I'm Pete du Pont with the National Center for Policy Analysis. It's time for an installment from my summer reading list, a book about sailing, though not one just for sailors.
In "Godforsaken Sea," Derek Lundy describes the 1997-98 Vendee' Globe, the most demanding race in the world: a four-month ordeal by solo sailors in 60-foot boats through the southern ocean, which contains the most desolate areas in the world, the watery places farthest from any land. Competitors start in France and circle the globe around Antarctica. You can sit safely on the beach, while you read about 40-foot waves, days on end with almost no sleep, capsizing boats, weather conditions almost perverse in their intensity and viciousness, and demands put on sailors that are as much psychological as physical.
Each of Lundy's chapters is headed by a quotation. The most telling is an old sailor's saying: "Below 40 degrees South there is no law; below 50 degrees South there is no God." this is one riveting story.
Those are my ideas, and at the NCPA we know that ideas — and a few great yarns — can change the world. I'm Pete du Pont, and I'll see you next time.