Large Archive of Hannah Arendt’s Papers Digitized by the Library of Congress: Read Her Lectures, Drafts of Articles, Notes & Correspondence

Many peo­ple read the Ger­man-Jew­ish polit­i­cal philoso­pher and jour­nal­ist Han­nah Arendt as some­thing of an ora­cle, a sec­u­lar prophet whose most famous works—her essay on the tri­al of Adolf Eich­mann and her 1951 Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism—con­tain secrets about our own times of high nation­al­ist fer­vor. And indeed they may, but we should also keep in mind that Arendt’s insights into the hor­rors of Nazism did not emerge until after the war.

Arendt did not iden­ti­fy as Jew­ish dur­ing the Naz­i’s rise to pow­er, but as a ful­ly assim­i­lat­ed Ger­man; she had a roman­tic rela­tion­ship with her pro­fes­sor Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, who became a doc­tri­naire Nazi, and she seemed to have lit­tle under­stand­ing of Ger­man anti­semitism dur­ing the thir­ties and for­ties. Arendt, many have alleged, some­times seemed too close to her sub­ject.

In such times as hers, to use the words of Wal­lace Stevens—a writer with his own com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship to fas­cism—the “dif­fi­cult rig­or” of observ­ing the moment means that “we rea­son of these things with lat­er rea­son.” Arendt’s obser­va­tions of Europe in the 1950s were reck­on­ings with the recent past—she drew togeth­er strains of expe­ri­ence that could not always be con­nect­ed dur­ing what Stevens calls the “irra­tional moment.” So too, intel­lec­tu­al observers of our own “irra­tional moment” may only tru­ly under­stand it “with lat­er rea­son.”

But if Amer­i­cans wish to learn about their country’s long­stand­ing polit­i­cal ten­den­cies from Arendt’s work, it is per­haps not to her writ­ing on Ger­many or the U.S.S.R. that we should turn, but to her work on the U.S., much of which is reflect­ed in typed drafts of essays and lec­tures, cor­re­spon­dence, and notes con­tained at the Library of Congress’s Han­nah Arendt Papers col­lec­tion. All of the col­lec­tion has been dig­i­tized, and some of those scans are online. Find­ing out which doc­u­ments have been uploaded and which only remain view­able onsite takes a lit­tle dig­ging around in the cat­a­log, but it is work that pays off for those with a gen­uine inter­est in the fas­ci­nat­ing turns of Arendt’s thought.

We may turn to essays such as 1971’s “Lying in Pol­i­tics,” writ­ten after the release of the Pen­ta­gon Papers, notes Brain Pick­ings, and “includ­ed in Crises of the Repub­lic—a col­lec­tion of Arendt’s time­less­ly insight­ful and increas­ing­ly time­ly essays on pol­i­tics [and] civ­il dis­obe­di­ence.” As Arendt writes in an ear­li­er lec­ture that pre­ced­ed “Lying in Politics”—with the ear­li­er title “The Role of the Lie in Pol­i­tics” (top)—“Truthfulness has nev­er been count­ed as among the polit­i­cal virtues.” You can view and down­load high-qual­i­ty images of that typed lec­ture here, and see her revise her ideas in cor­rec­tions and mar­gin­al notes.

The polit­i­cal lie, she writes weari­ly, “has exist­ed since the begin­ning of record­ed his­to­ry.” And yet, there is some­thing unique about its use in U.S. pol­i­tics, in which “the only per­son like­ly to be an ide­al vic­tim of com­plete manip­u­la­tion is the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.” Despite her dis­pas­sion­ate philo­soph­i­cal view, Arendt found the lies of the Viet­nam War-era par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing. In the type­script page at the top, you can see a pro­posed sub­ti­tle pen­ciled in at the top left cor­ner: “How Could They? What Went Wrong in Amer­i­ca.”

In the typed lec­ture above, “Action and the Pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness,” from 1960, Arendt remarks on the “amaz­ing dis­cov­ery” by the country’s nat­u­ral­ized “new cit­i­zens” that the “pur­suit of hap­pi­ness” remains a “more than mean­ing­less phrase and an emp­ty word in the pub­lic and pri­vate life of the Amer­i­can Repub­lic.” This “most elu­sive of all human rights,” she con­tin­ues, “appar­ent­ly enti­tles men, in the words of Howard Mum­ford Jones, to ‘the ghast­ly priv­i­lege of pur­su­ing a phan­tom and embrac­ing a delu­sion.’”

Arendt’s 1968 New York Times edi­to­r­i­al “Is Amer­i­ca By Nature a Vio­lent Soci­ety,” whose type­script you can see in part above, opens with a num­ber of assump­tions about the country’s “nation­al char­ac­ter,” begin­ning with the com­ment that the country’s “mul­ti­tude of eth­nic groups… for bet­ter or worse have nev­er melt­ed togeth­er into a nation.” Per­haps this is too broad a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. Or per­haps the U.S. as a nation is no more “arti­fi­cial ‘by nature,’” in its com­po­si­tion than many oth­er, much old­er, nations.

Arendt’s obser­va­tions on her adopt­ed land weren’t always so astute, but she did have enough crit­i­cal dis­tance from the coun­try to close­ly observe it dur­ing times of cri­sis and see clear­ly what oth­ers could or would not. You’ll find many more of Arendt’s keen observations—typed in drafts and notes, scrib­bled in mar­gins, and writ­ten in letters—at the Library of Con­gress’ Han­nah Arendt Papers col­lec­tion, (part­ly) online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter the Han­nah Arendt Archives & Dis­cov­er Rare Audio Lec­tures, Man­u­scripts, Mar­gin­a­lia, Let­ters, Post­cards & More

A Look Inside Han­nah Arendt’s Per­son­al Library: Down­load Mar­gin­a­lia from 90 Books (Hei­deg­ger, Kant, Marx & More)

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

What Ancient Chinese Philosophy Can Teach Us About Living the Good Life Today: Lessons from Harvard’s Popular Professor, Michael Puett

It has at times been con­cern­ing for some Bud­dhist schol­ars and teach­ers to watch mind­ful­ness become an inte­gral part of self-help pro­grams. A casu­al atti­tude toward the prac­tice of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion can make it seem acces­si­ble by mak­ing it seem relax­ing and effort­less, which often results in miss­ing the point entire­ly. What­ev­er the school, lin­eage, or par­tic­u­lar tra­di­tion from which they come, the source texts and sages tend to agree: the pur­pose of med­i­ta­tion is not self improvement—but to real­ize that there may, indeed, be no such thing as a self.

Instead, we are all epiphe­nom­e­non aris­ing from com­bi­na­tions of ever-shift­ing ele­ments (the aggre­gates, or skand­has). The self is a con­ven­tion­al­ly use­ful illu­sion. This notion in the ancient Indi­an texts has its echo in Scot­tish enlight­en­ment philoso­pher David Hume’s so-called “bun­dle the­o­ry,” but Hume’s thoughts about the self have most­ly remained obscure foot­notes in west­ern thought, rather than cen­tral premis­es in its philoso­phies and reli­gions. But as thinkers in India took the self apart, so too did philoso­phers in ancient Chi­na, before Bud­dhism reached the coun­try dur­ing the Han Dynasty.

Har­vard Pro­fes­sor Michael Puett has been lec­tur­ing on Chi­nese phi­los­o­phy to audi­ences of hun­dreds of students—and at 21st cen­tu­ry tem­ples of self-actu­al­iza­tion like TED and the School of Life. He has co-authored a book on the sub­ject, The Path: What Chi­nese Philoso­phers Can Teach Us About the Good Life, drawn from his enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, in which he expounds the philoso­phies of Con­fu­cius, Men­cius, Zhuangzi, and Xun­zi. The book has found a ready audi­ence, and Puett’s “Clas­si­cal Chi­nese Eth­i­cal and Polit­i­cal The­o­ry” is the 3rd most pop­u­lar class among Har­vard under­grad­u­ates, behind intro to eco­nom­ics and com­put­er sci­ence. What Pro­fes­sor Puett offers, in his dis­til­la­tion of ancient Chi­nese wis­dom, is not at all to be con­strued as self-help.

Rather, he says, “I think of it as sort of anti-self-help. Self-help tends to be about learn­ing to love your­self and embrace your­self for who you are. A lot of these ideas are say­ing pre­cise­ly the opposite—no, you over­come the self, you break the self. You should not be hap­py with who you are.” Lest this sound like some form of vio­lence, we must under­stand, Puett tells Tim Dowl­ing at The Guardian, that in “break­ing” the self, we are only doing harm to an illu­sion. As in the Bud­dhist thought that took root in Chi­na, so too in the ear­li­er Con­fu­cian­ism: there is no self, just a “a messy and poten­tial­ly ugly bunch of stuff.”

While our cur­rent cir­cum­stances may seem unique in world his­to­ry, Puett shows his stu­dents how Chi­nese philoso­phers 2,500 years ago also expe­ri­enced rapid soci­etal change and upheaval, as his co-author Chris­tine Gross-Loh writes at The Atlantic; they nav­i­gat­ed and under­stood “a world where human rela­tion­ships are chal­leng­ing, nar­cis­sism and self-cen­tered­ness are on the rise, and there is dis­agree­ment on the best way for peo­ple to live har­mo­nious­ly togeth­er.” A major­i­ty of stu­dents at Har­vard are dri­ven to pur­sue “prac­ti­cal, pre­de­ter­mined” careers. By teach­ing them Con­fu­cian and Daoist phi­los­o­phy, Puett tries to help them become more spon­ta­neous and open to change.

What­ev­er we call it, the inter­act­ing phe­nom­e­non that give rise to the self can­not, we know, be observed in any­thing resem­bling an unchang­ing steady state. Yet West­ern cul­ture (for sev­er­al moti­vat­ed rea­sons) has lagged far behind both intu­itive and sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­tions of this fact. Puet­t’s stu­dents have been told, “’Find your true self, espe­cial­ly dur­ing these four years of col­lege,’” and “try and be sin­cere and authen­tic to who you real­ly are” in mak­ing choic­es about careers, part­ners, pas­sions, and con­sumer prod­ucts. They take to his class because “they’ve spent 20 years look­ing for this true self and not find­ing it.”

In the two lec­tures above—a short­er one at the top from TEDx Nashville and a longer talk above for Ivy, “The Social Uni­ver­si­ty”—you can get a taste of Puett’s enthu­si­as­tic style. Chi­nese phi­los­o­phy, “in its strong form,” he says above, “can tru­ly change one’s life.” Not by mak­ing us more empow­ered, per­son­al­ly-ful­filled agents who re-cre­ate real­i­ty to bet­ter meet our nar­row specs. But rather, as he tells Dowl­ing, by train­ing us “to become incred­i­bly good at deal­ing with this capri­cious world.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Con­fu­cius’ Life & Thought Through Two Ani­mat­ed Videos

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

Learn Islam­ic & Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy with 107 Episodes of the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­cast

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Hunter S. Thompson’s Decadent Daily Breakfast: The “Psychic Anchor” of His Frenetic Creative Life

Image  via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Is break­fast real­ly the most impor­tant meal of the day?

It cer­tain­ly seems so from all the care­ful­ly staged pho­tos of overnight oat­meal on Insta­gram.

The phys­i­cal and men­tal ben­e­fits are well doc­u­ment­ed. A nutri­tious meal in the morn­ing boosts blood glu­cose lev­els, improv­ing con­cen­tra­tion, boost­ing ener­gy lev­els and main­tain­ing healthy weight.

Sad­ly, many Amer­i­cans gob­ble their break­fasts on the fly. How many hun­dreds of film and tele­vi­sion scenes have you seen where­in the main char­ac­ters hur­tle through the kitchen snatch­ing bananas, gra­nola bars, and trav­el mugs on their way to the door?

The late gonzo jour­nal­ist Hunter S. Thomp­son would sure­ly not have approved, though he may have enjoyed the sense of supe­ri­or­i­ty these morn­ing scram­bles would have engen­dered.

This was a man who bragged that he could “cov­er a hope­less­ly scram­bled pres­i­den­tial cam­paign bet­ter than any six-man team of career polit­i­cal jour­nal­ists on The New York Times or The Wash­ing­ton Post and still eat a three-hour break­fast in the sun every morn­ing.”

Report­ing for Rolling Stone in “Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail 76,” he inti­mat­ed that he viewed break­fast with the “tra­di­tion­al­ized rev­er­ence that most peo­ple asso­ciate with Lunch and Din­ner.”

One won­ders who exact­ly he meant by “most peo­ple”?

Tex­ans? The Irish? Rabelais?

Regard­less of whether he had been to bed, or what he had got­ten up to the night before, he insist­ed upon a mas­sive repast—consumed al fres­co, and prefer­ably in the nude. The sun he enjoyed bask­ing in was usu­al­ly at its zenith by the time he sat down. The meal, which he called the “psy­chic anchor” of “a ter­mi­nal­ly jan­gled lifestyle, con­sist­ed of the fol­low­ing:

Four bloody Marys

Two grape­fruits

A pot of cof­fee

Ran­goon crêpes

A half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef-hash with diced chilies

A Span­ish omelette or eggs Bene­dict

A quart of milk

A chopped lemon for ran­dom sea­son­ing

Some­thing like a slice of Key lime pie

Two mar­gar­i­tas

And six lines of the best cocaine for dessert

Last sum­mer, a Dan­ish Vice reporter recre­at­ed Thompson’s break­fast of choice, invit­ing a poet friend (and “aspir­ing alco­holic”) to par­take along with him. It end­ed with him vom­it­ing, naked, into a shrub. His guest, who seems to be made of stur­dier stuff, praised the eggs bene­dict, the Bloody Marys, and dessert.

Thomp­son pre­ferred that his first meal of the day be con­sumed solo, in order to get a jump on the day’s work. In addi­tion to the edi­ble menu items, he required:

Two or three news­pa­pers

All mail and mes­sages

A tele­phone

A note­book for plan­ning the next twen­ty four hours

And at least one source of good music

Read “Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail 1976” here. The key break­fast quote reads as fol­lows:

I like to eat break­fast alone, and almost nev­er before noon; any­body with a ter­mi­nal­ly jan­gled lifestyle needs at least one psy­chic anchor every twen­ty four hours, and mine is break­fast. In Hong Kong, Dal­las, or at home—and regard­less of whether or not I have been to bed—breakfast is a per­son­al rit­u­al that can only be prop­er­ly observed alone, and in a spir­it of gen­uine excess. The food fac­tor should always be mas­sive: Four bloody Marys, two grape­fruits, a pot of cof­fee, Ran­goon crêpes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef-hash with diced chilies, a Span­ish omelette or eggs Bene­dict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for ran­dom sea­son­ing, and some­thing like a slice of Key lime pie, two mar­gar­i­tas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert… Right, and there should also be two or three news­pa­pers, all mail and mes­sages, a tele­phone, a note­book for plan­ning the next twen­ty four hours, and at least one source of good music… All of which should be dealt with out­side, in the warmth of the hot sun, and prefer­ably stone naked.

And just in case, here is a recipe for Crab Ran­goon Crepes…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Hunter S. Thomp­son Gave Birth to Gonzo Jour­nal­ism: Short Film Revis­its Thompson’s Sem­i­nal 1970 Piece on the Ken­tucky Der­by

Hear the 10 Best Albums of the 1960s as Select­ed by Hunter S. Thomp­son

Read 11 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

A Demonstration of Perfect Samurai Swordsmanship

The age of the samu­rai has long since end­ed, but does its spir­it live on? You might well feel that, despite every­thing, the flame of the samu­rai still burns in Japan today after watch­ing the swords­man­ship skills on dis­play in the clip above. Or per­haps we should call it swordswom­an­ship: the mod­ern-day war­rior exe­cut­ing those per­fect cuts is the daugh­ter of grand­mas­ter Fumon Tana­ka, and her bear­ing and self-pos­ses­sion bring to mind the onna bugeisha of old Japan. And as we see, gen­der mat­ters not at all in the stark real­i­ty of blade on bone — or in this case, blade on a sim­i­lar­ly dense stalk of bam­boo.

Tana­ka, show­ing an imper­fect­ly cut piece of bam­boo, explains that its curved edge means “your left and right hands are not bal­anced. If a samu­rai decap­i­tates a man with this bad tech­nique, it would cause great pain. It has to be one pre­cise cut. That is the way of the samu­rai.”

His daugh­ter then demon­strates just how hand­i­ly she can attend to any of your decap­i­ta­tion needs, halv­ing the bam­boo with what her father deems “a per­fect straight cut.” Though it only takes a sin­gle stroke, that sin­gle stroke comes as the cul­mi­na­tion of years and years of work toward mas­tery — and work that, in this mod­ern onna bugeisha’s case, no doubt began ear­ly indeed.

The Smith­son­ian Chan­nel pro­duced this video as part of their series Samu­rai Head­hunters, more of whose mate­r­i­al on “how these elite knights actu­al­ly lived, loved, fought, and died” you can watch on Youtube. If you’d like a more in-depth sense of how their sword tech­niques work, have a look at Masayu­ki Shimabukuro’s video series on samu­rai swords­man­ship, which begins with an episode on the basics and con­tin­ues on to sub­jects like pos­tures, two-hand cuts (as seen exe­cut­ed on those bam­boo stalks), and flick­ing the blood — that last per­haps more use­ful in feu­dal Japan than 21st-cen­tu­ry Tokyo, or for that man­ner every­where else, but a good samu­rai has always known how to hon­or the past.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Crafts­man Spends His Life Try­ing to Recre­ate a Thou­sand-Year-Old Sword

Female Samu­rai War­riors Immor­tal­ized in 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Pho­tos

A Hyp­not­ic Look at How Japan­ese Samu­rai Swords Are Made

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

Meet Yasuke, Japan’s First Black Samu­rai War­rior

Leg­endary Japan­ese Author Yukio Mishi­ma Mus­es About the Samu­rai Code (Which Inspired His Hap­less 1970 Coup Attempt)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

175+ College Admissions Offices Promise Not to Penalize High School Students Who Get Suspended for Protesting Peacefully Against Gun Violence

Image by Lorie Shaull, via Flickr Com­mons

“Will my admis­sion get rescind­ed if I get sus­pend­ed for engag­ing in a school walk-out meant to bring atten­tion to the school shoot­ing issue?” That’s a ques­tion many high school stu­dents have posed to col­lege admis­sions offices around the coun­try, espe­cial­ly after some high school offi­cials threat­ened to sus­pend stu­dents tak­ing part in anti-gun demon­stra­tions.

Many lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties have since issued pol­i­cy state­ments and giv­en these stu­dents their bless­ing and sup­port. In a post called “In Sup­port of Stu­dent Protests,” Han­nah Mend­lowitz, from Yale’s Admis­sions Office, writes:

[W]e con­tin­ue to get the ques­tion: will Yale look unfa­vor­ably upon dis­ci­pline result­ing from peace­ful demon­stra­tions?

The answer is sim­ple: Of course not.

To the stu­dents who have reached out to us with these con­cerns, we have made clear that they should feel free to par­tic­i­pate in walk-out events to bring atten­tion to this issue with­out fear of reper­cus­sion. Yale will NOT be rescind­ing anyone’s admis­sion deci­sion for par­tic­i­pat­ing in peace­ful walk­outs for this or oth­er caus­es, regard­less of any high school’s dis­ci­pli­nary pol­i­cy. I, for one, will be cheer­ing these stu­dents on from New Haven.

And on the offi­cial Twit­ter feed for the Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, a tweet reads:

Appli­cants to Brown: Expect a social­ly con­scious, intel­lec­tu­al­ly inde­pen­dent cam­pus where free­dom of expres­sion is fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant. You can be assured that peace­ful, respon­si­ble protests against gun vio­lence will not neg­a­tive­ly impact deci­sions on admis­sion to Brown.

And that’s just the tip of the ice­berg. Below, find a list of 175+ uni­ver­si­ties that have grant­ed sim­i­lar assur­ances, along with links to their state­ments. The list comes from Alex Gar­cia, who is main­tain­ing a reg­u­lar­ly-updat­ed Google Doc. Access it online here.

Again, you can refer to this Google Doc for more updates.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Free: The Best Books for Learning Modern Statistics

A quick fyi: Dan Kopf, an eco­nom­ics reporter, has a tip that seemed worth pass­ing along. Over at Quartz, he writes:

As a for­mer data sci­en­tist, there is no ques­tion I get asked more than, “What is the best way to learn sta­tis­tics?” I always give the same answer: Read An Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­ti­cal Learn­ing. Then, if you fin­ish that and want more, read The Ele­ments of Sta­tis­ti­cal Learn­ing. These two books, writ­ten by sta­tis­tics pro­fes­sors at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, and the Uni­ver­si­ty South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, are the most intu­itive and rel­e­vant books I’ve found on how to do sta­tis­tics with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy… You can down­load them for free.

Find An Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­ti­cal Learn­ing in PDF for­mat here. And The Ele­ments of Sta­tis­ti­cal Learn­ing here. Physical/hard copies can be pur­chased respec­tive­ly here and here.

We’d also rec­om­mend sup­ple­ment­ing these resources (both now avail­able in our col­lec­tion of Free Math Text­books) with video-based class­es found on our list of Free Math Cours­es, a sub­set of our big col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Quartz

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Against All Odds: A Gen­tle Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics Host­ed by Har­vard Geneti­cist Par­dis Sabeti (Free Online Course)

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

Flo­rence Nightin­gale Saved Lives by Cre­at­ing Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Visu­al­iza­tions of Sta­tis­tics (1855)

Leo Tolstoy Makes a List of the 50+ Books That Influenced Him Most (1891)

War and PeaceAnna Karen­i­naThe Death of Ivan Ilyich —many of us have felt the influ­ence, to the good or the ill of our own read­ing and writ­ing, of Leo Tol­stoy. But whose influ­ence did Leo Tol­stoy feel the most? As luck would have it, we can give you chap­ter and verse on this, since the nov­el­ist drew up just such a list in 1891, which would have put him at age 63.

A Russ­ian pub­lish­er had asked 2,000 pro­fes­sors, schol­ars, artists, and men of let­ters, pub­lic fig­ures, and oth­er lumi­nar­ies to name the books impor­tant to them, and Tol­stoy respond­ed with this list divid­ed into five ages of man, with their actu­al degree of influ­ence (“enor­mous,” “v. great,” or mere­ly “great”) not­ed.

It comes as some­thing of a rar­i­ty, up to now only avail­able tran­scribed in a post at Northamp­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts’ Val­ley Advo­cate:

WORKS WHICH MADE AN IMPRESSION

Child­hood to the age of 14 or so

The sto­ry of Joseph from the Bible — Enor­mous

Tales from The Thou­sand and One Nights: the 40 Thieves, Prince Qam-al-Zaman — Great

The Lit­tle Black Hen by Pogorel­sky - V. great

Russ­ian byliny: Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovich. Folk Tales — Enor­mous

Puskin’s poems: Napoleon — Great

Age 14 to 20

Matthew’s Gospel: Ser­mon on the Mount — Enor­mous

Sterne’s Sen­ti­men­tal Jour­ney — V. great

Rousseau Con­fes­sions — Enor­mous

Emile — Enor­mous

Nou­velle Héloise — V. great

Pushkin’s Yevge­ny One­gin — V. great

Schiller’s Die Räu­ber — V. great

Gogol’s Over­coat, The Two Ivans, Nevsky Prospect — Great

“Viy” [a sto­ry by Gogol] — Enor­mous

Dead Souls — V. great

Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketch­es — V. great

Druzhinin’s Polin­ka Sachs — V. great

Grigorovich’s The Hap­less Anton — V. great

Dick­ens’ David Cop­per­field — Enor­mous

Lermontov’s A Hero for our Time, Taman — V. great

Prescott’s Con­quest of Mex­i­co — Great

Age 20 to 35

Goethe. Her­mann and Dorothea — V. great

Vic­tor Hugo. Notre Dame de Paris — V. great

Tyutchev’s poems — Great

Koltsov’s poems — Great

The Odyssey and The Ili­ad (read in Russ­ian) — Great

Fet’s poems — Great

Plato’s Phae­do and Sym­po­sium (in Cousin’s trans­la­tion) — Great

Age 35 to 50

The Odyssey and The Ili­ad (in Greek) — V. great

The byliny — V. great

Vic­tor Hugo. Les Mis­érables — Enor­mous

Xenophon’s Anaba­sis — V. great

Mrs. [Hen­ry] Wood. Nov­els — Great

George Eliot. Nov­els — Great

Trol­lope, Nov­els — Great

Age 50 to 63

All the Gospels in Greek — Enor­mous

Book of Gen­e­sis (in Hebrew) — V. great

Hen­ry George. Progress and Pover­ty — V. great

[Theodore] Park­er. Dis­course on reli­gious sub­ject — Great

[Fred­er­ick William] Robertson’s ser­mons — Great

Feuer­bach (I for­get the title; work on Chris­tian­i­ty) [“The Essence of Chris­tian­i­ty”] — Great

Pascal’s Pen­sées — Enor­mous

Epicte­tus — Enor­mous

Con­fu­cius and Men­cius — V. great

On the Bud­dha. Well-known French­man (I for­get) [“Lali­ta Vis­tara”] — Enor­mous

Lao-Tzu. Julien [S. Julien, French trans­la­tor] — Enor­mous

The writer at the Val­ley Advo­cate, a Tol­stoy afi­ciona­do, came across the list by sheer hap­pen­stance. “On my way to work, I found some­thing just for me in a box of cast-off books on a side­walk,” they write: a biog­ra­phy of Tol­stoy with “some­thing cool­er inside”: a “yel­lowed and frag­ile New York Times Book Review clip­ping” from 1978 con­tain­ing the full list as Tol­stoy wrote it. “Gold,” in oth­er words, “for this wannabe Tol­stoy schol­ar.” If you, too count your­self among the ranks of wannabe Tol­stoy schol­ars — or indeed cre­den­tialed Tol­stoy schol­ars — you’ll no doubt find more than a few intrigu­ing selec­tions here. And if you sim­ply admire Tol­stoy, well, get to read­ing: learn not how to make the same things your idols made, I often say, but to think how they thought. Not that any of us have time to write War and Peace these days any­way, though with luck, we do still have time to read it — along with The Thou­sand and One NightsDavid Cop­per­fieldThe Odyssey, and so on. Many of these works you can find in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in July, 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Why Should We Read Tolstoy’s War and Peace (and Fin­ish It)? A TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion Makes the Case

Vin­tage Footage of Leo Tol­stoy: Video Cap­tures the Great Nov­el­ist Dur­ing His Final Days

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

Tol­stoy and Gand­hi Exchange Let­ters: Two Thinkers’ Quest for Gen­tle­ness, Humil­i­ty & Love (1909)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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When Archie Bunker’s Advice on Gun Control Becomes Mainstream GOP Policy (1972)

The more things change, the more the talk­ing points stay the same. Just swap teach­ers for air­plane pas­sen­gers, and watch a sil­ly sit­com punch­line morph into actu­al GOP pol­i­cy.

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