Feldman's Faves: April 20, 2026

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE

Two question topics for you: (1) How will the Raptors do this year in the playoffs? Will they win the title? Will they win a single game? Thoughts? (2) Who among you are WORDLE fans? Do you use the same first word every day or do you mix it up. I have been using ARISE for some time now with varying degrees of success. If anyone has a better word please let me know.

Congratulations to our super creative students on last week’s Give a Night fundraiser. According to Duncan (and frankly, thanks to Duncan) we broke a record and are the top participating firm. Great job everyone!!

Just a reminder that Goodmans Appreciation Day is this Wednesday at lunch. Please try to make it if you can.

On the theme of appreciation, please join me in thanking Shannon for everything she did for Goodmans and for our section over the years. We will all miss you (and your treadmill desk) but wish you all the very best in your new and exciting role with CPPIB.

No theme this week – just topics of interest.

THINKING HISTORICALLY – A GUIDE TO STATECRAFT AND STRATEGY By: Francis J. Gavin – Francis J. Gavin is this year’s winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize for his very interesting book entitled, Thinking Historically. He beat out some pretty strong competition including some books I recently reviewed - King of Kings and Capitalism – A Global History being two of them. So I figured Gavin might have some interesting insights that are relevant to our world today. And of course, he does. Gavin is a historian who argues for the need to include historians as part of the policy inner circle when making key and world changing decisions. How can you know where you are going if you don’t know where you have been is a cliché, but is a cliché because it is so very true. The trick is to take the “precedent” of the past and apply it to the facts of today. Sound familiar??? As one reviewer notes, “The notion of using history as a guide for policymaking has been controversial among historians for generations, and the irony of this trope is not lost on Francis Gavin. In Thinking Historically, Gavin reminds his readers that interpretations of the past continue to shape the world around us whether historians inform those views or not. Militaries use history to craft doctrine and determine how they should fight the next war. Citizens apply their knowledge of history to contextualize and evaluate current events. Policymakers employ historical references to justify their positions or issue warnings about the future. Despite these features of society, Gavin argues, historians remain underrepresented in policy formulation, so “history as a core part of the policy process must be recognized and improved” (p. 80). In this educational and thought-provoking book, Gavin explains that a historical sensibility is not an instruction manual for tomorrow, but it can offer tools to break free of the “fixed thinking and dogma” that so often characterize the present (p. 40). Gavin is a historian and distinguished professor at Johns Hopkins University who has spent much of his career advising government agencies, editing interdisciplinary journals—such as Security Studies and Texas National Security Review—and teaching defense practitioners. This unique experience positions him well to explain how studying the past can help decision-makers navigate strategy and diplomacy. The author draws inspiration from Richard Neustadt and Ernest May’s Thinking in Time (1986) by taking a fresh look at the utility of academic history. More recent offerings, such as Williamson Murray and Richard Sinnreich’s The Past as Prologue (2006) or Michael O’Hanlon’s Military History for the Modern Strategist (2023), usually interpret history for the reader and assign meaning to its events. By developing a framework to help public officials think like historians, Gavin has abandoned the tradition of giving readers a “fish” and instead fashioned a rod with which they can catch their own. Thinking Historically is that rod.

The book’s structure is thematic, beginning with a well-crafted apology for the usefulness of history that also recognizes its limitations. In the second chapter, Gavin describes how history feeds policy with a crash course in the fields competing for relevance: political science, international relations, and history. Scholars have long noted this divide between historians and political scientists, so Gavin’s analysis is a welcome introduction to a debate with which few are acquainted beyond the halls of academia. Topics such as quantitative or qualitative research, correlation and causality, and how deep or wide researchers choose to cast their nets—a choice John Gaddis referred to as “lumping” or “splitting” in Strategies of Containment (2005)—each make an appearance in this chapter. Gavin avoids demeaning the scientific approach to security studies but admits it can create expectations of mathematical precision in human phenomena that are notoriously hard to measure. The craft of history is not without its blemishes either. Gavin explores the suspicion with which historians view political power and the tendency of those in power to abuse history “to justify morally problematic policies” (p. 77). The importance of understanding history’s limitations and the critical thought that accompanies such awareness underpin Gavin’s argument in this chapter.

Chapter 3 dives into Cold War historiography to demonstrate why major historical questions of that period remain unanswered. If historians cannot agree when the Cold War began, what caused the Cold War, or why the Cold War ended, then consumers of history can hardly rely on their answers to these questions as a foundation for analyzing strategy in the present. Asking better questions rather than seeking new answers to old ones is another benefit of thinking historically. In chapter 4, Gavin presents a model for transforming a historical sensibility into a mind that makes better decisions. This model consists of a set of intellectual tools followed by twelve questions in the form of a checklist in the fifth and final chapter. One of the keys to Gavin’s hypothesis becomes apparent when he elaborates on Neustadt and May’s “Goldberg rule,” which states that behind every problem there is a story (p. 132). By thinking historically, leaders can forge keys to unlocking the meaning behind these stories and, ideally, find solutions to their associated problems.

A critical approach to this book yields three notes. The first is the presence of counterfactual analysis, addressed in chapter 4. “If we can imagine different futures,” Gavin writes, “we must also imagine there could have been different pasts” (p. 150). These thought exercises can help demonstrate history’s potential value, but as Gavin admits, they are anathema to historians because one cannot find evidence of something that never happened. Second, in what seems like an effort to avoid overcomplicating an already ambitious project, Gavin’s engagement with academic disciplines and techniques is implicit. Readers familiar with these concepts will realize that historiography, pedagogy, epistemology, and the complementary nature of history’s various fields lie beneath Gavin’s argument even though he does not discuss them explicitly. Absent the disciplinary structure upon which these ideas are built, some readers may walk away viewing the historian’s craft as even more unruly than the author concedes. A final point may reflect my own bias. Considering the popularity of Michael Howard’s lecture turned essay on the “use and abuse” of military history (1961) and Gavin’s analysis of such abuse (pp. 53–62), I was surprised to not find Howard mentioned in the book. Howard’s width, depth, and context trinity—how one must study history to avoid abusing it—seems relevant. Indeed, several questions in Gavin’s checklist fit nicely within this trinity, such as How Did We Get Here? (width); Was this Unprecedented? (width); What Else is Happening? (context); and What is Unsaid? (depth). In this light, it seems Gavin has built a more prescriptive system for applying the unspoken elements of Howard’s thesis to statecraft. Yet, these are minor objections to what is otherwise a landmark study of applied history. There is no more impressive defense of the past’s usefulness in print. Gavin captures what so many historians know but struggle to communicate: “Thinking historically appears to be available to anyone and easy to employ” even though it is not (p. 52). When applied properly, a historical sensibility can “reveal how we think the world works and force us to explain our inconsistencies” (p. 105). More than that, though, Gavin offers a methodology for improving how analysts dismantle complex problems, and the potential applications of that system extend far beyond the limited scope of the book’s subtitle. Gavin likens a historical sensibility to a magnet that attracts important information from the past while “ruthlessly eliminating the overwhelming mass of extraneous or distracting information” (p. 156). In an era of perpetual distraction, I can think of no more useful tool. If this book empowers its readers to filter information more effectively, think deeply about why they interpret history the way they do, and question how they apply that interpretation to current challenges, then Gavin will have achieved his purpose of improving the way government officials think. That alone is reason for this book to appear on the reading lists of professional institutions and the syllabi of academic courses that inform statecraft and strategy.” Being able to step back, understand historical patterns, understand differences and be thoughtful about using this learning seems like a pretty good idea to me. I wonder if certain world leaders share this view????Here’s a good review from Medium - https://whitneyzim.medium.com/strategy-book-breakdown-francis-j-gavins-thinking-historically-and-the-strategy-method-667fd65f3ffc

ACQUIRED – Ferrari – I have been waiting for this episode for a long time. For those of you who are fans of this PODCAST it really is an education. I have enjoyed the deep dive they have done on so many business and in particular on luxury brands such as Hermes, Louis Viton and Rolex. But I think all of their work to date has been the build up for this episode. Ferrari is the ultimate luxury brand that represents the best in craftmanship, design and performance. I am pretty sure that I will never have the opportunity in my life to drive one but one can dream – and that’s kind of the point. In this episode we learn about the history of Ferrari, starting with the legendary Enzo and get all the way to today, when the publicly traded multi-billion dollar public company is winning F1 races all over the world and even about to launch an electric car. It is such a crazy and fascinating story. Here’s an excerpt from the PODCAST itself. “Ferrari is the pinnacle of luxury scarcity — across its entire 79-year history, the company has sold just 330,000 cars at an average price today of $500,000. For context, Hermes sells that many Birkins and Kellys roughly every 2 years, and Rolex moves that many watches every 3 months. And yet this ultimate luxury product also lives under the same roof with a widely-beloved professional sports team… one with 400 million rabid fans from all walks of life who live and die by the Scuderia’s performance every F1 race weekend! How is it possible that these two seemingly contradictory customer bases can coexist within the same company? And far from destroying each other’s value, only reinforce it? The answer, it turns out, is a beautiful, bloody, tragic and romantic opera that spans two families and three generations — and just might be one of the best tales we’ve ever told on Acquired. Buckle up for the story of Ferrari.” https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/acquired/id1050462261?i=1000761027849

Thank you for your ongoing engagement and participation.

And remember to stay safe, stay healthy and to docket daily.

Jon