WW2

US History

The Prince Who Could Not Act: Adlai Stevenson, Tiresias, and the Tragedy of the Superior Mind

There is a peculiar species of political tragedy that does not fit comfortably within the categories American culture generally makes available for understanding defeat. We have the tragic hero brought down by a single fatal flaw, the Shakespearean model, and we have the good man destroyed by circumstance, the model

US History

The Man Who Performed the Labors: Franklin Roosevelt and the Herculean Burden of American Civilization

Heracles, or Hercules, as I will refer to him through this essay, does not volunteer for the labors. This is the detail that tends to get lost when the myth is invoked casually, when someone reaches for the image of the hero and his twelve tasks as a shorthand for