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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Courage and Consequence – The Slave Woman the State Could Not Erase
A slave with no second name. A crowd that wanted her dead. Torturers working in shifts, from morning until dark, who quit before she did. A built exit held open the whole time: say you are not a Christian, burn a pinch of incense, and walk home to the ordinary… More⇢
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In the Arena – Ulysses S. Grant – Before Appomattox, There Was Failure, Debt, and Firewood
He graduated middling from West Point and rode better than he led. Then the lonely coast took his money and his name, and he resigned the Army under a cloud and went home to fail at everything else. He cleared the timber and built a cabin and called it Hardscrabble… More⇢
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In the Arena – Abraham Lincoln – He lost the Race That Taught the Country His Name
In the spring of 1832 a tall, penniless young man stood up in New Salem and asked to be sent to the legislature. He called himself young and unknown. He finished eighth in a field of thirteen. He bought a store on borrowed money and watched it fail. When his… More⇢
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In the Arena – Ernest Shackleton – He Failed to Cross Antarctica — and Refused to Lose His Men
He set out to cross a continent no one had ever crossed. He never set foot on it. The ice caught the Endurance a day’s sail from land, held her for ten months, crushed her, and pulled her under. “She’s going, boys,” Shackleton said. The mission went down with the… More⇢
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In the Arena – Theodore Roosevelt – Failure Is a Gift
Youngest president the country had ever had. Cattleman, soldier, author, force of nature. Then the office passed to a friend, and the friend disappointed him, and Roosevelt decided to take it back. He could have stayed retired, lionized, untouched. Instead he split his own party, built the Bull Moose in… More⇢
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Courage and Consequence – The German Aristocrat Who Built a Resistance Circle
One of the most famous names in Prussia. A desk inside Hitler’s war machine. A friend about to be arrested, and a warning that would cost him everything. Helmuth von Moltke could have stayed silent and survived. Instead he gathered aristocrats and socialists, Catholics and Protestants, into a secret circle… More⇢
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Courage and Consequence – The Japanese Schindler Who Wrote Visas Until the Train Left
Two armies closing in. A government that said no. Three cables to Tokyo, three refusals. A crowd of refugees at his gate every morning, mothers holding children, men gripping the fence. Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese vice-consul with orders to stay out of it. He picked up a pen instead.… More⇢
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Courage and Consequence – The Only Black War Correspondent Writing for a Major Daily
Thomas Morris Chester took the one war-correspondent job in America that could get the reporter shot or sold into slavery. He accepted it without hesitation. The son of a fugitive slave, he became the only Black reporter for any major daily in the Civil War, embedded with the United States… More⇢
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The Eight Critical Skills: Where You Actually Learn Them
Thirty years ago, I built a list of eight critical skills—not from a survey, but from nearly a thousand executive searches where companies told me what they’d pay real money to find. The skills held. The world they were built for did not. AI changed everything underneath them. It drafts… More⇢
Meet Your Host – Charles Cranston Jett
Charles Cranston 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.
