We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction. - Malcolm Gladwell

Good writing does not fail or succeed on the strength of its ability to persuade. Not the kind of writing that you'll find in this book, anyway. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head — even if in the end you conclude someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.

from intro to What The Dog Saw

"The "culture of honor" hypothesis says that it matters where you're from, not just in terms of where you grew up or where your parents grew up, but in terms of where your great-grandparents and great-great-great-grandparents grew up. That is a strange and powerful fact. It's just the beginning, though, because upon closer examination, cultural legacies turn out to be even stranger and more powerful than that."

And Leites and Wolf were wrong. “It has been said that most revolutions are not caused by revolutionaries in the first place, but by the stupidity and brutality of governments,