Pilot Varsity Disposable Fountain Pen. I was cleaning out my junk drawer the other day and rediscovered a Pilot Varsity fountain pen that had been buried under loose playing cards and earbuds. I’d used these disposable fountain pens quite a bit years ago when I first got into fountain pens. But as with many hobby phases, I’d drifted apart from them. Picking up that Varsity again reminded me just how much fun it is to write with a fountain pen. It’s really satisfying the way the ink flows onto paper. At around $3 each, the Varsity is the perfect gateway drug for anyone curious about fountain pens but hesitant to drop serious money on a nice Lamy or Pilot Metropolitan. When you get your Varsity, make sure to read our article on how to write with a fountain pen!
Most Popular Books Read in WWII. Five-time AoM podcast guest Alex Kershaw recently published a fascinating dive into how America became a nation of readers during World War II. During the war, the Army and Navy Library Services distributed 123 million free, especially portable paperbacks (the Armed Services Editions — check out our article about them — which were designed to fit into uniform pockets) to U.S. service members. You might imagine that GIs would gravitate toward stereotypically masculine fare like Westerns, but the most-read books included Betty Smith’s coming-of-age novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Kathleen Winsor’s historical romance Forever Amber. What strikes me most is how this wartime reading program accidentally rescued The Great Gatsby from obscurity — Fitzgerald’s novel had been a commercial failure in 1925, but free distribution to 150,000 servicemen launched it toward its current Great-American-Novel status.
Sam Fender. If Brandon Flowers and Bruce Springsteen had a British baby, he’d sound like Sam Fender. In an era where rock feels increasingly rare, it’s refreshing to see a young artist carrying the torch for it. And Fender does so with a compelling style, marked by driving guitars, anthemic choruses, and lyrics that go beyond romance to explore themes like working-class life and familial struggles. Perhaps best of all, many of his songs include another modern rarity: plenty of sweet, sweet sax. You can start exploring his music in the standard way by listening to his top songs on Spotify, but his new album People Watching is also worth checking out.
The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker. This collection of 366 daily readings from the legendary management guru Peter Drucker is a perfect introduction to his thinking. Drucker has been described as “the champion of management as a serious discipline” and is one of the most widely influential thinkers on management theory and practice. What makes Drucker essential reading is his ability to cut through business school jargon and get to the heart of what actually works in business and in life. Even if you’re not in management, you’ll find his insights about dealing with uncertainty and change to be relevant. His thinking about “systematic abandonment” inspired an AoM article. While you could tackle his full-length books, this daily format lets you sample his best ideas in short bursts. Anyone in a leadership role would benefit from spending time with Drucker’s work.
On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published:
Quote of the Week
The all-round liberally educated man, from Paleolithic times to the time when the earth shall become a cold cinder, will always be the same, namely, the man who follows his standards of truth and beauty, who employs his learning and observation, his reason, his expression, for purposes of production, that is, to add something of his own to the stock of the world’s ideas.
—Henry Fairfield Osborn
