I’m reading Brave Companions: Portraits in History by the Pulitzer Prize winning historian David McCullough. Each chapter highlights the career and contribution of specific individuals who lived in the last 100 years. As usual McCullough draws you into the story with simple, yet elegant, prose. His descriptions could inspire your career.
Attitude is the Key
David McCullough writes “Reading about the lives of such great figures…one is struck again and again by how much they accomplished in a lifetime. Where did they find the time or energy…? I wonder if perhaps it was because tuning out boredom had not yet been made so easy as in our day.”
The Men who Built the Panama Railroad
“Here the bravest might well have faltered and even turned back from so dark a prospect as presented itself to the leaders…but they were men whom personal perils and privations could not vanquish.”
The Men and Women who Built the Brooklyn Bridge
“Interestingly, those who worked on the bridge had little or nothing to say about it once it was finished. All the speeches and poetry, the essays, the editorials extolling its beauty and significance were provided by others. Roebling, too, said almost nothing on the subject He—they all—seemed to prefer to let their work speak for itself.
The Early Aviators
“Though of different nationalities and differing abilities as pilots, these aviator authors were alike in their love of the freedom of the profession, their love for the still unspoiled, distant corners of the Earth and their affection for their fellow pilots.”
What Will They Write of You
McCullough challenges “Life in other times past was never on a track, any more than it is now or ever will be. The past after all is only another name for someone else’s present. How would things turn out? They knew no better than we know how things will turn out for us.”
Wednesday we will present more case studies of situations at work and how you would cope
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