Welcome to the Critical Skills Blog, home to over a thousand human-generated articles—never AI—on topics that matter to continuous education. To find articles of interest, use the “Search” tab. Please feel free to comment, and please subscribe. All content on this site is free.
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The Brand That . . . . Dressed the Republic
It invented the suit you could buy off a rack and wear the same day, and it cut the soft-shouldered coat that dressed the American professional class for a hundred years. Brooks Brothers dressed forty of the nation’s presidents — and one of them, Abraham Lincoln, was wearing its coat,… More⇢
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Courage and Consequence — The Mississippi Senator Who Turned His Own Murder Into Testimony
What do you do when you cannot win? Charles Caldwell — born enslaved, blacksmith, Mississippi state senator, captain of a Black militia company — was lured into a Clinton store cellar on December 30, 1875, and shot at the clink of a Christmas toast. The bullet did not kill him… More⇢
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The City That . . . . Began America’s Factories
Every American factory has an ancestor, and it stands beside a waterfall in Rhode Island. In 1793 a young Englishman who had smuggled the secret of cotton spinning out in his memory built the first water-powered mill in the country here — seventy-two spindles that multiplied into millions and clothed… More⇢
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The Brand That . . . . Cleaned the American Mouth
He arrived nearly penniless and believed soap and salvation were related. William Colgate boiled his first batch on a narrow Manhattan street in 1806; ninety years later his company put toothpaste in a collapsible tube and taught a whole country to brush — alone, twice a day, from a tube… More⇢
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The Brand That . . . . Turned Gunpowder Into Chemistry
A French immigrant came home from a hunt in 1800 angry about his gunpowder, and two centuries later the company he built had given the country nylon, Teflon, Kevlar, and the suit that walked on the moon — and a chemical in nearly every bloodstream on earth. DuPont turned powder… More⇢
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The Brand That . . . . Aged America’s Patience
A German farmer with too much corn turned his surplus into whiskey — and his family spent the next seven generations teaching a restless country to wait. From a barrel-shed in 1795 to a sixteen-billion-dollar sale to Japan in 2014, Jim Beam survived Prohibition, the death of its founder, and… More⇢
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The City That . . . . Lit the World’
Before the oil came out of the ground, it came home from the sea. For one shining generation New Bedford was the richest city in America, dollar for dollar, and the whale oil its ships hauled back from years-long voyages lit lamps from Boston to London — though the men… More⇢
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The Brand That . . . . Ground America’s First Chocolate
Before the republic had a name, a mill on the Neponset River was already grinding chocolate. In 1764 a penniless Irish chocolatier and the Dorchester doctor who staked him made the first chocolate manufactured in America — and the name they settled on, Baker’s, is still on a green box… More⇢
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In the Arena – Vincent van Gogh — He Kept Painting for a World That Had Not Yet Learned How to See Him
He failed at everything before he failed at painting. Art dealer, teacher, bookseller, preacher to the miners — every respectable path threw Vincent van Gogh out before he was thirty. So he picked up a pencil. He gave ten years to it, kept alive by his brother Theo, and the… More⇢
Meet Your Host – Charlie Jett
Charles C. Jett is an author, civic educator, and Professional Certified Coach based in Chicago. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (Class of 1964) and Harvard Business School, he served during the Cold War aboard the nuclear submarine USS Ray (SSN 653), where his tactical innovations helped inspire Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character. He developed the Field Studies methodology to teach “Critical Skills” and was endorsed by the Department of Labor in 1994. He is the author of six books, including Super Nuke!, hosts three podcasts, and writes across his Critical Skills Blog and Civic Sage platforms on history, leadership, and the health of the American republic. He and his wife, Dr. Nancy Church, co-host the Chicago Salons at Water Tower Residences.
