Marie Curie lost her husband and partner, then walked into a packed lecture hall and kept working. Devotion to truth, even when it costs.

John Glenn wouldn't fly until Katherine Johnson checked the computer by hand. Make your work auditable; excellence is its own rebuttal.

Over borscht and Black Sea fish in Warsaw, two Ukrainians explain war fatigue, disinformation, and why they want partners, not pity.

John argues the war in Ukraine is already a European war, fought with drones, code, and propaganda, and that denial is its sharpest weapon.

Churchill asked for tools. Goebbels demanded total war. John reads February in World War II through the words leaders chose.

Today's 101st Airborne soldiers walked the ground their predecessors held at Bastogne, connecting the Bulge's lessons to modern leadership.

From Hitler's 1939 Reichstag threat to the liberation of Auschwitz, John finds lessons in the Januaries of World War II.

John looks to the Greatest Generation's resilience and initiative as a roadmap for young men and women facing today's setbacks.

Three recent productions about World War II left John optimistic. Here's what Oppenheimer, One Life, and Masters of the Air taught him.

John has walked the Kremlin and the Winter Palace. Here he compares two rulers who forced Russia to change: Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.

Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Augustus made haste slowly. John compares two Roman leaders and what their styles teach about power.

Time magazine introduced Americans to sisu in 1940, as Finland fought off the Red Army. John on the Finnish word for refusing to quit.

John and an old friend still remember lessons from staff rides at Antietam and in the Ardennes. Here's why he takes leaders to battlefields.

At Concord, Gettysburg, the Delaware, and Omaha Beach, the ground itself asks the question. John on learning leadership where it happened.

From a bunker above Omaha Beach, two young German soldiers fired on the Americans coming ashore. John on WN62 and the enemy's view of D-Day.

Brady at the McPherson farm, dead horses at the Trostle barn, a staged sharpshooter at Devil's Den. John pairs Gettysburg's battle photos with the same views today.

Major Chet Hansen kept a diary at Omar Bradley's elbow and went toward Omaha Beach to find out what was happening. John on the aide history almost forgot.

An F-86 hit his B-47 at night with a 7,600-pound bomb aboard. Howard Richardson had to decide what to do with it.

A peasant girl from Domremy talked her way to the future king, lifted the siege of Orleans, and saw him crowned before she turned 18.

A hard-drinking opportunist and Nazi Party member risked everything to save more than 1,000 Jews. John on the imperfect man behind Schindler's List.