The Mammoth Book of Heros — Jon E. Lewis

Whoever is heroic will always find crises to try their edge,” Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his essay “Heroism,” and popular Mammoth editor Jon E. Lewis has chosen crises throughout history that have tested human courage to the extreme. Heroism has inspired writers from Livy (on Horatius at the bridge) to Tom Wolfe (on Chuck Yaeger's breaking the sound barrier), from Plato (on the death of Socrates) to St. John (on the crucifixion of Christ) to Richard Harding Davis (on the death of Adolfo Rodriguez). This comprehensive and illuminative volume also offers testimony from the heroes themselves, such as Dolley Madison on her rescue of White House papers in the face of the advancing Redcoats during the War of 1812, Emile Zola's “J'accuse ...” defense in the Dreyfus Case, Ernest Shackleton on his open-boat journey in the South Atlantic, Lillian Hellman on the Communist witch hunts of the 1950s, an anonymous Beijing student on the pro-democracy protests at Tianamen Square, and John McCarthy on his five years in captivity by Islamic Jihad. It demonstrates, too, that heroism crosses political boundaries, for the heroic often fight for opposing causes. Ron Kovic, for instance, was as courageous -- and, like all heroes, as selfless, virtuous, and unflagging against overwhelming odds -- in his protest against the Vietnam War as was Lieutenant-Colonel Joe M. Jackson in fighting it. In addition, essays by Aristotle, Thomas Carlyle, and Ralph Waldo Emerson contemplate the nature of heroism and define the qualities that have led often ordinary men and women to exceptional heights in the face of peril, terrorism, oppression, and catastrophe.