Here is my table of contents, which gives you a sense of the structure of the book: For the most part we “age with” Hannibal, and also with Scipio, in the main storyline, so that we face the issues that arise at each stage of life.
In bullet points, I’ve put some of the people that come up in each chapter. You can try to figure out the context in which they appear, and why.
One. HANNIBAL AND ME
- Hannibal
- Me
- (A bit of Carl Jung, tiny bit of Scipio and Fabius)
Two. THE INFLUENCE OF PARENTS
- Hamilcar, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, Mago
- Theseus
- Barack Obama
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Amy Tan
- (Gerhard Kluth)
Three. DO YOU NEED A GOAL?
- Hannibal
- Meriwether Lewis (and Thomas Jefferson, William Clark)
- Harry Truman
- Ludwig Erhard
Four. TOWERING PEAKS
- Hannibal
- Pablo Picasso
- Paul Cézanne
- Meriwether Lewis
Five. THE ART OF WINNING
- Hannibal
- Morihei Ueshiba
- Cleopatra (and Julius Caesar
)
Six. TACTICS AND STRATEGY IN LIFE
- Hannibal (and Sosylus)
- Carl von Clausewitz
- Steve Miller and Tiger Woods
- Cleopatra
- Douglas MacArthur and Harry Truman
- Pyrrhus and Cineas
Seven. DEALING WITH DISASTER
- Quintus Fabius Maximus
- Elizabeth Kübler-Ross
- Lance Armstrong
- Lao Tzu and Sun Tzu
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Ernest Shackleton
Eight. THE PRISON OF SUCCESS
- Hannibal
- Tennessee Williams
- Amy Tan
- Eliot Spitzer
- Albert Einstein
Nine. THE LIBERATION OF FAILURE
- Publius Cornelius Scipio
- Steve Jobs
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Ten. THE THRESHOLD OF MIDDLE AGE
- Hannibal and Scipio
- Carl Jung (and Sigmund Freud)
- Ernest Shackleton
Eleven. POLITICAL DEATH
- Scipio and Marcus Porcius Cato
- Ludwig Erhard (and Konrad Adenauer)
- Liu Shaoqi (and Mao Zedong)
Twelve. AGING AND TRANSCENDING
- Hannibal and Scipio
- Abraham Maslow
- Ludwig Erhard
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Albert Einstein
Thirteen. THE LESSONS OF HANNIBAL
- All of the above
- (plus Arjuna)
Hannibal and Me: life lessons from history 
Trying to find E. K-R’s place in your story, I turn to Wikipedia (lazy person’s source for biographical detail) for some context. No answers. But there is this:
“Becoming pregnant disqualified Kübler-Ross from a residency in pediatrics, so she took one in psychiatry.”
Well, sure.
And, I now love this woman. She said: “Half working, half dancing – that is the right mixture.”
Now, speaking of dancing, where can you possibly go next with this striptease? Give us the god-damn book already.
Don’t you know that I’ve been wanting to “give you the god-damn book already” for about two years now? It’s my publisher who’s been taking its time. The striptease is killing me: do you have any idea how cold and unflattering it gets for a stripteaser when he’s up there butt-naked on the table for all this time?
Kübler-Ross: She and Maslow are the only ones who are in the book almost exclusively for their ideas, as opposed to their own life story. And they make only short appearances. (carl Jung is in there both for his ideas AND his life story).
K-R’s big idea, in MY book, is that of “acceptance”, as the necessary stage in dealing with disaster. With it comes, in my mind or at least in that chapter, the Taoist idea of non-doing, non-resistance. Both Fabius and (surprise) Shackleton embody those two related ideas in that chapter.
Can I get dressed now?
I can weigh in with some authority here, as I once auditioned for stripper in a gay bar in West Hollywood. I was up there in a g-string for about 20 minutes during happy hour. Made five bucks, but they didn’t hire me. #failure
Andreas, that’s funny. 🙂
I’ll wait for the book. Acceptance.
Cyberquill: the whole story on your blog? The story of the stripper who delights in Scalia dissents?
jenny: Are you projecting your personal disinclination to separate apples from oranges onto me?
Love the title for chapter 8. Not many people who have not achieved something called success see it that way.
Well, that’s promising, Douglas. Sometimes, during the writing, i kept wondering whether everything I was saying was so darned obvious as to be banal. If you do NOT naturally see success as a (potential) prison, then that is GOOD, because I promise that by that point in the book, I’ll have you right where I want you. 😉
Speaking about striptease, have you and your publisher talked about making some promo videos? 🙂 I think I previously mentioned I quite like videos made by Alice Schroeder for Snowball by and William Poundstone for Priceless.
No, we haven’t discussed that yet. I’m open to it, if I could be persuaded that it adds, rather than subtracts. I will google Snowball and Priceless to get some ideas….
Thanks, Kempton.