Cornelius Ryan was one of my favorite historians and authors.  His trilogy of WWII histories, The Longest Day, The Last Battle, and A Bridge Too Far brought to vivid life the heroes and events of that conflict. After finishing The Longest Day recently — having previously read the other two — I read up on […]

Mr. Vujnovich received the Bronze Star today for the single biggest rescue of US servicemen ever — and it happened in WWII.  Vujnovich, who is 95, led the OSS’s Halyard Mission to rescue more than 500 downed airmen, all shot down over Serbia while on bombing raids targeting the German oilfields in Romania. And God […]

Okay, it’s a “credit where credit’s due” moment for me.  Thomas Friedman’s column yesterday was about how the ChiComs will have to allow social freedoms or will see the progress their country has made come to a halt.  This is from a guy who’s spilled lots of ink expressing his envy of the ability of those very […]

I’m going to have to check out Steven Johnson’s books — if they’re anything like as good as his Wall Street Journal article, “The Genius of the Tinkerer,” I’m in for some great reading.  I sure didn’t know this, for example: More recently, a graduate student named Brent Constantz, working on a Ph.D. that explored […]

Many years ago I was prompted to re-establish contact with one of my college professors after he published a letter to the editor of the local paper castigating the US for its use of the atomic bomb against Japan in WWII. We had a pleasant correspondence for several years after that, during which I became […]

This past week I took part in a study of great explorers in the context of leadership, including British South Pole explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott.  The key theme involving Scott was blaming various supposed shortcomings in his leadership style for his being beaten to the pole by Roald Amundsen, and for his team’s perishing […]

…is right here.