Sublime

• Favorite documentaries? “Restrepo, which I’m sure you’ve seen. [TF: This was co-produced and co-filmed by Sebastian Junger, the next profile.]

I felt my gorge rising and knew that all the lurid training tapes, all the horrible deaths in training accidents, hadn’t prepared me for this sudden reality … that I had a magic wand that I could point at a life and make it a smoking piece of half-raw meat; I wasn’t a soldier nor ever wanted to be one nor ever would want—

leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield and the principles of good leadership do not change regardless of the mission, the environment, or the personalities of those involved. Leading is leading.

Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich.

This one, like most battles we fight in life, would be won or lost in our own minds.

And so on.

Endless books and authors followed, as we worked our way methodically down the list: The Count of Monte Cristo, Edgar Allan Poe, Robinson Crusoe, Ivanhoe, Gogol, The Last of the Mohicans, Dickens, Twain, Austen, Billy Budd … By the time I was twelve, I was picking them out myself, and my brother Suman was sending me the books he had read in college

It was followed by the third stage, that of name-calling—the argumentum ad hominem.