Andreas Kluth's Blog, page 5
February 1, 2012
Hannibal and Me: The highest endorsement
Patrick Hunt at Stanford University is a leading archaeologist and historian, and arguably the leading living scholar of Hannibal.
He has taken students to the Swiss Alps to figure out which pass Hannibal took. He has given a fantastic lecture series on iTunes U, which is in my bibliography. And he does much, much more, all of it fascinating.
So try to imagine my delight at the glowing review that Patrick has just written about Hannibal and Me.
As all of you know, I have never pretended to be 'a historian' — rather, I am (merely but proudly) a journalist and a storyteller who happens to love, and to reflect on, history. So I'm sure that I got some details wrong in the book, and Patrick could easily have pounced. But he looked at the big concept, at the story and the meditation, and he endorsed it. And that means so much to me.
From his review:
… Rarely do books mainly about history make such entertaining reading without diluting the complexities of world events that can turn on a literal moment from impending doom to brilliant success and vice versa. Surely Polybius, our best ancient source about Hannibal, would applaud Kluth's book for psychological depth that matches its historical accuracy, like Polybius himself whose history is as much about why and how, the deeper analytics, as about what and when. Kluth deserves every kudo for this book that shows his new Hannibal research is not beating a dead horse but rather a startlingly fresh outlook on an old mystery.
Thank you, Patrick Hunt!
And thank you Christopher, for being even quicker than Google Alerts in pointing me to it.
Filed under: Books, Hannibal and Me, History Tagged: Book reviews, Patrick Hunt, Reviews
January 27, 2012
Slowing down to save time
Pascal
"I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one." So Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher, allegedly excused himself once. Or perhaps it was Mark Twain or George Bernard Shaw.
It's witty, it's ironic, it's true: that's why any of them might have said it.
Here is how I know that: I write for The Economist, and most of our articles are short. I've opined on the subject of optimal length in writing before, but in this context, let's just say that it is the shortening that takes all of the time.
Because I have so little time, I got into the bad habit of not shortening, and not cleaning up, my emails. You see, there were too many emails, and I was too busy to take time for any one of them. (Bear with me. You're supposed to find an irony building.)
But why were there so many emails in the first place? Oh yes, because all sorts of people (mainly PR people, but also others) are writing me emails. And those are all busy, busy, busy people, with very little time. So their emails are long and sloppy. They refer to an attachment that is missing. They invite me to an event on the wrong date, or omit the date, or the place, even as they somehow find paragraphs of other things to say.
So then, since we are all so very, very busy, we shoot the emails back and forth to clarify this and rectify that, and the threads grow and take more of our time, making us even busier and requiring us to write even faster, thus making our emails longer and sloppier….
So, for a few months, I've been trying an experiment. I respond less fast, and often not at all. When I do email, I take more time. I actually read through emails before I push Send. I check that phone numbers and dates are correct, and that all the information is there. I think about what is extraneous and what I can cut.
Lo, the threads are getting ever so slightly shorter, the iterations fewer, the decisions more decisive.
Fewer words → more meaning
Less activity → more action
To my surprise, I am finding that, by slowing down, I have more time. If, like Pascal, I need to write a letter, I might now be able to make it … shorter. I hope I can keep this up.
Filed under: The Economist, writing Tagged: time
January 26, 2012
Hannibal/Hasdrubal/Mago > Danny/Ben/Sam
It sucks that I can't watch the Beeb from here in the US. That's because something fun is on the telly there.
Three brothers — Danny, Ben and Sam Wood — are tracing the route that Hannibal took, from Spain through France and over the Alps into Italy, and thence to Tunisia and perhaps onward. (Here is a map of Hannibal's lifetime path.)
They're doing it by bike, instead of elephant.
What does this show? That Hannibal maintains his eerie ability to inspire us modern types today, just as he inspired me to write my book.
"So we also feel a certain sense of 'Hannibal and Me'," as Danny, also a journalist, emailed me this week.
If you're in Britain, follow them on the BBC. And good luck, lads!
Here's a taste:
Filed under: Carthage, Hannibal, Life Tagged: Wood Brothers
January 23, 2012
LA Magazine's "Best of the West"
Jason Kehe at Los Angeles Magazine has chosen his four Critic's Picks for January, and Hannibal and Me is "Best of the West".
He's also captured the same issue with "genre bending" that Andres Martinez noted the other day. Kehe calls it a "shelving" challenge. How true. I plan to reflect on this in due course.
Here is Kehe:
[...] Kluth, the West Coast correspondent for The Economist, mines a veritable who's who of history's winners and losers for life lessons, from Einstein to Steve Jobs, Cleopatra to Eleanor Roosevelt. Booksellers will have an interesting time shelving this one. What is it? Memoir? Bio? Self-help? Pop psych? Here's a better question: Who cares? It's fascinating.
Thank you, Jason Kehe!
Filed under: Books, Hannibal and Me Tagged: Book reviews, Los Angeles Magazine, Reviews
January 21, 2012
The review in the Washington Post
Well, it's a busy day for reviews of Hannibal and Me.
After the Wall Street Journal's review, also today, the Washington Post has now weighed in, with a very short but sweet take.
That's now the 8th or 9th review, depending on how you count. (As a reminder, I'm keeping a list of everything here.)
Like the Journal, the Post also "grouped" me with two other books, but in this case two "self-improvement" books.
Here goes:
The author, a longtime correspondent for the Economist, will surely elicit comparisons to the work of Malcolm Gladwell and others with his new book, which deals with pressure, resilience and why some people (and companies) thrive while others don't. Kluth's originality lies in examining the successes and failures of the legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal in order to illuminate our own. One of Kluth's tenets is that "part of success is adjusting your idea of what it is." That can be true for failure, as well, he reasons, and it's important to know the difference. For example, Hannibal's miraculous crossing of the Alps was a triumph in the short run, but in the end his enemies, the Romans, endured.
OK, OK. Compared to … Gladwell, called "original", …. I guess I'll take it. 
Filed under: Books, Hannibal and Me Tagged: Book reviews, Reviews, Washington Post
The review in the Wall Street Journal
The review in the Wall Street Journal is now out, and it is the 7th or 8th review by my count. (I try to keep the list current here.)
Philip Delves Broughton is the reviewer, and he has grouped my book, Hannibal and Me, with two others:
Julius Caesar: Lessons in Leadership From the Great Conqueror, by Bill Yenne; and
Atatürk: Lessons in Leadership From the Greatest General of the Ottoman Empire, by Austin Bay.
You can see why Delves Broughton would do that: All three books take a great figure from the past, and promise lessons for us today. The other two have the word "lessons" in the subtitle; mine has "lessons" in the title of the last chapter, and the word "teach" in the subtitle.
I've long been fascinated by both Caesar (Of course! He even appears in my book) and Ataturk. So I'll be adding the other two books to my queue.
Delves Broughton begins his triple review with an extended anecdote about Hannibal (the Alpine prisoners fighting one another to the death, which I use to open Chapter 5, "The Art of Winning"). But he doesn't explicitly mention my book until the end, after he has discussed the other two:
Andreas Kluth's "Hannibal and Me: What History's Greatest Military Leader Can Teach Us About Success and Failure" is something quite different, a wide-ranging reflection in which the author takes that lonely figure high up in the Alps, surrounded by elephants, as a prism for understanding his own life….
Fortunately, the book quickly recovers [from a "bathetic" moment in the first chapter] and becomes a charming and fascinating inquiry into triumph, failure and that gnarliest of head-scratchers: What makes for a successful life? Mr. Kluth has the riveting Hannibal at the heart of his book, but there is nearly as much about other famous figures raised and dropped by fate: Eleanor Roosevelt, Meriwether Lewis, Albert Einstein and the author's own great uncle, Ludwig Erhard, the chancellor of West Germany from 1963 to 1966.
With each of these lives, Mr. Kluth forces us to ask what we admire and what we would rather do without. He offers reflections rather than prescriptions. …
"Your struggles are likely to be less violent and to involve smaller stakes than Hannibal's," Mr. Kluth justly notes. But the themes will remain consistent. The good life, Mr. Kluth suggests, is not to be found by trying to imitate those we consider leaders and successes, who are rarely all they seem. It consists of doing what we must, as well as we are able, perceptions and consequences be damned.
Filed under: Books, Hannibal and Me Tagged: Book reviews, Reviews, Wall Street Journal
January 20, 2012
Hannibal and Me in Bogota, Colombia
I just received the following email from one Matt Aaron, and it's the sort of spontaneous, casual and genuine feedback that makes authors happy:
I just finished the audio version of Hannibal and Me this morning, walking through a park in Bogota, Colombia.
I am in a transition period, now in my late 20′s. This book has helped me understand my current path and a general direction for the next 10-15 years.
Thanks for writing this!
-Matt
Thank you, Matt.
PS: I guess I should really get myself that audio version now, to hear what my book sounds like.
Filed under: Books, Hannibal and Me, Life
January 19, 2012
'Drinks with' me on Zocalo Public Square
Andres Martinez
Andres Martinez is a great journalist, writer and now think-tanker. And he's had a career of Sophoclean ups and downs that could have been a storyline in my book.
He and I had drinks the other day. Now Andres has penned a "Drinks With" column about me on Zocalo Public Square, an intellectual gathering point for the Los Angeles area.
It's more about me than about the book. But Andres does use a phrase I will steal from now on when telling people what type of book it is:
genre-bending
Thank you, Andres!!
Filed under: Books, Hannibal and Me, The Economist, writing Tagged: Andres Martinez, Zocalo Public Square
January 18, 2012
Hannibal and Me … and Mr Crotchety
There are reviewers, and then there are reviewers. And then there is … Mr Crotchety.
Who is Mr Crotchety?, you ask.
He (and I am reasonably confident that he is indeed both human and male, as allegedly pictured above) first presented himself to me in 2008, when he wrote a reader letter to The Economist about a piece I had written (about "Slow Food"). Here is that letter:
Date: 16 September 2008
To: letters@economist.com
Subject: slow food
Regarding: (11 Sep 08) Revolutionaries by the Bay
Many years ago I sat down in a Slow Food restaurant in New England. It seems like only yesterday when I walked out. The food was not memorable, but the service was glacially slow and inattentive (this was before global warming). Does the service have to be European also?
Mr. Crotchety
That set the tone for all that was to follow. Mr Crotchety, possibly encouraged by me, poured himself into the blogosphere and, under his increasingly notorious nom de guerre, began spreading his wit more widely.
Here on The Hannibal Blog, for example, we were soon turning the epic tale of Hannibal the Carthaginian into its … limerick version. (Read through the comments in that post, too: We expanded the mission to Zen Senryus.) In retrospect, it is hard to believe that both Polybius and Livy overlooked such an obvious literary device.
But Mr Crotchety never over-indulged himself with his blog commentary. Sometimes he crotched, sometimes he didn't. Over time, I became aware that an entire subculture of the blogosphere was secretly yearning for one of his ambushes. They bestowed the ultimate kudos.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that this same Mr Crotchety has now, via Sprezzatura, written his own and inimitable review of Hannibal and Me. Follow the link, and may the kvetching and crotching continue over there….
Filed under: Books, Hannibal and Me, Life, The Economist Tagged: humor
January 13, 2012
Jack Covert likes my storytelling
Jack Covert
Jack Covert, the founder of 800-CEO-READ (America's leading direct supplier of business literature to companies and organizations) and a sort of bestseller-prophet, has "selected" (ie, recommended) Hannibal and Me. Thank you, Jack!
(The rest of you, remember: My book can be a business book, but need not be. It's a life book.)
He says that I do
a fine job turning this adventure book into a personal development guide of sorts
and concludes:
[W]hat makes or breaks a book like this, with its uncommon structure and sometimes lofty subject matter, is the storytelling, and this book is one of the best in that regard that I have read in a long time.
Storytelling! One of my favorite subjects and highest aspirations. Great note to end on. Thanks again.
Filed under: Books, Hannibal and Me Tagged: 800CEORead, Book reviews, Jack Covert, Reviews
