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    A Message to Garcia: And Other Classic Success Writings
    A Message to Garcia: And Other Classic Success Writings
    A Message to Garcia: And Other Classic Success Writings
    Ebook90 pages59 minutes

    A Message to Garcia: And Other Classic Success Writings

    By Elbert Hubbard

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    This tale of a soldier’s self-reliance during the Spanish American War is history’s greatest motivational lesson, now collected with Elbert Hubbard’s most treasured inspirational works.

    A Message to Garcia touched so profound a chord in readers that, after its publication in 1899, it became one of the most widely read works in human history. A Message to Garcia tells the story of an American soldier charged with delivering a critical message to a leader of Cuban rebel forces during the Spanish American War. In Hubbard’s account, he delivered the urgent missive with no questions asked, no complaining, and no hedging. The enduring and almost unbelievably simple message of the essay is this: When asked to perform a task, don’t ask How...? or Why...? or Wouldn’t it be better if,/I . . . ? Just do it—and you will become more valued and respected than you ever imagined possible.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Publishing Group
    Release dateDec 26, 2008
    ISBN9781440685439
    A Message to Garcia: And Other Classic Success Writings
    Author

    Elbert Hubbard

    Elbert Hubbard was born in 1856 in Bloomington, Illinois. He was a writer, publisher, and artist who was an influential member of the Arts and Crafts Movement. His best-known work is the short publication A Message to Garcia.

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    Reviews for A Message to Garcia

    3.5/5

    55 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Elbert Hubbard had a way with words! This is his most famous essay, but his other writings that include interviews with luminaries of his time (early 20th century) are also beautifully crafted and worth reading.
    • 3/5
      A collection of fourteen essays on a variety of topics, I particularly enjoyed "Advantages and Disadvantages." My enjoyment was marred by a few references to people I don't know which meant I didn't get a full understanding of the text.
    • 2/5
      A message to Garcia is nothing more than a short inspirational essays of not much more than six pages. The self-published author created a hype which made the essay extremely popular. It is claimed to have sold over 40 million copies. The content of the essay is derived from a heroic mission undertaken by Captain Andrew Rowan to convey a message to the Cuban rebels in Spanish-controlled Cuba to establish contact and form an alliance with the United States against Spain.

      Elbert Hubbard essay, published in 1899, was based on a report he had heard about Andrew Rowan brave mission. Many years later, Andrew Rowan, who was a published author, wrote a short story based on his experience, entitled "How I carried the message to Garcia". While this story is apparently based on Rowan's experience, he has also sometimes asserted that the story is entirely fictional.

      While A message to Garcia may have had its function in its day, the essay is of no particular value to readers today. It is written in an old-fashioned style, by a boastful and over-self confident author. As the essay is so extremely short, it is now usually printed together with a number of supplementary materials. In the edition by Shanghai Joint Publishing (2010), Andrew Rowan's short story How I carried the message to Garcia is one of the appendices. This is somewhat awkward, because Rowan's story has much more merit, and deserves much more to be read than Hubbard's essay. Rowan's story is a fairly well-written adventurous story of about 40 pages. It would make much more sense to publish Rowan's story and add Hubbard's essay as an appendix.

      The Chinese edition also includes two further contributions inspired on the theme and related to the aforementioned materials. These contributions are however of a shamefully low quality.

      The historical background of How I carried the message to Garcia is definitely interesting, and the short story might well be read by a wider audience. Hopefully, the story can be accessed through anthologies.
    • 1/5
      Wow... should I be worried that my boss asked me to read this? He said it was "really good", I found it to be bullshit corporate propaganda.

    Book preview

    A Message to Garcia - Elbert Hubbard

    A MESSAGE TO GARCIA

    APOLOGIA

    This literary trifle, A Message to Garcia, was written one evening after supper, in a single hour. It was on the Twenty-second of February, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-nine, Washington’s Birthday, and we were just going to press with the March Philistine. The thing leaped hot from my heart, written after a trying day, when I had been endeavoring to train some rather delinquent villagers to abjure the comatose state and get radioactive.

    The immediate suggestion, though, came from a little argument over the teacups, when my boy Bert suggested that Rowan was the real hero of the Cuban War. Rowan had gone alone and done the thing—carried the message to Garcia.

    It came to me like a flash! Yes, the boy is right, the hero is the man who does his work—who carries the message to Garcia.

    I got up from the table, and wrote A Message to Garcia. I thought so little of it that we ran it in the Magazine without a heading. The edition went out, and soon orders began to come for extra copies of the March Philistine, a dozen, fifty, a hundred; and when the American News Company ordered a thousand, I asked one of my helpers which article it was that had stirred up the cosmic dust. It’s the stuff about Garcia, he said.

    The next day a telegram came from George H. Daniels, of the New York Central Railroad, thus: Give price on one hundred thousand Rowan article in pamphlet form—Empire State Express advertisement on back—also how soon can ship.

    I replied giving price, and stated we could supply the pamphlets in two years. Our facilities were small and a hundred thousand booklets looked like an awful undertaking.

    The result was that I gave Mr. Daniels permission to reprint the article in his own way. He issued it in booklet form in editions of half a million. Two or three of these half-million lots were sold out by Mr. Daniels, and in addition the article was reprinted in over two hundred magazines and newspapers. It has been translated into all written languages.

    At the time Mr. Daniels was distributing the Message to Garcia, Prince Hilakoff, Director of Russian Railways, was in this country. He was the guest of the New York Central, and made a tour of the country under the personal direction of Mr. Daniels. The Prince saw the little book and was interested in it, more because Mr. Daniels was putting it out in such big numbers, probably, than otherwise.

    In any event when he got home he had the matter translated into Russian, and a copy of the booklet given to every railroad employee in Russia.

    Other countries then took it up, and from Russia it passed into Germany, France, Spain, Turkey, Hindustan, and China. During the war between Russia and Japan, every Russian soldier who went to the front was given a copy of the Message to Garcia.

    The Japanese, finding the booklets in possession of the Russian prisoners, concluded that it must be a good thing, and accordingly translated it into Japanese.

    And on an order of the Mikado, a copy was given to every man in the employ of the Japanese Government, soldier or civilian.

    Over forty million copies of A Message to Garcia have been printed. This is said to be a larger circulation than any other literary venture has ever attained during the lifetime of the author, in all history—thanks to a series of lucky accidents!

    E.H., East Aurora, December 1, 1913.

    A MESSAGE TO GARCIA

    In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion.

    When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba—no one knew where. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly.

    What to do!

    Some one said to the President, There is a fellow by the name of Rowan who will find Garcia for you, if anybody can.

    Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How the fellow by the name Rowan took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia—are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail. The point that I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, Where is he at?

    By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the

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