Lessons From History Biographies

Sometimes, to defeat a greater enemy, you have to compromise with people you might detest.     That historical lesson is a common takeaway from the Allied victory in World War II, and it was absolutely true as the Americans, British, and Soviets all had to tolerate some fairly awful behavior from their allies in order to defeat the evil of Nazi Germany. In his relatively brief, page-turning study of the Allies, Giles Milton in The Stalin Affair focuses on studying the alliance through the eyes of the American diplomat W. Averell Harriman and his entourage. Needing to work with unsavory characters is a tried-and-true lesson of many historical movements, but it was especially true when trying to destroy the monstrosity of fascism. Milton's book claims to tell the story of how FDR, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin set aside differences and old animosities to work together to win the war, but he overwhelmingly focuses on the unique characters of Churchill and Stalin, two uniqu...

  Great leaders must always be willing to learn new things.     This blog post will be a relatively short one, as William Fowler's George Washington and the Creation of the American Republic is a relatively short book, clocking in at under 200 pages when sources and notes are not taken into account. Although easy to read, Fowler's book is a deep-dive on a very specific period of Washington's life (the six years between him leading America to victory during the American Revolution, and subsequently assuming the first presidency of its new Constitution), and to that end it is certainly of much more interest to Washington scholars and professional historians. That said, one element I did find fascinating in Fowler's book in terms of historical lessons was Washington's private interests during this quiet era, and how his curiosity about the world around him continued to aid his evolution as one of the great leaders of his era.     From a modern perspective, one of t...

Every great artist needs both the freedom to follow their visions, and the pressure to eventually complete them.     Of all the fields of History I have studied in my decades of loving the topic, my knowledge of Art History has always been sadly limited. Partly this is my own lack of artistic vision; from my earliest academic days, my strength has always been in reading and writing, and not so much in any sort of visual talent or appreciation of what one looked like. To that end, I was well aware that the Renaissance artists were great men who made timeless artistic masterpieces, yet I knew very little about their lives or the details of what their art meant to them. Having discovered Miles Unger's 2014 study of Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces , I have a new appreciation for what the man accomplished, as well as an understanding of the complexities of dealing with tortured artists, many of whom have ambitions they could never accomplish without outside deadlines and d...