Obsidian Odyssey

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Publications

Art] What Cities Make of Us: Art, Power & the Human Condition Across Europe | Rome & Naples: The Weight of Ruins and the Art of Living Anyway (18/22)

Art] What Cities Make of Us: Art, Power & the Human Condition Across Europe | Rome & Naples: The Weight of Ruins and the Art of Living Anyway (18/22)

On the burden and liberation of living inside history — and what Caravaggio, Bernini, and two thousand years of imperial legacy teach us about ambition, succession, and the problem of greatness

Art] What Cities Make of Us: Art, Power & the Human Condition Across Europe | Venice: Trade, Empire, and the Art of Surviving by Being Indispensable (17/22)

Art] What Cities Make of Us: Art, Power & the Human Condition Across Europe | Venice: Trade, Empire, and the Art of Surviving by Being Indispensable (17/22)

How a city built on water outlasted every empire of its age — and what a thousand years of strategic neutrality can teach us about institutional survival

Book] Leadership | Classics Circle: The Art of War - Sun Tzu (08/12)

Book] Leadership | Classics Circle: The Art of War - Sun Tzu (08/12)

A Conversation Across Centuries Reading Time: 13 minutes Classical Period: ~5th century BCE (Ancient China, attributed to Sun Tzu) Core Philosophy: The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Why I'm Reading This After Frankl taught me meaning-making in extremity, I needed something

Art] What Cities Make of Us: Art, Power & the Human Condition Across Europe | Tuscany: Beauty, Banking, and the Birth of the Modern World (16/22)

Art] What Cities Make of Us: Art, Power & the Human Condition Across Europe | Tuscany: Beauty, Banking, and the Birth of the Modern World (16/22)

How the Medici turned money into civilization — and what the Renaissance teaches us about the relationship between financial power and cultural legacy

Art] What Cities Make of Us: Art, Power & the Human Condition Across Europe | Andalusia: Where Three Civilizations Learned to Live Together (and Then Didn't) (15/22)

Art] What Cities Make of Us: Art, Power & the Human Condition Across Europe | Andalusia: Where Three Civilizations Learned to Live Together (and Then Didn't) (15/22)

On the greatest multicultural experiment in medieval history, what made it work, what ended it, and what it still has to tell us

Art] What Cities Make of Us: Art, Power & the Human Condition Across Europe | Madrid & Barcelona: Goya, Picasso, and the Art of Bearing Witness (14/22)

Art] What Cities Make of Us: Art, Power & the Human Condition Across Europe | Madrid & Barcelona: Goya, Picasso, and the Art of Bearing Witness (14/22)

On the moral responsibility of the artist with access to power — and why Spain produced the two greatest anti-war images in Western history

Book] Leadership | Classics Circle: Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl (07/12)

Book] Leadership | Classics Circle: Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl (07/12)

A Conversation Across Centuries Reading Time: 14 minutes Classical Period: Published 1946 (based on 1942-1945 in Nazi concentration camps) Core Philosophy: You cannot control what happens to you. You can control how you find meaning in it. Why I'm Reading This After García Márquez showed me inherited