Slow Burn, by Stu Mittleman. New York: Harper Collins, 2000.

We’re hardwired by nature to find common social ground, to believe that whatever we’re doing today is normal and not much different from the way people have always behaved.

The classics were their comic books; they’d grown up on Plutarch’s Lives—“the bible for heroes,” as Emerson declared—and came of age with their heads buried in the adventures of Odysseus and Richard the Lionheart and Sigurd the Dragonslayer. They understood that in ancient Greece, entire wars could pivot on the performance of one or two

Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero.

Pursuit—walk, run, crawl. Escape—climb, balance, jump, swim. Attack—throw, lift, fight.

Wing Chun Kung Fu: Traditional Chinese Kung Fu for Self-Defense and Health, by Grandmaster Ip Chun, with Michael Tse. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.

these things were done out of wantonness and lust.” Plutarch did such a remarkable job, Parallel Lives became the handbook for modern history’s heroes.

Get Tough! How to Win in Hand-to-Hand Fighting, as Taught to the British Commandos, and the U.S. Armed Forces, by W. E. Fairbairn. Boulder, Colorado: Paladin Press, 1974.

Because we have to answer to one another, and they did not.