Afghanistan

Monday Mashup—9/14/09

By Steven Pressfield | Published: September 14, 2009

This past Friday marked eight years since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Agora, Editorial, Mashup
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Afghanistan

Knowing When to Stop, or Learning How to Win?

By Steven Pressfield | Published: September 11, 2009

A guest blog by Michael Brandon McClellan

[Mike McClellan is a graduate of Yale and Georgetown Law and a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. His articles on politics and foreign policy have appeared in the WSJ, the Weekly Standard and on TCS Daily.  It's our pleasure to welcome him as a contributor.]

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Posted in Afghanistan, Agora, Editorial, Guest Blogger, On Tribalism
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Writing Wednesdays

Personal Anguish

By Steven Pressfield | Published: September 9, 2009

Have you seen Elizabeth Gilbert at TED? The video has become a bit of a sensation on the web and if you watch it, you’ll see why. Ms. Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design; it’s a nonprofit organization that brings together speakers from the arts and sciences and politics several times a year. Ms. Gilbert’s talk was a hit at the most recent get-together.

She was talking about the enormous and unexpected (to her) success of Eat, Pray, Love and how she was struggling with the pressure to follow the book up with something as good or better. What helped her, she said, was to jettison the contemporary concept that the artist is the genius who produces the work and go back to the ancient Roman idea that the artist has the genius (a Latin word). This entity is not ourselves, but something that lives within us–a muse or guardian creative spirit. Thus, Elizabeth Gilbert says, it’s not we fallible mortals who are doing the work, but some mysterious force within and beyond us. And that takes all the pressure off. (more…)

Posted in Writing Wednesdays
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