Marathon Men and Women
There is a special category of people I call “too competitive to compete.” It is filled with talented people who fondly imagine that they could be, say, great co…
continue reading >In This Section…
Grit, Spring 2009
-
-
Ten Great Moments in the Annals of Grit
June 23, 1312: A despondent Robert the Bruce, defeated and considering flight, watches a spider build its web – it takes seven tries. Inspired, Bruce adopts the motto…
continue reading > -
An American Virtue
The story of the world is mirrored in the history of words. And because that story is full of surprises and paradoxes, the words we use are bound to reflect that fact. Take…
continue reading > -
Angela Duckworth talks to IC
Angela Duckworth has done more than anyone else to popularize the term grit. While teaching low-income children, Duckworth became convinced that something besides IQ was a k…
continue reading > -
Einstein's Final Quest
In the later years of his life, after he had fled Nazi Germany at age fifty-four and moved to Princeton, New Jersey, Albert Einstein focused his scientific energies on what…
continue reading > -
True Grit
A hobo wearing a beaten-up farmer’s hat lounges uneasily on a dusty Old West main street outside the saloon. He’s out of place. Two hard-faced cowboys ride up to…
continue reading > -
Learning the Hard Way
For Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, the worst year of their long effort to help inner-city children was probably 1997. They had created the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) i…
continue reading > -
Self-Help Yourself
Pop quiz: What’s the secret to success? Intelligence? Wealth? Luck? According to the vast and growing advice industry, the secret to success is sheer tenacity. From Sa…
continue reading > -
Does focusing on failures in the "system" undermine the psychological basis for economic recovery?
Tony Blankley: “[E]very generation, apparently, is susceptible to the tempting argument that there is such a thing as a free lunch, that the stern ethics, hard work…
continue reading > -
Does immigration increase the "grit quotient" in the United States?
Yes... By Tamar Jacoby Most migrants make the trip for the opportunity to work. The decision is an economic, not moral one. And like any group, today’s newcomers are a…
continue reading > -
Days of Their Lives
On a drizzly and drunken New Year’s Eve in 1978, I twisted two bunches of my shoulder-length hair into curls hanging alongside each ear. Then I popped a thrift-shop fe…
continue reading > -
More Agony Than Ecstasy
Mother Teresa, the tiny woman in the white-and-blue sari, was — and remains — well known to the world not for her looks or her wealth, but for simply tending to…
continue reading > -
The Failures Club
If you are afraid to fail, stop here. Don’t waste your time reading the rest of this article. Please give this article to a more ambitious friend of yours. My conversa…
continue reading > -
Gritbiscuit
The greatest confrontation between glamour and grit that ever occurred on American soil took place at four in the afternoon on November 1, 1938, at Pimlico racetrack, on a d…
continue reading > -
Joblessness 2.0
The 1930s were among the most dangerous and consequential passages in all of American history. The travails of that awful time scarred an entire generation and reshaped the…
continue reading > -
The Drudge Report
During the mercifully brief Boy Inventor phase of my childhood, I became enthralled with the inspirational lessons embedded in the life of Thomas Edison. Even at nine years…
continue reading > -
Blood, Sweat, and Words
Grit, the overcoming of serious obstacles through determined effort, is most impressively on public display on the battlefield, in athletics, in every sort of comeback in th…
continue reading >
