A Message to Garcia

Elbert Hubbard · 1899

4.7 · 7 ratings

About the book

A one-evening essay about a soldier who took the message through without asking a single question — and became, overnight, the most reprinted call to initiative in business history. Forty million copies before Hubbard went down with the Lusitania.

Try the short course

Part 1 · A letter for a missing general. The first six slides, free.

A letter for a missing general

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Hubbard does not open with a war. He opens with a proverb: “As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them that send him.”

Picture a field hand in the heat of harvest and a handful of snow on the back of his neck. That is what a reliable messenger feels like to the person who sent him: sudden, unlikely relief.

So before a single fact about Cuba, you already know what kind of story this is. Not a battle story. A story about being sent, and about the rare person who, once sent, actually arrives.

Inside the course

10 parts

Rowan is handed a letter for GarciaFree above
«How the fellow by the name of Rowan took the letter»
The clerk who asks six questions and does nothing
Correggio: the encyclopedia test
The dread of getting fired, and what it never produces
Sympathy for the employer — Hubbard's unfashionable case
What a man who can carry a message is actually worth
«Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals»
The Apologia: how a filler essay sold forty million copies
Initiative, a century later: what still holds

Questions

Is A Message to Garcia free to read in Astra Trainer?

Yes. The full book opens free in the app’s reader, in English, German, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian.

What is the short course?

10 short parts that walk through the book’s key ideas in slides, each with a quick quiz. The first six slides are free to try on this page.

Where do I get the app?

Astra Trainer is free on the App Store and Google Play. A Message to Garcia is waiting in the app’s library.