In honor of Presidents’ Day next week, I’m sharing several posts this week on Abraham Lincoln, one of my favorite leaders of all time.

1: “In the early days of the American Civil War,” Ryan Holiday writes in his terrific book Stillness is the Key, “there were a hundred competing plans for how to secure victory and whom to appoint to do it.

“From every general and for every … continue reading

1: The year was 1863. General Ulysses S. Grant was stuck.

For a year, he and his troops had tried to crack the defenses of Vicksburg. The city sat high on the cliffs of the Mississippi, providing a “stranglehold on the most important river in the country,” writes Ryan Holiday in The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph.

Ulysses had attacked Vicksburg head-on. … continue reading

“What keeps you up at night?” Marine Corps General James Mattis was once asked by a television reporter, Ryan Holiday recounts in Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave.

“I keep people awake at night,” he replied.  

1: That is the answer of every warrior.  Before and since.  “A philosophy of offense.  Of initiative.  Of intimidating the enemy rather than being intimidated, of striking fear—striking, period—rather than being struck by it,” writes Ryan.… continue reading