Thanks to Abhishek for pointing out a life story that fits the theme of my book, which is that success and failure can be impostors, as Kipling would say. Abhishek emailed that
The other day, I downloaded a documentary on Syd Barret [the co-founder of the band Pink Floyd] from You tube. This is a classic [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Hannibal’
November 12, 2008
Visit ANCIENT Rome!
This qualifies as breaking news, if you’re writing my kind of book. Watch:
It arose out of this great project.
This where Fabius and Scipio walked. This is where the Romans bewailed their dead after Hannibal’s victories at the Trebia, at Trasimene and at Cannae. This is where Scipio celebrated his Triumph after [...]
November 11, 2008
Hannibal, Aikido and Casanova
Bear with me, please. I’m trying, right now, to analyze Hannibal’s phenomenal skill at winning battles. And I’m trying to find parallels in other areas of life.
It occurs to me that Hannibal had some things in common with this Aikido Black Belt:
It further occurs to me that Hannibal had his way [...]
November 11, 2008
Goldsworthy on The Punic Wars
And back again to the bibliography for my book.
We’re still in the “history” section, as opposed to the “biography” section, but we’ve mostly dealth with the ancient sources (Polybius, Livy and Plutarch). So now I’ll move into the modern writers.
If I had to choose just one book to give you a fun but thorough overview [...]
November 6, 2008
More on Hannibal’s elephants
Thanks to James Allen over at Electrical Wall for helping me reframe my understanding about Hannibal and his elephants. I now see that my own take missed the more existential connections the man had with his elephants.
November 3, 2008
The father of biography
Let’s get back to the bibliography for my book.
Right now–while we’re still dealing with the ancient sources–I’m going through the texts in chronological order. And after Polybius and Livy, that brings me to Plutarch.
You recall that Herodotus was the father of history. Well, Plutarch must be the father of biography. Like Herodotus, Thucydides and Polybius, [...]
October 31, 2008
Hannibal’s Y chromosome
Click on the map above and read about the latest in this fantastic research effort called the “genographic project“. The dots show the areas of the Mediterranean with the highest frequency of the Phoenician haplotype.
They swabbed the cheeks of men from Syria and Cyprus to Malta and Morocco to have a closer look at the [...]
October 25, 2008
Livy
I left off my series on the bibliography for my book with a long post on Polybius. Polybius, as I said, was one of the greatest historians ever, but most of his books were lost. This means that for the history of Hannibal’s war against Rome we have to rely heavily on another ancient source. [...]
October 21, 2008
Polybius
First off in this series of posts about the bibliography for my book–in the category of ancient sources–is, of course, Polybius. His life is one of the most fascinating ever lived, and his importance to us–especially to us Americans, as I will explain in the follow-up post–is enormous.
Let me lead up to Polybius in three [...]
October 21, 2008
My bibliography
A while ago, I promised Baltimore Bookworm to start blogging the bibliography for my book, and I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Baltimore Bookworm, I haven’t forgotten. Starting at once, I’ll drip out the books and academic papers I’ve been reading and plan to read.
The rest of you: Please feel free to infer my [...]
October 15, 2008
Uncle Lulu
That guy with the cigar on this West German stamp from 1987 is my great-uncle, Ludwig Erhard, or “Onkel Lulu” in our family.
Why is he on this blog?
Well, I’ve been posting a lot about writing and language and style recently, all of which of course has a lot to do with the writing of my [...]
September 29, 2008
Podcast about my book
Abhishek and I are talking for half an hour in this podcast about my book. The Indicast, if you don’t know it, is an up-and-coming podcast show in India.
We’re really having fun and getting side-tracked a bit, so it’s not until 16 minutes in that I actually summarize the book’s plot. The sound quality is [...]
September 19, 2008
Zidane rode for Hannibal
Well, this is really cool. I learned something that has long puzzled me, and I did it through blogging.
You recall that I recommended a blog post by Mathilda, in which she explains the ethnic categories of “Africans” in antiquity. (In a nutshell: “Libyan” = white; “Ethiopian” = black). All of which fascinates me because I [...]
September 16, 2008
Pyrrhic victories
You’ve heard of Pyrrhic Victories, which are defeats disguised as triumphs–in other words, Kipling-esque impostors of the sort that I will be describing in my book. But do you know why they are called that?
It’s thanks to Pyrrhus, who is well worth five minutes of your time.
Pyrrhus was the ancient world’s equivalent of a dumb [...]
September 15, 2008
When success ends in suicide
Thanks to Stephanie for suggesting that I look into David Foster Wallace, a literary wunderkind who just hanged himself.
There might be the obvious angle of a very successful person … killing himself.
Then there is the genre of suicide in general–Hannibal poisoned himself, besides lots and lots of other interesting people.
Stephanie, were you thinking of a [...]
September 4, 2008
The trouble with titles, continued
I’m just finishing Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis, which Baltimore Bookworm already does a great job of summarizing.
Naturally, I’m especially interested in what Haidt has to say, for instance, about the uses of adversity in life (he gives an entire chapter to it), since that fits one of the impostors in my book.
But, since I [...]
August 25, 2008
Hannibal’s life in eight minutes
Well-made YouTube video (meaning: hewing closely to Polybius and Livy) about Hannibal’s life, by Wolfshead:
Interesting moment of interpretation: why Hannibal, in this version, chose not to take Rome itself, which was the single biggest decision of his life. “We are not animals,” he says here.
(Also: did I detect stirrups on the [...]
