There are those who prefer to live in warmer climates, where the cold winds of winter never blow. During the last two exceptionally frigid winters back home in Ohio, I certainly daydreamed about what it might be like to live in a place without ice and snow. But while I can see the appeal of living in a land of eternal summer, there is something about the change of seasons that I know I would miss. When you have spent the summer months in Northern Michigan walking on the shores of a vast body of water like Lake Michigan, you experience the season vividly – and you sense the season drawing to a close as well. The angle of the sun and the shortening days, the changing colors of the tree leaves and dune grass, even the movements and behavior of the animals all signal that the season is coming to an end.
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The Great War: A Book List
Last August, in conjunction with the centennial of the start of World War I, I re-read Barbara Tuchman’s classic account of the war’s first days, The Guns of August. Tuchman is a great writer and she tells the story of the war’s first weeks well. One thing she captures particularly well is the way that poor military planning based on fatally flawed assumptions brought on catastrophes that affected all of the combatants.
Unfortunately, Tuchman’s book has some flaws and some critical omissions. Tuchman is a great story-teller, but all too often her desire to tell the story interferes with her account. There are too many sentences like this one, relating to Belgium’s war minister: “Baron de Broqueville, Premier and concurrently War Minister, entered the room as the work concluded, a tall, dark gentleman of elegant grooming whose resolute air was enhanced by an energetic black mustache and expressive black eyes.” Maybe it is just me, but when a war looms, the minister’s grooming, moustache and eyes are hardly relevant. Even if his mustache was — as improbable as it seems – “energetic.”
And whether or not you like the way she tells the tale, the problem is that her rendition is hollow at its core. Although Tuchman dutifully recites Bismarck’s famous quip that “some damn foolish thing in the Balkans” will start the next war, and although she dutifully if tersely recounts how the assassinations of the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie, triggered the war, she does not explain why the events in the Balkans threatened war so portentously, as Bismarck predicted, or even why the assassination of an Austrian Archduke would provoke a war that drew all of the major powers into what became at the time the most destructive war that the world had ever seen. Indeed, though she does a great job detailing the flaws of the various combatants’ war plans, she does little to explain why they were preparing for war in the first place and why all of the major powers viewed war as inevitable.
So, after finishing Tuchman’s book, I set out on what has proven to be a year of reading to try to gain a better understanding of what happened and why.
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What We Recommend: Three Very Cool Apps for Your Phone
I have been fairly slow in joining the 21st century. For example, I did not finally purchase an iPhone until last December. I have been trying to make up for lost time, among other things by becoming better acquainted with some of the available apps. In this post, I review three of my favorite new app discoveries, both to share what I have found and in the hope that others will share their favorite apps as well.
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Time for Nominations to the ABA’s List of Top 100 Law Blogs
Once again, it is time for nominations to the American Bar Association’s annual list of the Top 100 Law Blogs. I certainly am going to nominate my favorite law blogs for inclusion in the list. I would be very grateful to any reader who would be willing to nominate The D&O Diary. You can
The Phones are Alive (With the Sound of Music)
By now most of you, like me, have had Apple Music downloaded on your iPhone, with the latest iOS update. Pretty presumptuous of Apple to just stick it on our phones, don’t you think? Personally I would have preferred to have been asked first. Turns out, Apple not only wants us to buy its phones, but they also want us to pay for streaming music content as well. Just to sample Apple Music during the three-month trial period, you have to select and agree to a payment plan (either individual for $9.99 a month or family for $12.99) that kicks in after the trial period ends.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am not willing to pay $120 a year to listen to streaming music. (Okay, okay, $119.88.) Fortunately, we don’t have to pay anything. There are a number of good free options available. The purpose of this post is to share my notes on the free music streaming sites and, I hope, to encourage others to share their own notes with me and others as well.
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Of Time and Summer (A Reprise)
In recognition of the Independence Day holiday in the U.S., and in what is now something of an annual tradition, I am reprising here my 2012 essay about Time and Summer, which can be found here. Have a great Fourth of July holiday. Thank you to all of my loyal readers.
The D&O Diary’s New Look (and Other More Important Changes)
With this blog post, The D&O Diary is proud to launch its new look website. I hope readers will find the cleaner, more open page design easier to read, and that the relocation of the search box and the alterations to other website functions will make the site easier for readers to use.
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Winter Poems for the PLUS D&O Symposium
Like many of this site’s regular readers, I am at the PLUS D&O Symposium this week. Because the activities at the Symposium have disrupted my normal opportunities to blog, I thought I would fill the gap with some poetry.
These two winter poems come to us from Lucy Griffiths, Age 9, of Arlington, Virginia. Lucy
Notes from the Advisen European D&O Insights Conference in London
The D&O Diary was in London this week to attend and participate in the Advisen European Insights Conference, which took place on Wednesday at the Willis Building, located conveniently across Lime Street from the Lloyd’s Building. The picture to the left was taken on Lime Street, with the Lloyd’s Building on the
Notes from the PLUS International Conference in Las Vegas
This past week the annual PLUS International Conference took place at the sprawling Caesar’s Palace complex in Las Vegas. Given the mass of confusing pathways and corridors and vast distances between the various event venues at the hotel, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to hear that a few conference attendees are still wandering around