Download 150 Free Coloring Books from Great Libraries, Museums & Cultural Institutions: The British Library, Smithsonian, Carnegie Hall & More

in Art, Coloring Books, Libraries, Museums | February 6th, 2018

A news alert for fans of col­or­ing books.

You can now take part in the 2018 edi­tion of #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions–a cam­paign where muse­ums, libraries and oth­er cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions make avail­able free col­or­ing books, let­ting you col­or art­work from their col­lec­tions and then share it on Twit­ter and oth­er social media plat­forms. When shar­ing, use the hash­tag #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions.

Below you can find a col­lec­tion of 20 free col­or­ing books, which you can down­load, print, and col­or until you can col­or no more. Also find a com­plete list of 150 col­or­ing books over at this site main­tained by The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine Library.

To see the free col­or­ing books offered up in 2016, click here. And 2017, here.

• Brook­lyn Col­lec­tion at Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library
• Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library Col­or­ing Book
• Carnegie Hall Archives Col­or­ing Book
• Digi­ta Vat­i­cana
• Escuela Supe­ri­or de Artes de Yucatán Col­or­ing Book
• Euro­peana Col­or­ing Book
• Har­vard Cen­ter for the His­to­ry of Med­i­cine
• Lane Med­ical Library – Med­ical His­to­ry Cen­ter, Stan­ford Med­i­cine Col­or­ing Book
• New­ber­ry Library Col­or­ing Book
• New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine
• North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­tinc­tive Col­lec­tions Col­or­ing Book
• Queens’ Col­lege Library, Cam­bridge Col­or­ing Book
• The Bodleian Libraries Col­or­ing Book (Oxford)
• The British Library
• The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library
• The New York Botan­i­cal Gar­den
• The Smith­son­ian
• The Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas
• Thomas Edi­son Nation­al His­tor­i­cal Park Col­or­ing Book
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Strath­clyde Archives and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Col­or­ing Book

The image up top comes from The British Library.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Adult Col­or­ing Book: See the Sub­ver­sive Exec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book From 1961

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

How the Fences & Railings Adorning London’s Buildings Doubled (by Design) as Civilian Stretchers in World War II

in Design, History, Life, Travel | January 26th, 2018

Lon­don is a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich des­ti­na­tion for vis­i­tors with an inter­est in World War II:

Win­ston Churchill’s under­ground War Rooms…

The Roy­al Air Force Muse­um…

Blitz-spe­cif­ic walk­ing tours…

…and the scab­by steel fences/railings sur­round­ing a num­ber of South Lon­don hous­ing estates?

These mesh-and-pipe bar­ri­ers look utter­ly unre­mark­able until one hears their ori­gin story—as emer­gency stretch­ers for bear­ing away civil­ian casu­al­ties from the rub­ble of Luft­waffe raids.

The no-frills design was intend­ed less for patient com­fort than easy clean up. Kinks in the long stretch­er poles kept the injured off the ground, and allowed for easy pick up by vol­un­teers from the Civ­il Defence Ser­vice.

Some 600,000 of these stretch­ers were pro­duced in prepa­ra­tion for air­borne attacks. The Blitz killed over 28,000 Lon­don civil­ians. The num­ber of wound­ed was near­ly as high. The man­u­fac­ture of child-sized stretch­ers speaks to the cit­i­zens’ aware­ness that the human price would be ghast­ly indeed.

”I am almost glad we have been bombed,” Queen Eliz­a­beth “the Queen Mum” told a friend after Buck­ing­ham Palace was strafed in 1940. ”Now I feel I can look the East End in the face.”

Born of com­mu­ni­ty spir­it, it’s fit­ting that the stretch­ers con­tin­ue to serve the com­mu­ni­ty, replac­ing more orna­men­tal fences that had been uproot­ed for scrap met­al as part of the war effort.

Few neigh­bor­hood res­i­dents, let alone tourists, seem aware of the fences’ his­to­ry, as evi­denced in the video above.

Per­haps the recent­ly formed Stretch­er Rail­ing Soci­ety—for the pro­mo­tion, pro­tec­tion and preser­va­tion of Lon­don’s Air Raid Pro­tec­tion Stretch­er Railings—will change that, or at the very least, put up some plaques.

See pho­tos of the stretch­ers in action, then fol­low the Stretch­er Rail­ing Society’s map to their present loca­tions.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

31 Rolls of Film Tak­en by a World War II Sol­dier Get Dis­cov­ered & Devel­oped Before Your Eyes

The Stag­ger­ing Human Cost of World War II Visu­al­ized in a Cre­ative, New Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

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

Carl Sagan’s “The Pale Blue Dot” Animated

in Astronomy, Life | January 24th, 2018

Back in 1990, Voy­ager 1 snapped a pho­to of plan­et Earth from a record dis­tance – 3.7 bil­lion miles away. And there we saw it, our home, Plan­et Earth, a small blue dot almost swal­lowed by the vast­ness of space. This image inspired the title of Carl Sagan’s 1994 book, The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, which cap­ti­vat­ed mil­lions of read­ers then, and still many more now.

A quar­ter cen­tu­ry lat­er, The Pale Blue Dot con­tin­ues to give cre­ative inspi­ra­tion to many, includ­ing film­mak­ers who have pro­duced ani­ma­tions that sync with Sagan’s nar­ra­tion of a famous pas­sage from his book. The lat­est ani­ma­tion comes from a class of stu­dents at the Rin­gling Col­lege of Art and Design, locat­ed in Sara­so­ta, Flori­da. Give it a watch. It will help you put every­thing in per­spec­tive.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Won­der, Thrill & Mean­ing of See­ing Earth from Space. Astro­nauts Reflect on The Big Blue Mar­ble

Carl Sagan Presents a Mini-Course on Earth, Mars & What’s Beyond Our Solar Sys­tem: For Kids and Adults (1977)

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)

The Psychological & Neurological Disorders Experienced by Characters in Alice in Wonderland: A Neuroscience Reading of Lewis Carroll’s Classic Tale

in Literature, Neuroscience, Psychology | January 17th, 2018

Most rep­utable doc­tors tend to refrain from diag­nos­ing peo­ple they’ve nev­er met or exam­ined. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this cir­cum­spec­tion does­n’t obtain as often among lay folk. When we lob unin­formed diag­noses at oth­er peo­ple, we may do those with gen­uine men­tal health issues a seri­ous dis­ser­vice. But what about fic­tion­al char­ac­ters? Can we ascribe men­tal ill­ness­es to the sur­re­al menagerie, say, in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land? It’s almost impos­si­ble not to, giv­en the overt themes of mad­ness in the sto­ry.

Car­roll him­self, it seems, drew many of his depic­tions direct­ly from the treat­ment of men­tal dis­or­ders in 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­land, many of which were linked to “extreme­ly poor work­ing con­di­tions,” notes Franziska Kohlt at The Con­ver­sa­tion. Dur­ing the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion, “pop­u­la­tions in so-called ‘pau­per lunatic asy­lums’ for the work­ing class sky­rock­et­ed.” Carroll’s uncle, Robert Wil­fred Skeff­in­g­ton Lutwidge, hap­pened to be an offi­cer of the Luna­cy Com­mis­sion, which super­vised such insti­tu­tions, and his work offers “stun­ning insights into the mad­ness in Alice.”

Yet we should be care­ful. Like the sup­posed drug ref­er­ences in Alice, some of the lay diag­noses now applied to Alice’s char­ac­ters may be a lit­tle far-fetched. Do we real­ly see diag­nos­able PTSD or Tourette’s? Anx­i­ety Dis­or­der and Nar­cis­sis­tic Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der? These con­di­tions hadn’t been cat­e­go­rized in Carroll’s day, though their symp­toms are noth­ing new. And yet, experts have long looked to his non­sense fable for its depic­tions of abnor­mal psy­chol­o­gy. One British psy­chi­a­trist didn’t just diag­nose Alice, he named a con­di­tion after her.

In 1955, Dr. John Todd coined the term Alice in Won­der­land Syn­drome (AIWS) to describe a rare con­di­tion in which—write researchers in the Jour­nal of Pedi­atric Neu­ro­sciences—“the sizes of body parts or sizes of exter­nal objects are per­ceived incor­rect­ly.” Among oth­er ill­ness­es, Alice in Won­der­land Syn­drome may be linked to migraines, which Car­roll him­self report­ed­ly suf­fered.

We might jus­ti­fi­ably assume the Mad Hat­ter has mer­cury poi­son­ing, but what oth­er dis­or­ders might the text plau­si­bly present? Hol­ly Bark­er, doc­tor­al can­di­date in clin­i­cal neu­ro­science at King’s Col­lege Lon­don, has used her schol­ar­ly exper­tise to iden­ti­fy and describe in detail two oth­er con­di­tions she thinks are evi­dent in Alice.

Deper­son­al­iza­tion:

“At sev­er­al points in the sto­ry,” writes Bark­er, “Alice ques­tions her own iden­ti­ty and feels ‘dif­fer­ent’ in some way from when she first awoke.” See­ing in these descrip­tions the symp­toms of Deper­son­al­iza­tion Dis­or­der (DPD), Bark­er describes the con­di­tion and its loca­tion in the brain.

This dis­or­der encom­pass­es a wide range of symp­toms, includ­ing feel­ings of not belong­ing in one’s own body, a lack of own­er­ship of thoughts and mem­o­ries, that move­ments are ini­ti­at­ed with­out con­scious inten­tion and a numb­ing of emo­tions. Patients often com­ment that they feel as though they are not real­ly there in the present moment, liken­ing the expe­ri­ence to dream­ing or watch­ing a movie. These symp­toms occur in the absence of psy­chosis, and patients are usu­al­ly aware of the absur­di­ty of their sit­u­a­tion. DPD is often a fea­ture of migraine or epilep­tic auras and is some­times expe­ri­enced momen­tar­i­ly by healthy indi­vid­u­als, in response to stress, tired­ness or drug use.

Also high­ly asso­ci­at­ed with child­hood abuse and trau­ma, the con­di­tion “acts as a sort of defense mech­a­nism, allow­ing an indi­vid­ual to become dis­con­nect­ed from adverse life events.” Per­haps there is PTSD in Carroll’s text after all, since an esti­mat­ed 51% of DPD patients also meet those cri­te­ria.

Prosopag­nosia:

This con­di­tion is char­ac­ter­ized by “the selec­tive inabil­i­ty to rec­og­nize faces.” Though it can be hered­i­tary, prosopag­nosia can also result from stroke or head trau­ma. Fit­ting­ly, the char­ac­ter sup­pos­ed­ly affect­ed by it is none oth­er than Hump­ty-Dump­ty, who tells Alice “I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet.”

“Your face is the same as every­body else has – the two eyes, so-” (mark­ing their places in the air with his thumb) “nose in the mid­dle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now if you had two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance – or the mouth at the top – that would be some help.”

This “pre­cise descrip­tion” of prosopag­nosia shows how indi­vid­u­als with the con­di­tion rely on par­tic­u­lar­ly “dis­crim­i­nat­ing fea­tures to tell peo­ple apart,” since they are unable to dis­tin­guish fam­i­ly mem­bers and close friends from total strangers.

Schol­ars know that Carroll’s text con­tains with­in it sev­er­al abstract and seem­ing­ly absurd math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts, such as imag­i­nary num­bers and pro­jec­tive geom­e­try. The work of researchers like Kohit and Bark­er shows that Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land might also present a com­plex 19th cen­tu­ry under­stand­ing of men­tal ill­ness and neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders, con­veyed in a super­fi­cial­ly sil­ly way, but pos­si­bly informed by seri­ous research and obser­va­tion. Read Barker’s arti­cle in full here to learn more about the con­di­tions she diag­noses.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lewis Carroll’s Pho­tographs of Alice Lid­dell, the Inspi­ra­tion for Alice in Won­der­land

See The Orig­i­nal Alice In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

See Sal­vador Dali’s Illus­tra­tions for the 1969 Edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land

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

The Improbable Time When Orson Welles Interviewed Andy Kaufman (1982)

in Comedy, Television | December 27th, 2017

“Sit­coms are the low­est form of enter­tain­ment,” declares Andy Kauf­man as por­trayed by Jim Car­rey in Milos For­man’s biopic Man on the Moon. “I mean, it’s just stu­pid jokes and canned laugh­ter.” The scene comes in the peri­od of Kauf­man’s life in the late 1970s when, grow­ing ever more well-known on the back of acts like his “For­eign Man” char­ac­ter, he receives an offer to take part in ABC’s Taxi. The real-life Kauf­man, even­tu­al­ly con­vinced to join the show’s cast, devel­oped the For­eign Man into the unplace­able mechan­ic Lat­ka Gavras. Quite pos­si­bly Taxi’s most mem­o­rable char­ac­ter, Lat­ka also won the appre­ci­a­tion of no less demand­ing a cul­tur­al fig­ure than Orson Welles.

Guest-host­ing the Merv Grif­fin Show in June of 1982, Welles describes Taxi as a show that has “kept tele­vi­sion from being a crim­i­nal felony” just before bring­ing Kauf­man on for a brief (and unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly straight­for­ward) chat. He heaps praise on Kauf­man’s per­for­mance as Lat­ka, adding, “I want to know why it is that you go and wres­tle with peo­ple when you can act so well.” Kauf­man had shown up wear­ing a neck brace, an acces­so­ry sig­ni­fy­ing the end of his stint as a pro­fes­sion­al wrestler, one of the many inex­plic­a­ble but some­how com­pelling choic­es in a short career that blurred the lines between com­e­dy, per­for­mance art, and life itself.

“Nobody ever came from nowhere more com­plete­ly,” Welles says, draw­ing a big stu­dio-audi­ence laugh with this descrip­tion of not just Lat­ka but Kauf­man as well. Asked how he came up with such a dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter voice, Kauf­man says only that he “grew up in New York, and you hear a lot of dif­fer­ent voic­es in New York” (“You don’t hear that one,” replies Welles). He also cites the accents of a high-school friend from South Amer­i­ca and a col­lege room­mate from Iran. Less than four years lat­er, both Kauf­man and Welles would be gone (and actor Ron Glass, look­ing on from the oth­er side of the couch, joined them this past Novem­ber).

Or at least both men would be gone if you don’t cred­it the rumors about Kauf­man hav­ing elab­o­rate­ly faked his death. “I don’t know whether it’s the inno­cence of the fel­low or the feel­ing you have that he is not stu­pid­er than every­body, but maybe smarter, that adds to the fas­ci­na­tion,” Welles says. Again he speaks osten­si­bly of Kauf­man’s For­eign Man/Latka per­sona, but his words apply equal­ly to the man who not just played but peri­od­i­cal­ly — and some­times unpre­dictably — became him. 33 years after Kauf­man’s death, or in any case dis­ap­pear­ance from life, that fas­ci­na­tion remains as strong as ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Look Back at Andy Kauf­man: Absurd Com­ic Per­for­mance Artist and Endear­ing Weirdo

Orson Welles Meets H.G. Wells in 1940: The Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

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.

How to Draw in the Style of Japanese Manga: A Series of Free & Wildly Popular Video Tutorials from Artist Mark Crilley

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, How to Learn for Free | December 19th, 2017

In Japan, the word man­ga refers broad­ly to the art form we know in Eng­lish as comics. But as used in the West, it refers to a com­ic art style with dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic and sto­ry­telling con­ven­tions of its own, orig­i­nat­ing from but now no longer lim­it­ed to Japan. Just as the past cen­tu­ry or so has seen the emer­gence of West­ern mas­ters of such things thor­ough­ly Japan­ese as sushi, judo, and even tea cer­e­mo­ny, the past few decades brought us the work of the West­ern man­ga­ka, or man­ga artist. Mark Cril­ley stands as one of the best-known prac­ti­tion­ers of that short tra­di­tion, thanks not only to his art but to his efforts to teach fans how to draw in the style of Japan­ese man­ga them­selves as well.

Apart from com­ic-book series like Akiko, Miki Falls, and Brody’s Ghost, the Detroit-born Cril­ley has also pub­lished a tril­o­gy of Mas­ter­ing Man­ga instruc­tion­al books. In an inter­view with Wired, he frames his own man­ga-mas­ter­ing process as a project sim­i­lar to lan­guage-learn­ing: “When I went to Tai­wan to teach Eng­lish after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege, I threw myself into learn­ing Chi­nese with a real ‘tun­nel vision’ kind of ded­i­ca­tion. As a result I became con­ver­sa­tion­al in Man­darin with­in about a year. More recent­ly I decid­ed to teach myself how to draw in a man­ga-influ­enced style and thus focused exclu­sive­ly on that for many months.”

Cril­ley first took to Youtube to pro­mote his then-new man­ga series, but he “soon found that peo­ple were watch­ing my videos as draw­ing lessons. As more peo­ple watched I got hooked on pass­ing on draw­ing tips to the next gen­er­a­tion, and so I con­tin­ued pro­duc­ing more and more instruc­tion­al videos.”

More young­sters seem to have an inter­est in draw­ing in the style of Japan­ese comics and ani­ma­tion than ever (at least if my friends’ kids are gen­er­a­tional­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive), and Cril­ley finds that they “appre­ci­ate hav­ing an art teacher who takes man­ga seri­ous­ly, and doesn’t dis­miss it as an infe­ri­or art form. I’m sure plen­ty of art teach­ers are all, ‘Stop draw­ing those saucer-eyed char­ac­ters! Draw this still life instead!’ ”

Not to say that Cril­ley does­n’t appre­ci­ate real­ism: he’s put out a whole book on the sub­ject, and some of his instruc­tion­al videos cov­er how to draw life­like eyes (a tuto­r­i­al that has drawn 27 mil­lion views and count­ing), leop­ards, mush­rooms, and much else besides. But for the aspir­ing man­ga­ka of any nation­al­i­ty, his Youtube chan­nel offers a wealth of lessons on how to draw every­thing from faces to clothes to fig­ures in motion to big eyes in the man­ga aes­thet­ic. But as he sure­ly knows — hav­ing cit­ed in the Wired inter­view a wide range of influ­ences from Star Wars to Mad mag­a­zine to Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus — if you want to tru­ly find your own style, you can’t lim­it your­self to any one source of inspi­ra­tion. Acquire the skills, of course, but then take them to new places.

You can see a playlist of 256 how-to-draw videos by Cril­ley here. Or a series of small­er draw­ing playlists here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Big List of Free Art Lessons on YouTube

How to Draw the Human Face & Head: A Free 3‑Hour Tuto­r­i­al

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Shows You How to Draw Bat­man in Her UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

W.B. Yeats’ Poem “When You Are Old” Adapt­ed into a Japan­ese Man­ga Com­ic

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.

10 Reasons Why Hannibal’s Military Genius Still Captures Our Imagination Today

in History | December 13th, 2017

Note: This is a guest post from Patrick Hunt, author of the new book, Han­ni­bal.

Han­ni­bal Bar­ca, oth­er­wise sim­ply known as Han­ni­bal, lived and waged war over two thou­sand years ago – but is he still rel­e­vant in a world where the Romans are long gone? His famous cross­ing of the Alps in win­ter with an intre­pid army and ele­phants is unfor­get­table, but are his bril­liant maneu­vers and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing still worth exam­in­ing? Despite the enig­ma of this great Carthagin­ian gen­er­al being unable to pre­serve Carthage after him, Hannibal’s tac­tics and meth­ods offer great lessons not only for mil­i­tary his­to­ry but also for civ­i­liza­tion at large. His­to­ry reveals the Romans had a des­tiny of world con­quest, but what is less well known is how much Han­ni­bal changed the ways in which the Romans con­duct­ed the wars that even­tu­al­ly brought them Pax Romana, a peace often forged out of vio­lence after a bru­tal expan­sion that killed and enslaved mil­lions, includ­ing Carthage a cen­tu­ry after Han­ni­bal.

Before Han­ni­bal, Rome was hemmed in by seas on almost all sides and could hard­ly expand except north­ward into Etr­uscan and Celtic ter­ri­to­ry; acquir­ing Sici­ly was Rome’s first step out­side its main­land. But Han­ni­bal forced Rome to fight a very dif­fer­ent kind of war; his vic­to­ries taught them how exploitable their mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion was, and he pres­sured Rome to change for sur­vival. More rel­e­vant, while Han­ni­bal did­n’t invent spy­craft, he seem­ing­ly used it more effec­tive­ly than any oth­er ancient gen­er­al by his care­ful con­tin­gency plan­ning. Han­ni­bal set prece­dents for spy agen­cies and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and how to stage bat­tles in any kind of ter­rain and weather–templates that cur­rent nations still study and fol­low. Every mil­i­tary acad­e­my today offers detailed class­es and sem­i­nars on Hannibal’s tac­tics. I am fre­quent­ly invit­ed to lec­ture on Hannibal’s intel­li­gence gath­er­ing in venues like the U.S. Naval War Col­lege, where class­es are filled with Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force offi­cers along with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the intel­li­gence agen­cies. That is also why the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety spon­sored my Han­ni­bal field research – send­ing me to every Han­ni­bal bat­tle site and to Carthage in Tunisia, along with Spain, France, Italy and even Turkey where Han­ni­bal con­clud­ed his dra­mat­ic life — and also why Simon and Schus­ter pub­lished my biog­ra­phy Han­ni­bal this sum­mer. Here are some nuggets from 20 years of Han­ni­bal field­work found in this new book.

1. Han­ni­bal stud­ied his oppo­nents very care­ful­ly, employ­ing every means of gath­er­ing intel­li­gence in ene­my camps, includ­ing spies from allied pop­u­la­tions who pro­vi­sioned the Romans.
2. When nec­es­sary, Han­ni­bal paid for cred­i­ble intel­li­gence with sil­ver sup­plied from mines in Carthagin­ian Spain; as long as that sil­ver last­ed to pay for good intel, he was unbeat­able. Once Rome con­quered Spain’s sil­ver mines, Hannibal’s abil­i­ty to gath­er and exploit such mil­i­tary intel­li­gence was cut off. There is a direct cor­re­la­tion to Han­ni­bal’s access to sil­ver for intel or mer­ce­nary use and his bril­liant vic­to­ries.
3. Han­ni­bal usu­al­ly went for the unpre­dictable sur­prise maneu­ver that had nev­er been seen before, includ­ing cross­ing the Alps in win­ter and forc­ing the Romans to fight in the dead of win­ter and at night.
4. Han­ni­bal got into the minds of his ene­mies with psy-ops, expos­ing their weak­ness­es, trig­ger­ing their anger and van­i­ty, and mak­ing them fall into his traps; under­min­ing the con­fi­dence of the Roman foot sol­diers in big bat­tles and par­a­lyz­ing them with fear. Romans taught their chil­dren to fear Han­ni­bal as the bogey­man – always warn­ing in crises for cen­turies that “Han­ni­bal is at the Gates”.
5. Han­ni­bal proved it’s not the size of your army but how well pre­pared it is. He epit­o­mizes the old adage, “Bet­ter 10 men wise­ly led than 100 with a fool at the head.” Even if aus­tere, Hannibal’s lead­er­ship was leg­en­dar­i­ly charis­mat­ic – he even slept with his men on the ground wrapped in a blan­ket. He taught his men the bru­tal­i­ty of war with like­ly less PTSD than his ene­mies because he always pre­pared them with ideas like “fight or die.” Much lat­er, Machi­avel­li even allud­ed to Han­ni­bal in The Prince with the con­cept that it’s “bet­ter to be feared than loved.”
6. Han­ni­bal effec­tive­ly used the most mobile units pos­si­ble with his Numid­i­an cav­al­ry, often out­flank­ing the Roman infantry on mul­ti­ple cam­paigns, espe­cial­ly in his famous “dou­ble envel­op­ment” or where he fin­ished bat­tles with ambush­es from the rear where there was no escape.
7. Because his armies were almost always small­er – espe­cial­ly after his dif­fi­cult Alps cross­ing when he lost many sol­diers – Han­ni­bal aug­ment­ed his arse­nal with weapons of nature: forc­ing the Romans to cross the frozen Treb­bia Riv­er, hid­ing his armies in the fog above Lake Trasimene, dri­ving cap­tured cat­tle with torch­es tied to their horns to fool the Romans into think­ing he was on the move at night at Voltur­nus, mak­ing the Romans face the blind­ing dust and sand blow­ing from Africa at Can­nae. He even con­fused the Romans at Can­nae with some of his troops out­fit­ted with cap­tured Roman gear.
8. Sim­i­lar­ly, after study­ing ter­rain and topog­ra­phy, Han­ni­bal always chose his bat­tle sites when pos­si­ble for the best pos­si­ble advan­tage, espe­cial­ly con­strict­ing the larg­er Roman armies where they would be unable to out­flank him and instead they would be hemmed in by rivers or hills, etc., also choos­ing ter­rain where he could hide ambush­es in near­by forests.
9. Han­ni­bal sage­ly exploit­ed the 2‑consul Roman alter­nat­ing com­mand rotat­ed one day between an expe­ri­enced mil­i­tary vet­er­an and the next day with a polit­i­cal appointee pop­ulist lead­ing. On at least three occa­sions, Han­ni­bal anni­hi­lat­ed the Romans on the days when fools were the sup­posed com­man­ders. The fol­low­ing Roman gen­er­a­tions learned the hard les­son from this and the Sen­ate cre­at­ed a pro­fes­sion­al army com­mand­ed by vet­er­an lead­er­ship. Even­tu­al­ly Rome also amped up its cav­al­ry and became less depen­dent on infantry thanks to Han­ni­bal.
10. Han­ni­bal taught his one for­mi­da­ble Roman oppo­nent Sci­pio how to imple­ment bril­liant tac­tics, how to mine data from mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and how to ben­e­fit from Spain’s mer­ce­nary sil­ver to bribe the Numid­i­ans to aban­don Carthage. Sci­pio – the only one to beat Han­ni­bal — respect­ed Han­ni­bal more than any oth­er Roman because he learned so much from him. It’s one of the great ironies in his­to­ry that Han­ni­bal is appar­ent­ly more famous than Sci­pio, and it’s not only because of cross­ing the Alps with ele­phants: ulti­mate­ly the Romans did­n’t appre­ci­ate a vic­to­ri­ous Sci­pio any more than the Carthagini­ans appre­ci­at­ed a vic­to­ri­ous Han­ni­bal. Han­ni­bal will remain a pro­found enig­ma in that he could not ulti­mate­ly win the war with Rome, yet he could win so many bril­liant bat­tles with incred­i­bly mem­o­rable tac­tics still taught today.

The Roman book Strat­a­ge­ma­ta by Fron­ti­nus — a com­pi­la­tion of mil­i­tary strat­a­gems — has more clever rus­es of Han­ni­bal than any oth­er com­man­der up to that time. His­toric great com­man­ders or offi­cers who stud­ied or emu­lat­ed Han­ni­bal include but are not lim­it­ed to Julius Cae­sar, Belis­ar­ius, Charle­magne, Napoleon, Suvorov, Kutu­zov, von Clause­witz, Mont­gomery, Lid­dell Hart, Rom­mel, Pat­ton and Schwarzkopf, among many oth­ers. Even the term blitzkrieg allud­ed to Han­ni­bal’s clan (Bar­ca = “light­ning”) and his rapid advance in his inva­sion of Italy.”  So, of course, Han­ni­bal is at least as rel­e­vant as any oth­er mem­o­rable per­son in his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly in a time of world chaos and rethink­ing strate­gic alle­giances.

Post­script: Han­ni­bal (Simon and Schus­ter 2017) has been acclaimed in reviews from The New York Times, Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, Philadel­phia Inquir­er, Ancient His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­dia, a starred Kirkus Review and many oth­ers, and also nom­i­nat­ed in the Kirkus List of Best Non­fic­tion Books of 2017.

What Books Did Wunderkind Philosopher J.S. Mill Read Between Ages 3 and 7?: Plato’s Apology (in Ancient Greek), Cervantes’ Don Quixote & Much More

in Books, Philosophy | November 30th, 2017

I left much of my read­ing of C.S. Lewis behind, but one quote of his will stay with me for life: “It is a good rule,” he advised, “after read­ing a new book, nev­er to allow your­self anoth­er new one till you have read an old one in between.” I believe his advice is invalu­able for main­tain­ing a bal­anced per­spec­tive and achiev­ing a healthy crit­i­cal dis­tance from the tumult of the present.

Read­ing works of ancient writ­ers shows us how alike the mores and the crises of the ancients were to ours, and how vast­ly dif­fer­ent. Those sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences can help us eval­u­ate cer­tain cur­rent ortho­dox­ies with greater wis­dom. And that’s not to men­tion count­less his­to­ri­ans, nov­el­ists, poets, play­wrights, crit­ics, and philoso­phers from the past few hun­dred years, or sev­er­al decades, who have much to teach us about where our mod­ern ideas came from and how much they’ve devi­at­ed from their prece­dents.

For exam­ple, 19th cen­tu­ry lib­er­al polit­i­cal philoso­pher John Stu­art Mill is now wide­ly admired by con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­tar­i­an writ­ers and aca­d­e­mics as a pro­po­nent of indi­vid­ual eco­nom­ic lib­er­ty, the free mar­ket, and a flat tax. And they are not wrong, he was all of that, in his ear­ly thought. (Mill lat­er sup­port­ed sev­er­al social­ist caus­es.) Many of his oth­er polit­i­cal views might be denounced by quite a few as the excess­es of cam­pus activist left­ism. Adam Gop­nik sum­ma­rizes the Vic­to­ri­an philosopher’s gen­er­ous slate of posi­tions:

Mill believed in com­plete equal­i­ty between the sex­es, not just women’s col­leges and, some­day, female suf­frage but absolute par­i­ty; he believed in equal process for all, the end of slav­ery, votes for the work­ing class­es, and the right to birth con­trol (he was arrest­ed at sev­en­teen for help­ing poor peo­ple obtain con­tra­cep­tion), and in the com­mon intel­li­gence of all the races of mankind. He led the fight for due process for detainees accused of ter­ror­ism; argued for teach­ing Ara­bic, in order not to alien­ate poten­tial native rad­i­cals.…

Can peo­ple to Mill’s left on eco­nom­ics learn some­thing from him? Sure. Can peo­ple to his right on near­ly every­thing else learn a thing or two? It’s worth a shot. Mill cham­pi­oned engag­ing those with whom we dis­agree (he great­ly admired Thomas Car­lyle; the two could­n’t have been more dif­fer­ent in many respects). He also argued vig­or­ous­ly for “’lib­er­ty of the press’ as one of the secu­ri­ties against cor­rupt or tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment.” Before nod­ding your head in agree­ment—read Mill’s argu­ments. He might not agree with you.

And what did John Stu­art Mill read? In Chap­ter One of his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Mill gives a detailed account of his clas­si­cal edu­ca­tion from ages 3–7, dur­ing which time he read “the whole of Herodotus,” “the first six dia­logues of Pla­to,” “part of Lucian,” all in their orig­i­nal Greek, of course, as any young gen­tle­man of the time would. Mil­l’s father, Scot­tish philoso­pher James Mill, inten­tion­al­ly set out to cre­ate a genius with this advanced course of study.

Lapham’s Quar­ter­ly excerpt­ed the pas­sage, and turned the many books Mill men­tions into a list called “Ear­ly Edu­ca­tion.” You can find all of the titles below, includ­ing the ancients men­tioned and over two dozen “mod­ern” works (that is, since the time of the Renais­sance) Mill read as a child in Eng­lish, includ­ing Cer­vantes’ mam­moth Don Quixote. Most of us will have to make do with trans­la­tions of the Greek texts, but take heart, even Mill “learnt no Latin until my eighth year.” The list shows not only Mill’s daunt­ing pre­coc­i­ty, but also how essen­tial clas­si­cal texts were to well-edu­cat­ed Euro­peans of any age.

It also high­lights what kinds of texts were val­ued by Mil­l’s soci­ety, or at least by his father. All of the authors but one are men, all of them are Euro­peans, most of the works are his­to­ries and biogra­phies. Giv­en Mill’s broad views, his own rec­om­mend­ed read­ing list might look dif­fer­ent. Nonethe­less, Mil­l’s account of his extra­or­di­nary ear­ly years gives us a fas­ci­nat­ing look at the rel­a­tive breadth of a lib­er­al edu­ca­tion in 19th cen­tu­ry Britain. What ancient authors did you read as a young stu­dent? Or do you read now, between books, essays, arti­cles, or Twit­ter­storms du jour?

In Greek

Aesop–The Fables

Xenophon–The Anaba­sis, Memo­ri­als of Socrates, The Cry­opadeia 

Herodotus–The His­to­ries

Dio­genes Laer­tius–some of The Lives of Philoso­phers

Lucian–various works

Isocrates–parts of To Demon­i­cus and To Nic­o­cles 

Pla­to--Euthy­phro, Apol­o­gy, Crito, Phae­do, Craty­lus, Theaete­tus

 

In Eng­lish

William Robert­son–The His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, The His­to­ry of the Reign of the Emper­or Charles V, The His­to­ry of Scot­land Dur­ing the Reigns of Queen Mary and King James VI

David Hume–The His­to­ry of Eng­land

Edward Gib­bon–The His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Robert Watson–The His­to­ry of the Reign of Philip II, King of Spain

Robert Wat­son and William Thomp­son–The His­to­ry of the Reign of Philip III, King of Spain

Nathaniel Hooke–The Roman His­to­ry, from the Build­ing of Rome to the Ruin of the Com­mon­wealth 

Charles Rollin–The Ancient His­to­ry of the Egyp­tians, Carthagini­ans, Assyr­i­ans, Baby­lo­ni­ans, Medes and Per­sians, Mace­do­nians and Gre­cians

Plutarch–Par­al­lel Lives

Gilbert Bur­net--Bish­op Bur­net’s His­to­ry of His Own Time

The Annu­al Reg­is­ter of World Events, A Review of the Year (1758–1788)

John Mil­lar–An His­tor­i­cal View of the Eng­lish Gov­ern­ment

Johann Lorenz von Mosheim–An Eccle­si­as­ti­cal His­to­ry

Thomas McCrie–The Life of John Knox

William Sewell–The His­to­ry of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Chris­t­ian Peo­ple Called Quak­ers 

Thomas Wight and John Rut­ty–A His­to­ry of the Rise and Progress of Peo­ple Called Quak­ers in Ire­land

Philip Beaver–African Mem­o­ran­da

David Collins–An Account of the Eng­lish Colony in New South Wales

George Anson–A Voy­age Round the World

Daniel Defoe–Robin­son Cru­soe

The Ara­bi­an Nights and Ara­bi­an Tales

Miguel de Cer­vantes–Don Quixote

Maria Edge­worth–Pop­u­lar Tales

Hen­ry Brooke–The Fool of Qual­i­ty; or the His­to­ry of Hen­ry, Earl of More­land

via Lapham’s Quar­ter­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Harold Bloom Cre­ates a Mas­sive List of Works in The “West­ern Canon”: Read Many of the Books Free Online

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Yale Course

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

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

Bryan Cranston Gives Advice to the Young: Find Yourself by Traveling and Getting Lost

in Creativity, Life | November 9th, 2017

I don’t know what time you’re read­ing this post but “What do you real­ly want to do in life?” is a ques­tion that can wake you up right fast, or make you want to pack it in and sleep on it.

It’s also a ques­tion asked maybe a bit too ear­ly of our young peo­ple, which starts with fan­ta­sy (“What do you want to be when you grow up?” “A space­man!”) and by our teens it turns into a more seri­ous, fate-decid­ing inquiry by peo­ple who may not be hap­py with their sta­tion in life.

Actor Bryan Cranston takes on this ques­tion in this Big Think video, and extolls the virtues of trav­el and wan­der­ing.

“Trav­el­ing forces you to be social,” Cranston says. “You have to get directions.You have to learn where things are. You’re attuned to your envi­ron­ment.”

Cranston thought he was going to be a police­man when he entered col­lege. Then he took an act­ing class. So, at 19, Cranston explored Amer­i­ca for two years by motor­cy­cle with his broth­er, in essence to find them­selves by get­ting lost. He says he’s passed on this direc­tion­less wan­der­ing to his now 24 year-old daugh­ter.

That idea of let­ting go and just wan­der­ing also dove­tails nice­ly into his oth­er advice about audi­tions. You don’t go there to get a job, you go to cre­ate a char­ac­ter and present it. The rest is out of your con­trol.

Now, Cranston says that the peri­od between high school/college and the “real world” is the best time to do it, but there’s real­ly no time like right now. To quote Niger­ian author Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie, “I think you trav­el to search and you come back home to find your­self there,” and the boats are always leav­ing. Just jump on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Any­thing You Think Is Real­ly Good”

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers: Write, Write, Write and Read

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

A Free Trial Offer for The Great Courses Plus: A Special Deal for Open Culture Readers

in Deals | October 31st, 2017

We’ve told you about the Great Cours­es Plus (now called Won­dri­um)  before–a new video sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that lets you watch free cours­es (about 8,000 lec­tures in total) across a wide range of sub­jects, all taught by some of the best lec­tur­ers in the coun­try. The top­ics cov­er every­thing from His­to­ry, Phi­los­o­phy, Lit­er­a­ture, and Eco­nom­ics, to Math, Sci­ence, Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment, Cook­ing, and Pho­tog­ra­phy. And you can binge-watch entire col­lege cours­es in a mat­ter of days by watch­ing videos on your TV, tablet, lap­top and smart phone, with the help of apps designed for Apple, Google Play, Kin­dle Fire, and Roku.

Inter­est­ed in try­ing out this ser­vice? Right now, the Great Cours­es Plus/Won­dri­um is offer­ing a spe­cial deal for Open Cul­ture read­ers. If you click here, and sign up for a free tri­al, you can use this ser­vice for 30 days … for free. And then, if you would like, you can con­tin­ue to sub­scribe and pay their nor­mal prices. If you have time on your hands, this is a great way to keep your mind engaged and stream what PC Mag­a­zine has called “an excel­lent library of col­lege-lev­el lec­tures.”

Note: The Great Cours­es is a part­ner with Open Cul­ture. So if you sign up for a free tri­al, it ben­e­fits not just you and Great Cours­es Plus. It ben­e­fits Open Cul­ture too. So con­sid­er it win-win-win.