Carlos Alvarenga
publications
2022
The Arieti Project
The Arieti Project: Dialogues Past and Present is a collection of video and audio dialogues recorded with and by my long-time friend, teacher, and editor, James Alexander Arieti, Ph.D. to mark his retirement as Thompson Professor of Classics at Hampden-Syndey College. The site also features my essay on the role of the Classics in modern culture and life.
2022
Thematiks
The origin of this project was a years-long search for an easy way to stay current with the best academic business research. Rather than spend hours looking through business school websites, I wanted one site where we could read translations of great research with real-world business relevance. Unable to find such a resource, I decided to create it.
2023
Critic at Large
This newsletter is a weekly look at cultural creations — literature, art, film, music, etc. — old and new. Each week I examine a particular work and discuss its artistic and creative value. My aim with each post is to illuminate cultural works, especially ancient and/or obscure creations, worth experiencing.
2023
The Rules of Persuasion
From Homer to Shakespeare, from Magritte to Rothko, from Bach to Rakim, The Rules of Persuasion uncovers insights and concepts, some of them secret and powerful, that will fundamentally alter how you think about persuasion. In the end, my goal is to help you understand how these insights can make you a thoughtful and persuasive communicator in almost any setting in which you may find yourself.
2024
The Long Eclipse
In the 1970s and 80s, Italy lived through an intensely brutal war to control the emerging heroin trade that plunged the nation into chaos and almost destroyed it. In the midst of this constant violence and death, Magistrate Paolo Borromeo risks everything to battle the unseen forces of organized crime tearing the nation apart. Inspired, and based on, the life of legendary Italian prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, The Long Eclipse tells the moving, and heroic, story of Borromeo, his wife Anna, and the men and women on both sides of this epic struggle for the soul of a nation.
2025
The Trauma Boundary
The Trauma Boundary: How Language Defines, Limits, and Controls How the Rhetorics of Extreme Violence will examine how communicators use language to shape boundaries around the most traumatic social and political events. The book will examine what a trauma boundary is, how it is created, the cost of crossing it, and how people, organizations, and governments fight for control of its presence and power.
2026
Eight Below Zero
Eight Below Zero tells the story of the secret trials of an inner circle of eight ministers and generals after the death of the dictator they served for three decades. Set in an unnamed country, it is an examination of the allure of tyranny and the forces that corrupt those who give anything to hold and keep power.