RISHI

“far and away, the best prize life has to offer, is the chance to work hard at work worth doing” - Theodore Roosevelt

“You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.” -G.K. Chesterton

Today and every day, we remember.

@MissingAmerica_ @NapoleonBonabot which book?

@NapoleonBonabot One of my favorite anecdotes about the Emperor.

Napoleon loved his soldiers and by extension his soldiers loved him. They would fight for him to any end. Napoleon had accepted his fate when he realized Waterloo was lost and wished to die alongside his Old Guard. He had to be dragged off the battlefield by his Marshals.

@BenWilsonTweets excellent! i’ll order them.

@RISHIBEHL6 I really like the Broers biography series. Andrew Roberts' biography is also quite good, but not quite as in depth or as swash-buckling.

Napoleon on the Art of Victory: “There is the advance, with its various combinations, the battle is joined, the struggle goes on a certain time, the decisive moment presents itself, a spark of genius discloses it, and the smallest body of reserves accomplish victory.”

@EchelonFront agreed! it would be helpful if you could provide a detailed structure for it. that is, sort of a template, which outlines the structure clearly.

The debrief is one of the biggest tools for reinforcing a culture of Extreme Ownership. Leaders should start debriefs by taking ownership of what went wrong and providing solutions.

@themotiveletter @thinkingwest i bought it yesterday. i’m about to finish nixon’s book soon. then, i will start this one.

SELF HELP SELLS YOU A SYSTEM. Biography shows you a human. One tells you the 5 steps. The other shows you the 500 failures, the doubt, the obsession, the sacrifice it actually took. Which one do you think actually changes how you think? Read how Churchill led. How Rockefeller built. How Jobs refused to settle. STUDY THE MAN NOT THE METHOD.

Reject the self-help slop. Embrace the Great Man biography.

@nixonfoundation it’s my first book on nixon. so far, it’s been a great read.

Reject the self-help slop. Embrace the Great Man autobiography.

beautiful sunny day☀️ - grateful & blessed.

@BenWilsonTweets Any specific book one should read about Napoleon? I want to know more about his leadership style and his childhood.

Napoleon on Hatred: "One must learn to forgive and not to hold a hostile, bitter attitude of mind, which offends those about us and prevents us from enjoying ourselves; one must recognize human shortcomings and adjust himself to them rather than to be constantly finding fault with them."

Teddy Roosevelts wife and his mother died on the same day. February 14th, 1884. Valentines day. In the same house. Hours apart. His wife Alice had just given birth to their daughter two days earlier. She died of kidney failure. His mother died of typhoid in a bedroom downstairs. He wrote one line in his diary that day. A large black X and the words: "The light has gone out of my life." He left everything. Abandoned politics. Went to the Badlands of North Dakota. Became a cattle rancher in the middle of nowhere. For two years he did nothing but ride horses, hunt, and grieve in the freezing wilderness. His friends said he looked like a ghost. His clothes hung off him. Then he came back. Within 4 years he was a Civil Service Commissioner. Then Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Then he resigned to raise his own volunteer cavalry regiment and charged up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American war. On horseback. Into machine gun fire. While every officer around him took cover. Governor of New York at 40. Vice President at 42. When McKinley was assassinated, he became the youngest President in American history at 42. He busted monopolies. Built the Panama Canal. Won the Nobel Peace Prize. Created the National Parks system that protects 85 million acres of American wilderness to this day. He read a book every single day of his adult life. During his presidency he averaged a book a day. He boxed in the White House until a punch detached his retina and blinded him in one eye. He told nobody and took up jiu jitsu instead. Once during a campaign speech he was shot in the chest. The bullet lodged in his rib. He looked down at the blood spreading across his shirt. Opened his coat. And said: "Ladies and gentlemen, I dont know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." Then he finished the 90 minute speech. With a bullet in his chest. All of it. Every single thing. Started after the worst day of his life. the day you think its over. the day you lose everything. that is not the end of your story. that is the chapter where everything changes. its never over fren. not while youre breathing.

I am a secret operative of an influencer campaign that has been running for years, and it is time I came clean.

@JamesLucasIT If I were to learn more about this space, where do I start? Any recommendations for movies/documentary/books? Please let me know.

Napoleon studied Caesar. Caesar wept before a statue of Alexander. Alexander wanted to be Achilles. The greatest men the West ever produced were all trying to become the same Greek warrior... Alexander the Great kept a copy of the Iliad under his pillow. His tutor Aristotle had personally annotated an edition for him. According to Plutarch, when Alexander arrived at the ruins of Troy in 334 BC, he sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles and ran naked around it. He told the priests offering to show him Paris's harp that he had no interest in seeing the harp of a coward. "I would far rather see the lyre of Achilles," he said, "which he used to sing the glories of brave men." Three centuries later, in 69 BC, Julius Caesar was serving as quaestor in Spain when he stood in front of a statue of Alexander in the temple of Hercules at Cadiz. He was thirty-two: the same age at which Alexander had died, having already conquered most of the known world. Caesar wept. When his friends asked why, he answered, according to Plutarch: "Do you not think it is matter for sorrow that while Alexander, at my age, was already king of so many peoples, I have as yet achieved no brilliant success?" Eighteen centuries after that, Napoleon Bonaparte sat for his coronation portrait wearing a golden laurel wreath, modelled on the wreath of Julius Caesar. He carried with him on campaign the works of Plutarch and Caesar's own commentaries. Each of these men was reaching back, through the centuries, to the figure who came first. And that figure was a half-mortal Greek warrior who, when offered the choice between a long, quiet life and a short, glorious one, chose glory. The Greek name Akhilleus is most plausibly derived from akhos, meaning grief, and laos, meaning people. The grief of the people. The greatest hero of the Western imagination is not named for victory or for strength. He is named for sorrow... But that is the bargain: to choose greatness in the Achilles tradition is to choose a particular kind of suffering. Alexander died at thirty-two. Caesar was murdered by his closest friends. Napoleon ended his life on an island in the South Atlantic, looking at the sea. Each of them got what Achilles got: a name that has outlasted empires, and a life that was paid for in full. What drove the men who built Western civilization was not happiness. It was something older, deeper, and harder to name. The Greeks called it kleos: the glory that survives death. Achilles got there first. Three thousand years later, men are still trying to follow him... -- -- -- If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here: James-lucas.com/welcome If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.

Where does greatness come from? #MondayMotivation

Here's a case for why Napoleon is the greatest military captain of all time (words I committed to memory at one point since these debates come up so often). “Napoleon’s career demonstrated the importance of compartmentalization, meticulous planning, knowledge of terrain, superb timing, steady nerves, valuing the importance of discipline and training, understanding the psychology of the ordinary soldier to create esprit de corps, the issuing of inspirational speeches and proclamations, controlling the news, adapting the tactical ideas of others, asking pertinent questions of the right people, a deep learning and appreciation for history, a formidable memory, utter ruthlessness when necessary, the deployment of personal charisma, immense calm under unimaginable pressure -- especially in moments that looked like defeat -- an almost obsessive compulsive attention to detail, rigorous control of emotions, the ability to exploit a momentary numerical advantage at the decisive point of the battlefield, and -- not least -- good luck. Even though he was ultimately defeated, Napoleon is the wartime leader against whom all the others must be judged.” —Leadership in War: Essential Lessons From Those Who Made History, Andrew Roberts (2019)

IT’S TIME TO AMERICA-MAXX

@patrick_oshag Being Nixon: A man divided

Anyone read anything really great lately (any format)?

@EmpiresPod Great work building the community!

Thx for the list. Lawrence is my favorite of all time. Yet to see many of the others. Starting with Zulu and working my way through the rest in short order: 1. Alexander Nevsky 2. Gettysburg 3. 13th Warrior 4. The Last Samurai 5. Ran 6. Gone with the Wind 7. Cleopatra 8. El Cid 9. Das Boot 10. The Thin Red Line 11. Dr. Zhivago 12. The Last of The Mohicans 13. Bridge on the River Kwai 14. The Passion of the Christ 15. The 10 Commandments 16. Ben-Hur 17. Seven Samurai 18. Andrei Rublev 19. Zulu

If you are fortunate to be with elderly parents, then this is golden advice

@EmpiresPod superb and thank you. leadership in way seems like an interesting read…

Just sent out the third edition of Empire-Builders Book Club picks. Twelve more biographies, including four multi-figure biographies (attached).