Earlier this week, I had an insightful and fun interview with Andreas Kluth (Google+). Andreas is The Economist‘s US West Coast correspondent and author of a brand new book “Hannibal and Me: What History’s Greatest Military Strategist Can Teach Us About Success and Failure“.
I highly recommend “Hannibal and Me” and will write a book review later. For now, have a watch of my interview with Andreas. I hope to give you a sense of why I love the book so much.
Interviewing Andreas Kluth author of “Hannibal and Me”
*** Extra English interview clips & Chinese articles ***
Andreas Kluth, “Hannibal and Me” author, on Eleanor Roosevelt – interview extra
Chinese article: 唐英年太太郭妤淺應向羅斯福總統第一夫人Eleanor學習面對凱旋及厄難【短片】
Chinese article: “Hannibal and Me” 從文化大革命中的劉少奇學習 – 防人之心不可無
Andreas Kluth, “Hannibal and Me” author, on Harry S Truman – interview extra
Chinese article: Hannibal and Me” 美國總統杜魯門在韓戰中大敗於中國？ Harry S Truman in Korean War
Sept 14th, 2015 Update: I wrote a Facebook status about “Failures, Achievements, Triumph, and Disaster” to share with friends after reading a FB status by 2015 Miss HK and quoted Rudyard Kipling’s “If” (thanks to Andreas for the introduction),
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;”
And then I googled and found this great Economist audio interview with Andreas. Worth a listen.
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Subscribe by email
Kempton - ideas Revolutionary 
Kempton,
Well done.
Your father’s thoughts about Truman (by the way, I attended his funeral!) amused me. I always have to swallow hard and remind myself of perspective when I hear my in-laws (immigrants from Soviet Russia) rave about Reagan. They loved him.
Had I been in your shoes, I would not have been able to resist jumping on the comparison (I heard it!) of marriage and cold war! That’s just very, very funny. You showed restraint.
Elegant finish. I guess both you and Andreas get credit for that. It’s lovely: this book is successful if it provides the freedom to write the sort of second book the author imagines. So the interview closes with the value of independence inherited from parents. Nice.
I enjoyed it. Thank you.
Your mention of your in-laws from Soviet Russia reminds me: One of the lives/characters I struck from the book (for lack of space, and less-is-more) is Solzhenitsyn.
(Ouch, I just got carpal tunnel syndrome typing his name.)
He struck me as a Shackletonian figure: triumph over disaster (the Gulag), but then inability to grow with age and utter failure later in life, due to sheer bitterness.
Oh, and thanks for spotting elegance in our finish. I wasn’t aware of it as we stumbled into it. There’s a creative lesson, I guess. ;)
Thanks Andreas for mentioning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
In hind sight, I wish I had asked you to talk about some of the people you had to leave out from the book because of lack of space. Hmm, nothing to stop me to ask this as a followup question. Let me do just that!
I will sure mention in my book review that I find your book’s notes and references section contain some great additional reads and even video to watch!
Amy Tan
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tan0bio-1
Steve Jobs interview video
Hi Jenny,
Glad you enjoyed the interview clips.
I was sharing the great stories in Hannibal to my friends including my dad. So it amused me to listen to his takes on Truman. I did my best to retell the story and I think my dad will enjoy Andreas even more.
Again, thanks for your kind words Jenny.