocles’ Antigone »

“There is no horizontal Stratification of society in this country like the rocks in the earth, that hold one class down below forevermore and let another come to the surface to stay there forever.  Our Stratification is like the ocean where every individual drop is free to move and where from the sternest depths of […]

Continue reading about President James A. Garfield »

An excellent book which spans over two thousand years of Western thought asks the question: Who has influenced Western thought the most, Plato or Aristotle?  The answer writer Arthur Herman gives us in his excellent book The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization is both.  […]

Continue reading about Two Philosophic Giants and the Battle for Western Civilization »

The title of this post is from a novel written by Welshman Ken Follett, a writer who was unknown to me.  I was on a website that reviewed this masterful piece of historical fiction.  Follett takes us back to 12th century England, a world far removed from our own.  The story centers on a fictional […]

Continue reading about The Pillars of the Earth »

Imagine a future world where genius children are trained to fight an intergalactic war against an extraterrestrial enemy ready to destroy Earth.  Orson Scott Card’s book Ender’s Game (The Ender Quintet) is a fascinating story about a highly intelligent young boy named Ender who is chosen to train in the military to defeat an evil species.  This is […]

Continue reading about Ender’s Game »

I came across an interview of Ryan Holiday about his book The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph.  After reading the interview I decided to read the book. I can tell you I was not disappointed. Holiday’s book is not the usual self-help books with their meaningless platitudes that […]

Continue reading about How To Handle The Inevitable Challenges Of Life »

Not much is known about Aesop.  In one instance I read he was a slave in ancient Greece who wrote these tales as a chronicle of his life.  I also read that Aesop could have been a pen name used by multiple writers.  In any event these stories have lasted over 2000 years and their […]

Continue reading about Aesop’s Fables »