Leadership Stories
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The Wreckers Haven’t Started Yet
John worked two years inside the granite Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Its history, and why it shouldn't be painted.
The Chaplain Who Stayed
Father Emil Kapaun stayed behind with the wounded at Unsan, pushed a rifle aside, and kept hundreds of prisoners alive.
The Blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard and Executive Order 9981
In an election year he was expected to lose, Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces. The road began on a Greyhound bus.
Leadership Lessons from The Odyssey
What Homer's oldest lessons still teach about power, restraint, loyalty, and leadership, as Christopher Nolan's film sends millions back to the poem.
The Petition in the Drawer
July 17, 1945: seventy scientists asked the President to warn Japan before using the bomb they had built. He never saw the page.
Seventy-Four Notebooks
Seventy-four McKinsey Summer Associates walked Gettysburg with Heroes' Path. The minute made Chamberlain famous. The two years made the minute.
The Sand Was Tan
What a Marine officer taught a room of Ukrainian soldiers and Vietnam veterans about the wounds nobody can see.
The Field That Isn’t There
Notes from a morning in Washington with Ukrainian soldiers: a banner that hides the wounded, drones, and a flag full of names.
The Unlit Candle
On America's 250th morning, an imagined George Washington returns to Mount Vernon, and a young woman waits at the gate with an unlit candle.
Smart Just Got Cheap
Intelligence is now infrastructure. Wisdom and judgment are not. What Eisenhower's D-Day decision says about the age of AI.
Two and a Half Years
What actually happened on June 19, 1865, two and a half years after emancipation, and why almost no one knows about it.
The Frontier and the Network
Washington is guarding the AI engine. The advantage may lie in the track: adoption, standards, and the rails everyone builds on.
The Fence at Nogales
Same families, same desert, same rock. Only the rules differ. The fence at Nogales and the choices that build or hollow a nation.
The Silence Behind the Moon
Apollo 8, the burn behind the Moon, and the trust Jim Lovell built in a simulator long before it counted.
Anastasia’s Mate
Checkmate is built long before the final move. An outdoor chess board, a famous pattern, and what it says about teams.
The Last Man Connecticut Lost
A roadside sign, a bullet-torn wool hat, and the 73-year-old who died for the Revolution seven months after it was supposedly won.
The Right Failures
Elon Musk hits about a fifth of his own deadlines, but that number tells you less than you think. The meaning sits in the target.
The Fire Chief who Built the Incident Command System (Alan Brunacini, USA)
Alan Brunacini spent half a century turning fire ground chaos into a system that brings firefighters home.
Character Does Not Scale
Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical and the case for remaining human in an age of AI. The danger isn't machines becoming us.