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The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.

Barbara Tuchman

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one’s own prose.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Essentials Sound Writing
Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Civilization Literature History
Human behavior is timeless.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Behavior Human Timeless
Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as “the most flagrant of all the passions.” Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Exercise Passion Successful
War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Military Peace War
The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Action Appetite Power
In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Historical History Peace
The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Interesting Prevention War
To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Fasting Purpose Victory
Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Doctrine Reality Sex
Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Faculty Learning Teaching
In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Contempt Country Law States United
When people don’t have an objective, there’s much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Effort Interesting People
One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Conducting Finished Research
Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Argument Desire Found
The writer’s object is – or should be – to hold the reader’s attention.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Attention Object Reader

The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.

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The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.

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