The Historian Who Couldn’t Escape from Alcatraz

In the introduction to one of the chapters of my new book, I wrote about escaping from Alcatraz. If you’re trying to get out of an unfulfilling job, it can sometimes feel just as difficult as getting out of prison.

I used the Alcatraz story as a metaphor, but a reader who wants to remain anonymous wrote in with a personal story that I really liked. Here’s what she said:

“My uncle was a historian at the Maritime Museum in San Francisco. He gave me a tour of their private collection once, it...