“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.
Daniel H. Burnham”
― The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
Daniel H. Burnham”
― The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”
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“The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.”
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“It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history.”
― The Devil in the White City
― The Devil in the White City
“The most dramatic instances of directed behavior change and "mind control" are not the consequence of exotic forms of influence, such as hypnosis, psychotropic drugs, or "brainwashing," but rather the systematic manipulation of the most mundane aspects of human nature over time in confining settings.”
― The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
― The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
James’s 2025 Year in Books
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