What Maslow has to do with a Greek comedy — and what Aristophanes understood about human nature that most serious writers miss.
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Why the translator you choose changes everything you read — and what that tells us about so-called "editing" of classic literature.
Let's get one thing straight before we go any further: Lysistrata is a comedy. Not a tragedy. Not a cautionary tale. A comedy. And it's 2,400 years old,…
When something goes wrong — in a factory, in a business, in a life — the first instinct is to identify what happened. The second, harder instinct is…
Everyone in Hamlet is watching someone else. Polonius watches Hamlet through Ophelia. Claudius watches Hamlet through Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Horatio watches the King at Hamlet's request during the…
There is a moment in Act Four where Claudius takes a grieving son whose father has just been murdered and turns that grief into a murder plot. He…
There is a moment in Act Two where Hamlet has everything he needs to act. The ghost has told him the truth. Claudius is within reach. The court…
This third essay argues that the most quoted line in The Art of War is only half the instruction. Sun Tzu puts self-knowledge first — and the reason…
This second essay argues that The Art of War is not a manual for domination. It is a sustained argument about cost — and Sun Tzu's most important…
This first essay argues that The Art of War is not simply a military manual attributed to a famous general. It is a text delivered by a narrator…
In the end, Diary of a Madman leaves us with a troubling realization which we will explore in Blog #3. The narrator does not simply lose his mind…
In this post, we will watch the narrator’s journey into madness. The explanations that once lived quietly inside his diary and mind begin to change his behavior in…