Tag Archives: Top 10

The Top 10 American History Posts of 2013

09 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in History

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1. Thomas Jefferson’s Advice to His Teenage Grandson (from a letter sent to the 16-year-old Thomas Jefferson Randolph on November 24th, 1808)

“I was often thrown into the society of horseracers, cardplayers, Foxhunters, scientific and professional men, and of dignified me; and many a time have I asked myself… which of these kinds of reputation should I prefer?”

2. Great Men Cultivate Love by Booker T. Washington (from his autobiography, Up from Slavery)

“I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him…”

3. ‘The Light Has Gone Out of My Life’: Young Teddy Roosevelt in Love and Grief adapted by me (from Edmund Morris’s Theodore Rex)

“When, as ex-President, he came to write his Autobiography, he wrote movingly of the joys of family life, the ardor of youth, and the love of men and women; but he would not acknowledge that Alice ever existed…”

4. Whether I Stand High or Low in the Estimation of the World by John Adams (from a letter to his wife, Abigail, on July 1st, 1774)

“I will not willingly see blockheads, whom I have a right to despise, elevated above me, and insolently triumphing over me. Nor shall knavery, through any negligence of mine, get the better of honesty…”

5. The Fourth of July According to Ronald Reagan (from a 1981 essay)

“In recent years, however, I’ve come to think of that day as more than just the birthday of a nation. It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history… Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.”

6. When and How You Should Break the Law by Martin Luther King (from his televised interview on Meet the Press, March 28th, 1965)

“…  I don’t think any society can call an individual irresponsible who breaks a law and willingly accepts the penalty if conscience tells him that that law is unjust.”

7. Meet John Adams by David McCullough/ Meet Thomas Jefferson by Jon Meacham

“Adams could be high-spirited and affectionate, vain, cranky, impetuous, self-absorbed, and fiercely stubborn; passionate, quick to anger and all-forgiving; generous and entertaining. He was blessed with great courage and good humor, yet subject to spells of despair, and especially when separated from his family or during periods of prolonged inactivity.”

“He drove his horses hard and fast and considered the sun his ‘almighty physician.’ Jefferson was fit and virile, a terrific horseman and inveterate walker… He delighted in archaeology, paleontology, astronomy, botany, and meteorology…”

8. ‘Tragedy without Reason?’: Robert Kennedy Endures His Brother’s Death by Arthur Schlesinger (from Robert Kennedy and His Times Vol. One)

“… he was struggling with that fundamental perplexity: whether there was, after all, any sense to the universe… He scrawled on a yellow sheet:

The innocent suffer—how can that be possible and God be just?”

9. A Shallow Pretext for Extorting Compromise by Abraham Lincoln (from his 1861 letter to James T. Hale)

“We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten…”

10. Alexander Hamilton the Bachelor (from his 1779 letter to John Laurens)

“She must be young, handsome (I lay most stress upon a good shape), sensible (a little learning will do)… But as to fortune, the larger stock of that the better…”

Honorable mentions: Those Who Won Our Independence by Louis Brandeis; ‘The Strongest of the Stricken’: Robert Kennedy Reacts to His Brother’s Death by Arthur Schlesinger; The School of Affliction by Thomas Jefferson; John in Joe’s Shadow by Robert Dallek; The Great Anniversary Festival by John Adams

The Top 5 Posts from the Greeks and the Romans in 2013

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in History, Philosophy

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Greek Bust

The top 5, in order:

1. Partying with the Greeks by Thomas Cahill (from Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter)

I think any twenty-first century American could be forgiven for reading Cahill’s version of the Greeks and their symposia with a certain amount of identification. On a more personal level, the reflections of Archilochus accord with many of the transient, recurring thoughts and melancholic moods I’ve had while leaving parties in the early hours of the morning.

2. The Odyssey Home by Homer (from The Odyssey)

During a year in which I read heavily about war and its million unseen impacts, especially those which are felt at home, Homer’s Odyssey provided, among other things, insight into some eternal truths about military conflict. While the opening stave is by no means the strongest section of the text, it is probably the best summary of the Odyssey’s basic plot line and themes. It’s also a stark, dramatic introduction to Odysseus, one of the great heroes in fiction.

3. The Discourses of Epictetus by Arrian (from The Handbook of Epictetus)

A stirring argument for two distinctly Aristotelian insights: practice moderation in all things and make the most of your days. These exhortations are especially noteworthy when one considers the guy speaking them was born a slave.

4. Do Not Act as If You Were Going to Live Ten Thousand Years by Marcus Aurelius (from The Meditations)

This is nothing you haven’t read before, though it’s still essential, because in addition to bering one of the first to say it, Marcus Aurelius was also one of the best. It’s especially worth noting his nod to Heraclitus in the image of time as a river that is forever flowing.

5. Friends with Socrates by Xenophon (from Memorabilia)

It’s amusing to read an epistemic breakdown of something as delicate and natural as friendship. Still, Socrates’s voice here is at its most eccentric and convincing, as he explains how exactly relationships with others can come to result in non-zero sum paradigms.

The Top 10 Speeches of 2013

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Speeches

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The top 10, in order:

1. Ted for Robert — Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother, given two days after Bobby’s death

“He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side…

Those of us who loved him, and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us, and what he wished for others, will some day come to pass for all the world…”

2. The Mountaintop — Martin Luther King’s final speech, delivered the night before his assassination

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain… I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land…”

3. Victory or Death — George Washington’s rallying speech to the Continental Army on Christmas night, 1776, the night they crossed the Delaware to attack the Hessian forces

“Tonight, our mission, our duty as a free people, is to stem the tide of these atrocities, to retake what is rightfully ours and rid this great land of the plague of the mercenaries… And when the hour is upon us fight for all that you are worth and all that you cherish and love. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct that you show…”

4. Again I Pause to Remember — Christopher Hitchens’s Daniel Pearl Lecture on Anti-Semitism

“… I once wrote that anyone who wanted to defame the Jewish people would, if they were doing so, be defaming my wife, my mother, my mother- and father-in-law, and my daughters, and so I didn’t think I really had to say anything for myself.

But I did add that in whatever tone of voice the question was put to me — whether it was friendly or hostile — Was I Jewish? I would always answer Yes. Denial in my family would end with me.

But, of course, there was the most acute possible test of that question faced by the young Daniel Pearl, in the most appalling circumstances, and again I pause to remember how proudly, and how bravely, and how nobly he refused any sort of refuge in denial…”

5. The Rustle of a Wing — Robert Ingersoll’s eulogy at the passing of his young brother

“He added to the sum of human joy; and were every one to whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep tonight beneath a wilderness of flowers…”

6. A World Split Apart — Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 speech at Harvard University

“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature… It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it…”

7. The Opening of the Nuremberg Trials — Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson’s introductory remarks at the Nuremberg tribunal

“That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason…”

8. The Awful Grace of God — Robert Kennedy’s impromptu speech upon the shooting of Martin Luther King

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country…”

9. The Defense of Freedom and Peace  — Winston Churchill’s address to the British people on the eve of World War II

“… People say we ought not to allow ourselves to be drawn into a theoretical antagonism between Nazidom and democracy; but the antagonism is here now…”

10. How to Write — Sebastian Junger’s lecture on how to write with style and clarity

“… You are not more interesting than the world is. Your writing is not more beautiful than the world is. You don’t want the facts of the world to serve as a platform for your skill as a writer. It’s the other way around. The relationship goes the other way. Your skill as a writer serves the world.”

Honorable mentions: College, Life by yours truly; Let Us Plant Our Trees this Afternoon by John F. Kennedy; Consider the Great Problem of Women’s Bodies by Sam Harris; What Art Tells by Saul Bellow; The Highlight of the Election by Mitt Romney and Barack Obama