Twelve Against the Gods

Description

Recommended by Elon Musk from Tesla Motors.In this "sociological, psychological and in a sense mystical", exploration of adventurer and adventure, William Bolitho explores 12 famous lives: Alexander the Great, Casanova, Christopher Columbus, Mahomet, Lola Montez, Cagliostro (and Serpahina), Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon I, Lucius Sergius Cataline, Napoleon III, Isadora Duncan and Woodrow Wilson."The adventurer is within us, and he contests for our favour with the social man we are obliged to be. These two sorts of life are incompatibles; one we hanker after, the other we are obliged to. There is no other conflict so deep and bitter as this, whatever the pious say, for it derives from the very constitutions of human life, which so painfully separate us from all other beings. We, like the eagles, were born to be free. Yet we are obliged, in order to live at all, to make a cage of laws for ourselves and to stand on the perch. We are born as wasteful and unremorseful as tigers; we are obliged to be thrifty, or starve, or freeze. We are born to wander, and cursed to stay and dig."William Bolitho (1890-1930) was a brilliant young writer, journalist and playwright with a reputation as an astute political commentator.