Ryan Holiday book recommendations
The Reading List Email for March 30th, 2021
I can’t believe it’s been a year. As I wrote this email last year, the awful reality of the COVID-19 pandemic was just becoming undeniable to us all. Here we are, twelve months later, and I find myself asking a question that we posed over at DailyStoic.com the other day: What do you have to show for it? How did you do? I can proudly say that I was safe, I was smart. I kept my family safe (and didn’t expose or harm anyone with my behavior). I also have a large pile of books read (some favs: The Great Influenza and Leadership: In Turbulent Times) and pages written to show for it (please check out my new book The Boy Who Would Be King). Remember, this is what Stoicism is: We don’t control what happens, we control how we respond. The tragic events of the last year were a chance to live that creed. If you fell short? Well, it’s not too late. Every day is a chance to make the best of what’s in front of you—even in a pandemic, even when everything is going wrong.
I Came As a Shadow: An Autobiography by John Thompson My normal, somewhat cynical rule is that books with awesome titles are rarely good. What a title this one has, though! And it lives up to it! I didn’t know much about John Thompson, but he was a longtime friend of one of my mentors, George Raveling, and so I read it. I wish I could have met him—because he cuts quite a figure in the book. Contrarian. Confident. Ambitious. Blunt. Brilliant. Anyway, I’ll give you a bit of the poem Thompson takes the title from (written by his uncle, a figure in the Harlem Renaissance): “I am as a shadow/I stand now a light;/The depth of my darkness/Transfigures your night.” I also watched this old episode of Charlie Rose that features John Thompson and George Raveling as well as fellow Black NCAA coaches John Chaney and Rudy Washington and the Washington Post’s William Rhoden.
Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression by Christopher Knowlton Last month I raved about Cattle Kingdom, and it turns out I already had the author’s second book on my shelf—this time about the 1920s landrush and speculative bubble to develop Florida. In fascinating, vivid detail, Christopher Knowlton shows how it was actually the Florida land boom that caused The Great Depression. The market crash destroyed wealth on Wall Street. The Florida crash destroyed billions of dollars of middle class wealth. The characters in the book are crazy… and there’s all sorts of cautionary tales for us here today. Do read. I’ve heard from a lot of people who liked my other Florida recommendation, The Gulf.
Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington by Ted Widmer Did I need to read another book about Lincoln? When a friend raved about it, my instinct was no. I’d already read and loved so many: Lincoln’s Virtues, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, Lincoln’s Melancholy. Yet this one deserves a spot on the list. It’s the story not of President Lincoln but President-elect Lincoln, and his journey—literally and figuratively—to Washington to give his inaugural address. In each city and town that Lincoln’s train stops in, he faces assassination attempts and enormous crowds. He gives speeches and answers questions, developing, on the fly, a philosophy and a vision that might save America from destroying itself. This book is a masterwork of research and connections and clearly the book the author’s entire career was building towards writing. Glad I read it.
Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty by Jeff Pearlman I know, another basketball book. After I read Sacred Hoops, I wanted to read about Phil Jackson’s time with the Lakers. It’s definitely a hell of a story, but at the same time, there was an element of the book that just felt… mean? I’m not sure anyone in the book comes off particularly well, except maybe Shaq, and even then only in bursts. I’d have preferred less gossip and backstabbing and more stories about what made all these figures so incredible (as well as fatally flawed). As a writer, that’s the trickiest part of the job—to get to what really makes someone tick. Anyway, I still believe Game 6 of the 2002 Lakers-Kings series was horribly officiated, if not rigged.
The Reading List Email for August 16th, 2020
It’s not much, but I can at least say I am proud of how I have spent the last five months. I have kept my family safe. I haven’t exposed or put at risk any strangers. I have run my business responsibly. And most of all, I have used this time. When I look at the stack of books I have managed to get through since the pandemic began seriously in America in March, I not only feel fondness for the hours spent in those pages, but I know I am better off for what I learned. When we talk about Alive Time vs Dead Time, this is what we’re talking about. You don’t control what happens, but you control how you respond. You don’t control what’s going on in the world but you do have influence over your world. So use it. Make the most of it. Read as much as you can… and wear a mask!
A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson I had not read much on de Gaulle but I was endlessly fascinated by this book. It’s a big one but most great biographies are. I’ve done a lot of reading about Churchill (I recommend the Manchester series) but de Gaulle is probably a better example of the “great man of history” theory than any other person of the 20th century. One guy managed to essentially will France back into existence. But the book does a wonderful job of showing that it wasn’t just raw charisma or inspiring speeches that did this. “What everyone seems to ignore,” Jackson quotes de Gaulle as saying, “is the incredible mixture of patience, of slow development, of obstinate creativity, of trick questions, the dizzying succession of calculation, negotiations, conflicts, trips that we had to carry out to accomplish our enterprise.” Loved this book. Highly recommend.
The World’s Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America’s First Black Sports Hero by Michael Kranish Funny enough, a few years ago I pitched one of my clients on doing a book on Major Taylor—as there was no biography of this fascinating athlete. They passed, which is a good thing because Michael Kranish was apparently working on this book for over a decade. It’s a fascinating, inspiring, heartbreaking story of one of the greatest athletes in American history… a story which, unlike Jackie Robinson’s, does not end in triumph over racism (I recommend the Rampersad bio). Like Jack Johnson, the animus and the hatred that Major Taylor was up against ultimately broke him—as it would break any human being (if you haven’t watched the Ken Burns doc, you must). But for the entirety of his incredible career, Major Taylor was the best in the world at what he did. Towards the end of his life he met Theodore Roosevelt who said something to the effect of: Anyone who is a champion at what they do is worthy of admiration. That’s why this story is worth reading about. It will also open your eyes to just how awful the Jim Crow years of American history were.
Plutarch’s Lives and Plutarch’s Moralia Is there anyone better than Plutarch? No, there is not. I think he’s the best, most interesting, most accessible biographer to ever do it. There’s a reason he was the favorite of everyone from Napoleon to Alexander Hamilton right on down to people today. Funny enough, his grandson was one of Marcus Aurelius’s philosophy teachers. Anyways, I read mostly from his lives of the Romans this month—Cato the Elder, Coriolanus, etc. He’s hard to beat. If you haven’t read Plutarch, do it! Try Penguin Classics or the new little translation How to Be a Leader from Princeton Press is also good. Plutarch, I might also add, was the inspiration and a main source of my next book (which I will be announcing next month) that you can preorder here: Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius.
Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit and the Making of the College Admissions Scandal by Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz To me, the college admissions scandal is one of the most revealing of our time—and will be one given its representative due in history books, à la Teapot Dome or Watergate. I wish the authors had done a bit more delving into the why of the scandal, but the how of it is fascinating too. Why did these parents think that college mattered so many anyway? They were already rich, already connected, their kids did not need most of the advantages colleges offered, anyway. Why not, you know, just actually raise their kids to be good at academics? It’s not that hard to get into USC or University of Texas. My favorite quote in the whole book comes from one of the judges at sentencing: “It is maybe something parents should be thinking about… are they doing that for their children? Or are they doing it for their own status or for their own other goals that do not have anything to do with their children?”
A Torch Kept Lit by William F. Buckley This is a collection of obituaries written by William F. Buckley. Some are short. Some are mean. Most are deeply insightful. Damn, the title is great though. I thought the collection was very well edited and the introduction to each one provided a bunch of interesting context. These collections of biographies are great ways to find more figures to read about—which is why I liked Great Contemporaries by Churchill, Leaders by Richard Nixon and Leadership in War by Andrew Roberts (all included in my pandemic reading stack so far). Reading a bit more about Buckley after finishing the book, I thought this essay on how Buckley changed his mind on civil rights was a really good one and worth study for any activist today fighting against closed minds and bad assumptions.
The Reading List Email for July 19th, 2020
I hope everyone is staying safe, being smart and using social distancing as an excuse for having lots of quiet time to read. I know that I am. Before I get into this month’s email, I wanted to once again recommend John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, which if more people had read it, even as late as this spring, might have saved the US this horrific second wave of the virus we are in (if you don’t learn your history, you’re doomed to repeat it). I also have some slightly more positive news. My book, Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire’s Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire is $1.99 on Amazon Kindle at the moment. I think it’s my best book and I’m very proud of it—it’s got some Shakespearean characters and a bunch of plot twists you won’t believe. They are in the middle of casting the movie edition, so that’s fun, and it’s been raved about everywhere from The New York Times to NPR. Check it out.
Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones by Carlin A. Barton Brett McKay recommended this book to me and it’s incredible. I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed reading footnotes so much. Just a wonderful, fascinating book about how the Romans thought about courage, honor, adversity, shame, and duty. As a result, it’s sort of a guided tour and greatest hits of the classics from Seneca and Epictetus to Virgil, Tacitus and Dio Cassius. It was exhausting to go back and take my notes on it, but well worth it. Great book. Really enjoyed.
Serpico: The Classic Story of the Cop Who Couldn’t Be Bought. by Peter Maas Tyler Cowen wrote recently that he had re-watched the movie, so I decided to read the book. A timely and eye-opening book in the middle of this issue of police brutality (and as I have been saying, one of the best ways to understand the present moment is to go back and study the less controversial past). To me this is really a story of courage—it’s also a book about how quickly cultures of organizations can turn sour. Here you had people doing something obviously wrong, and it almost boggles the mind how much one man had to go through just to get people to hear the truth about it. So it’s not about a “few bad apples,” it’s how self-protective and self-reinforcing norms and obligations are. When an institution becomes Us vs. Them (as police culture has become worldwide), it becomes very hard to reform or change or improve those institutions, even if most people inside them are good. This ties in well with the book Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud I recommended a while back. I had the author, Tom Mueller, on the Daily Stoic podcast, which you might enjoy. We say we like and admire whistleblowers, then you look at what we put them through… no wonder we don’t have more of them.
Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig by Jonathan Eig and Lou Gehrig: Pride of the Yankees by Paul Gallico As I’ve said before, although they are not always as accurate, I tend to prefer older biographies to new ones. I’d rather have a biographer that really likes their subject, that wants to draw moral lessons from their life, than a journalist who gets all the facts. In this case, both the Gallico and the Eig books (the former old, the latter newer) are both quite good. Gehrig’s life is incredible, and I wish I’d studied it and used it in Ego Is the Enemy. Better late than never though. Worth reading…
In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides I am embarrassed to say that this is my first Hampton Sides book—I will be rectifying this mistake soon as he is a wonderful storyteller. This book is the story of a hellish but heroic Arctic voyage in the late 1870s that—like many others—ended with the ship getting stuck in the ice for years and years. It reads as the northern version of Shackleton’s voyage… with a slightly less inspiring end, sad to say. But great storytelling if you’re looking to take your mind off current events.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson Not a great title… but will ring true for many people. It’s a book that could have used a better publisher and editor, but there’s a reason it’s got 1,000 reviews on Amazon and still sells steadily. It nails a real problem, one that unfortunately many children of Boomers are having to come to terms with.
The Reading List Email for June 14th, 2020
Why do we read? It’s to escape, a little, of course. The stillness of quiet time with a book is unlike any other. We read to learn as well, obviously. But what are we trying to learn? Facts and figures? To impress people? To get better at our jobs? Maybe a little, if we’re being honest. For the Stoics, the main reason to read was simple: To become a better person. To turn the words, into works. There are unprecedented, challenging times. Which is why you must be reading. It’s just as essential, however, that you apply this reading to your duties as a citizen, a parent, a fellow human being. And as my friend Coach Raveling said, you owe it to the people who fought and died over the centuries—in the fights for freedom, fights against slavery and discrimination—so that we could all have access to books and information—we owe it to them to read. It’s a moral duty to search for truth and live by it.
We talked the last couple months about the costs of “functional illiteracy.” It is not just incompetence. The cost of not reading widely, of not benefiting from experiences or perspectives outside your own, of not studying greats of history is also a kind of moral bankruptcy. An inability to know what the right thing is amidst noise and temptation. We read for clarity. We read to be inspired. We read to be called to a higher purpose. This is more urgent now than ever. So please keep reading… and I hope some of the books below can be of use to you.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison It had been my intention to re-read this book and recent events only confirmed the need. Invisible Man has some of my favorite lines in fiction—“Play the game, boy, but raise the ante,” “How does it feel to be free of illusion? Painful and empty”—which I have featured in my writing since I first read it over a decade ago. But reading this book, first published in 1952, in light of the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd was terribly sad. How little has changed. How callous and awful people are to each other. How crushing it must be to live in a world that strips you of your dignity, that uses you, that subjects you to violence and unfairness. There were many scenes I forgot in the book: A police killing. A race riot. Communist agitators exploiting the race issue. All of which take on more meaning now. There are many “anti-racist” reading lists floating around, but how many of the books on those lists will still be readable in 70 years? Do yourself a favor and read this. It’s not going anywhere because it is timeless and sadly, very timely. Its conclusion is the most important thing: “We are to affirm the principle on which the country was built and not the men, or at least not the men who did the violence… the principle which they themselves had dreamed into being out of the chaos and the darkness of the feudal past, and which they had violated and compromised to the point of absurdity even in their own corrupt minds.”
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield According to Amazon, I bought this book on Oct 7, 2006. It cost $7.99 and I paid $3.99 for shipping because Amazon Prime was not around yet. I loved this book when I read it then, but I appreciate it so much more now. All I remembered, really, was that it was the story of the 300 Spartans. Now, all these years later, I am blown away at all the other things that Steven was doing in the book. The meta-narrative of the dying Spartan telling his story to the Persian court. The story of an orphan trying to find his family and his home. The triumph of courage over fear. The way that male and female energy come together to create some type of a whole. There’s just so many different messages and plots going on in this book. It really is a masterwork and deserves all the accolades and fans it has earned over the years. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. If you have, read it again. Also I think Steven’s post about how Spartans would respond to COVID-19 is worth reading.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy I joked a couple months ago that I was deliberately not reading this book because of the Pandemic. In truth, I got it down from my shelf and sat on my bedside table while I worked up the courage to read it again. My fear was well-founded, because on the night I finished, all I could do was walk quietly into my son’s room and sob while he slept. The Road is just one of the most beautiful and profound depictions of struggle and sacrifice and love ever put down on the page. I hope in three thousand years, when our society is as distant to future generations as the Spartans are to us, that this book survives. Because it may just be one of the best things the human species has ever done.
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas This is also a timely and important book—a first-time read for me but one I’m very glad I did. I saw a great sign at one of the protests: “What would you have done during slavery, Hitler or segregation? You’re doing it right now.” Bonhoeffer is a pastor who stood up to Hitler when almost all of Europe failed to; in fact, he stood up and gave his life when the rest of his countrymen believed in Hitler. Bonhoeffer was rich. He had easy escape routes to London and America. But he stayed and fought. He did not betray his faith. He lived it. And he was very nearly successful in ridding the world of a great evil. It’s an incredible story and very much worth reading. (I will say it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that the author of this great book is also the author of the children’s books Donald Builds the Wall and Donald Drains the Swamp.)
Great Contemporaries: Churchill Reflects on FDR, Hitler, Kipling, Chaplin, Balfour, and Other Giants of His Age by Winston Churchill Last month I read Nixon’s stab at this genre, but of course, Nixon was no Churchill. There are some sentences in this book that just… wow. Churchill remarks of T.E Lawrence that if that man had just been a writer, that would have been accomplishment enough. The same is true of Churchill. His observations here on Hitler, on FDR, on Shaw, are just brilliant. Of course, a bunch of the figures have drifted into obscurity but the portraits are still quite good.
The Reading List Email for May 17th, 2020
Last month, some folks were triggered by a remark I made about how the ravages of this pandemic were, in part, the cost of “illiterate leadership.” They seemed to think I was talking about a specific person (though it does say something that when someone says illiterate leaders, only certain names come to mind), but actually I was referring to our general inability to study the wisdom of the past and use it to our advantage. “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history,” Aldous Huxley is quoted as saying, “is the most important of all the lessons of history.” More recently, General James Mattis has referred to this as being “functionally illiterate.” Being able to read is not impressive; what counts is what you read and what you do with this information. Thinking that you already have the facts—whether you’re a parent or a president—and that your education is finished is a dangerous mindset. And unfortunately, that’s where too many of us sit too much of the time.
Below are some recommendations that have opened my mind over the last month or so and hopefully will open yours. Also, I have some exciting—and timely—news: my book Ego Is the Enemy is $2.99 as an ebook in the US today and tomorrow (expires Monday night). “You can’t learn what you think you already know” was Epictetus’s dictum 2000 years ago. It’s true at this moment as well.
The Great Influenza by John M. Barry
This is an incredible book by an incredible author (his Rising Tide I read many years ago and loved). “It was only influenza, it’s only influenza,” Barry says over and over again. Because that’s what people were saying in 1918 as millions of people died, as the US and the world wrestled with an overwhelming pandemic for which they were not prepared. Cities held parades despite the warnings, people insisted on going to church, they declined to wear masks, they told themselves it was a hoax. History repeats itself, and we make the same mistakes over and over again, don’t we? The book drags a little at the beginning but once it gets going, it’ll sober you up and humble you real fast. In 2005, George W. Bush read this book, spoke with the author and instituted some basic pandemic preparations (not an illiterate leader—in fact, Bush was an underrated reader). And then most of these plans were forgotten about or dismantled and we told ourselves once again, it’s only the flu, it’s only the flu. (You might like this video we did about how Marcus Aurelius responded to the Antonine Plague.)
Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts
We talked before about Alive Time vs Dead Time. I am trying to use this time to read books that otherwise I might not have had the space or time to get into. This 976-page biography of Napoleon was one I had been looking for an opportunity to dive into. I’m glad I did. It’s exciting, humanizing, compelling and well-done. Not many British writers would create such an admirable portrait of Napoleon, but Roberts is a bit of a contrarian. My only criticism is that he is perhaps a bit too kind to Napoleon. The more I read about the man, the more I respect his brilliance but am disappointed by who he became. Washington turned down power, Napoleon craved it and was corrupted and broken by it… and in the end, as Emerson said, all his accomplishments were rolled back. Check out my interview with Andrew for Daily Stoic here. Lots of good stuff.
Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour
One of the first grown-up books I ever read was L’Amour’s Flint. I remember I got “caught” reading it in 4th grade instead of paying attention to the teacher. Instead of getting in trouble, Ms Whittaker recommended I be put in advanced classes. So in a way, L’Amour’s Westerns changed my life. For whatever reason, I didn’t have nearly the expectations for his memoir, but I actually think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read about self-education and about life. It’s just beautiful and interesting and clearly the result of a master at work. Really enjoyed it.
Montaigne by Stefan Zweig
This was a short little book that hit me profoundly when I read it in 2016, but re-reading it this month was an even deeper and more moving experience. It’s funny, Zweig himself talks about how he first read Montaigne when he was 20 but didn’t quite know what to do with what he read. It wasn’t until 40 years later, after two world wars and a forced exile as Zweig fled Hitler, that he really got it. That makes for what I think is one of the most beautiful biographies ever written. It’s a book about a man who turned inward as the world was tearing itself to pieces… written by a man forced to do the very same thing some 350 years later. This is timely and important. Please read it. Also read Montaigne’s Essays directly and Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live.
Leaders by Richard Nixon
A year or so ago I recommended Being Nixon: A Man Divided and I continue to be fascinated by the man. For all his flaws—and he had many—Nixon was not an illiterate leader. Nor was he stupid or entirely at the mercy of his ambitions or flaws. He was in fact brilliant, but also devious and lacking in self-awareness. This book is interesting because it’s essential a history book of the 20th century (biographies of de Gaulle, Churchill, MacArthur, Golda Meir, etc), but instead of being written by a historian, it is from the perspective of a peer—someone who held power alongside of them, negotiated against them, had dinner with them. It’s really a fascinating book, particularly in the instances which would have been perfect opportunities for self-awareness and reflection but Nixon couldn’t bring himself to do it. Even though the book was published in 1990, Nixon was still only able to dissect and analyze others… not himself. Still, it’s clear why he was able to get as far as he did and why he was actually quite good at it. Really interested, underrated leadership book.
The Reading List Email for April 19th, 2020
We’ve read a lot of history over the years as a part of this reading list, and here we are living through it. Suddenly all those themes of the past are real. Not quite as fun is it? But still, there is much to learn. To me, this moment is what we read history for—so we can understand and process and put into perspective what is happening right now (it would have been nice for a knowledge of history to have helped prevent some of this, but such is the cost of illiterate leadership). Personally, I’ve been reading quite a bit, trying to put some serious distance between me and the breaking news of the world. It’s helped and it’s also helped me turn this period into a productive one. (Speaking of which, now’s a great time to check out our Alive Time, Read to Lead and Habits for Success, Habits for Happiness challenges over at Daily Stoic. You didn’t choose for this to happen, but you do choose how you respond. You can choose to learn and grow from this. That can be the only and slim silver lining.)
The other cool thing is that Ego, Obstacle and Stillness are now available as a boxset. So check that out!
The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade by Cecil Woodham-Smith I first heard about the Charge of the Light Brigade from the Iron Maiden song, “The Trooper” (one of their best). I read the poem shortly thereafter. I had no idea this book existed until this month but it’s really incredible (I wished I had read it while writing Ego is the Enemy). The story of how two vain, difficult, spoiled and incompetent commanders in British history ended up leading one of the most tragic and heroic (and utterly pointless) charges in military history, this book is a sobering reminder that leadership matters. Or as the Stoics say: that character is fate.
Edison by Edmund Morris The opening sentence of this book: “Toward the end, as at the beginning, he lived only on milk.” Morris was one of the greatest biographers of the age and unfortunately he just passed—but Edison was a good way to go out. The book is somewhat strangely organized (reverse chronological) but there are some wonderful insights about Edison here. I still prefer Matthew Josephson’s bio, but this one had lots in it I didn’t know. If you haven’t read Morris’ biographies of Theodore Roosevelt you are missing out.
That One Should Disdain Hardships: The Teachings of a Roman Stoic by Musonius Rufus Unfortunately most of the works of the Stoics not named Epictetus, Seneca or Marcus Aurelius have been lost to history. A few others are poorly translated or organized. Musonius Rufus has been neglected for both these reasons but this new book is a great step forward into making him accessible to modern readers. He’s very quotable, very direct and perfectly suited to this moment: Musonius was exiled at least three, possibly four times, so he knew about being locked down. He knew about losing your freedom. He knew that all a philosopher could do was respond well—bravely, boldly, patiently—to what life threw at us. That’s what we should be doing now.
Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from Those Who Made History by Andrew Roberts Last month I read Leadership: In Turbulent Times, this month I grabbed this one. Roberts’ book is shorter and breezier but lots of good stuff in here. I particularly enjoyed his sketch of Margaret Thatcher. I’m in the middle of another book by him at the moment and find him to be funny, insightful and quite good at capturing the essence of unique historical figures. As I said, now is the time to get perspective and to learn from the past.
Florence Nightingale by Cecil Woodham-Smith Two biographies from the same author this month. Robert Greene told me a lot time ago to err on the side of age for biographies and it’s usually a pretty good rule. Biographers used to try to teach their readers things, they actually admired their subjects and didn’t get bogged down in endless amounts of facts (Andrew Roberts and Edmund Morris are throwbacks in this regard). In any case, I got a lot out of this biography. When you think Florence Nightingale, you don’t think “hero’s journey” but her life maps pretty perfectly on it. Also re: history providing perspective, the intense bureaucracy and institutional stupidity she fought against maps well to what we’re seeing today with the fight against COVID-19.
The Way of the Warrior Kid by Jocko Willink I got this for my three and a half year old and I read it aloud to him over about two weeks. There’s good stuff in here—I mean there are adults I know who need to read this. The prescription that Uncle Jake, a Navy SEAL gives Mark, a struggling 5th grader, would actually work for just about anyone stuck at home right now, trying to figure out how to come back from all of this (exercise, facing your fears, building your mind, eating right—basically all the stuff we walk you through in the Alive Time challenge!). We ended up writing out the “Warrior Kid Code” and putting it on the wall in his bedroom.
The Reading List Email for March 22nd, 2020
Wow, a lot has happened in the six weeks since I sent this last email. Our busy, normal lives have been suddenly and irrevocably changed by a global pandemic. More directly, most of us are now trapped inside. What should we be doing in a time like this? Certainly, there are worse things than reading. We should be reading history that teaches us, we should be reading fiction that distracts us, we should be reading books that will give us skills and habits to help us recover. We should probably not read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I had, coincidentally, planned to re-read this month before it became dreadfully too close to real life.
Before I get into this month’s recommendations, I have two things to bring your attention to: 1) This piece I wrote about leadership during the plague in ancient Rome. When things get bad, good people have to stand up. That means all of us. The best way to reduce anxiety in times like this is to start thinking about what you can do for other people. 2) My book The Obstacle is The Way is $1.99 on Amazon in the US and £1.89 in the UK. Now is a time of real adversity and I think the message of the book is more relevant than ever: We need to steady our nerves. Focus on the good we can create out of this situation. Embrace the obstacle life has thrown at us. And most of all, learn from what happened.
Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Absolutely incredible book. I think I marked up nearly every page. The book is a study of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Lyndon Johnson, and it is so clearly the culmination of a lifetime of research… and yet somehow not overwhelming or boring. Distillation at its best! I have read extensively on each of those figures and I got a ton out of it. Even stuff I already knew, I benefited from Goodwin’s perspective. This is the perfect book to read right now.
Hillel: If Not Now, When? by Joesph Telushkin
I’ve been wanting to read a biography of Hillel for some time as he is the source of three of my favorite quotes. He famously said that the Torah could be summarized as “Love thy neighbor as thyself, all the rest is commentary.” He said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And being for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” And he was a formulator of the “Golden Rule,” saying, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” I thought this book was well done, considering the sparseness of the source material, and I took many, many notes on it.
Two Americans: Truman, Eisenhower and a Dangerous World by William Lee Miller
Last month I read David McCullough’s epic biography of Truman and found myself fascinated with the man. This biography is shorter but equally interesting because it tracks Truman and Eisenhower’s parallel lives from obscure Midwest origins to the heights of power and influence. It shows the greatness of both men and the flaws of both men, and is written with Miller’s brilliant eye for applicable lessons. His two other books, Lincoln’s Virtues and President Lincoln, are all time-favorites, and I highly recommend everything he has written, including this book.
Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk
Most books about writing are not good and most of the people who try to teach writing have had little success with which to back up their theories. Palahniuk is one of the best novelists of our time and this book is quite good. I wish I had read it when I was writing Perennial Seller, as I would have used many of the stories. I am a fan of his novels Fight Club (very good) and Choke (also good). Thanks to James Altucher for the recommendation!
How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders by Suetonius
Last month I recommended another book from this series, How to Be A Leader by Plutarch (which again, I cannot praise highly enough). This book is essentially the opposite. It’s a look at some of the worst emperors from history and how they failed. I am a big believer in learning from cautionary tales, and while of course many of the stories from ancient Rome are extreme, there is plenty to take note of here.
The Reading List Email for February 23rd, 2020
It struck me the other day that the conversation we’ve been having with each other about books is now well into decade number two (the list started in 2009). It’s been an honor to share what I’ve been reading with you guys for this long, and humbling to see the support you’ve sent my way in return. I’m in the process of moving and re-organizing my entire library (per the Read to Lead Challenge—more on that below), so it was fitting to be thinking about this as I was forced to reckon with the literal weight of my reading habit the last few weeks. It took two trailer loads and a team of people to box and move them. Anyway, it’s been well worth it and I appreciate you guys funding my habit by picking up a few of the recommended books over the years. And one last thing: if you want a list of stuff I try to read every single day, check out the list I put together here.
How To Be A Leader by Plutarch
One of the best leadership books I’ve read in a very long time—and not surprisingly, it was written a very long time ago. There’s a reason Plutarch has been a favorite of thinkers and doers since the days of Ancient Rome. He’s insightful. He’s funny. He’s a great story teller. He wasn’t just a writer either, but like the best historians and philosophers, a practitioner of what he talked about. Highly recommend. Also my friend Ryan Hawk has a new book that pairs well with this: Welcome to Management.
Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell
I’ve made no secret of my love of/fascination with F. Scott Fitzgerald and have recommended many of his books and books about him. This biography of the writing of The Great Gatsby is an incredible book and in the vein of the best non-fiction books, is packed with all sorts of surprising anecdotes, connections, tangents and observations. Churchwell just absolutely knocked it out of the park with this book and I think you’ll have trouble not being sucked in to the era, Fitzgerald’s charm (and self-destruction) and the fascinating murder story she tells alongside. Related: I also read Flappers and Philosophers: Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald this month. He is maybe the best short story writer ever.
Siddhartha: A Novel by Hermann Hesse
We must make time for fiction… because it can teach us so much. This is a short, tight book that I should have gotten to earlier, but late is better than never. The main lesson I took from it is that you read and study all you want, but nothing replaces living amongst and learning from ordinary people… and the pains and struggles of ordinary life.
The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles A. Lindbergh
Robert Greene recommended this to me and whenever he takes the time to suggest a book, I read it. It’s a riveting, almost surrealistic minute by minute portrait of Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic. When I say riveting, I am not exaggerating. You are pulled from page to page, as if you are in the cockpit, drifting in and out of consciousness from the sleep deprivation. Who would have thought he could write this well? Or that anyone could? Knowing what happens after makes the whole thing bittersweet as well—the man writing has no idea about the tragic losses that lay ahead, that he would destroy his credibility and that he would die and be buried alone in Hawaii next to some guy’s pet monkeys.
Truman by David McCullough
I’m not sure why I didn’t get around to reading this until now, but it’s worth the large investment of time (1,120 pages). David McCullough is a world-class biographer and an amazing story teller, and Truman was a singular American president. Born in the 1800s, didn’t go to college, failed as a clothing store owner and somehow ended up succeeding FDR and ushering in the Nuclear Age. He stared down the USSR, took some brave stands in regards to civil rights and McCarthyism, and was generally a stand-up guy. He was also a big reader. We built the reading course I’ve been telling you about around his famous quote: “Not all readers are leaders but all leaders are readers.” Truman was a reader after my own heart—he devoured books on all topics, lived and breathed history and almost certainly drank deeply from thinkers like Plutarch.
The Reading List Email for January 26th, 2020
I hope everyone’s reading year is off to a good start. I know mine has been. I’ve got a couple reading commitments I am attending to seriously this year: Read lots of big, thick biographies. Read more diversely. Re-read important books that have had a big impact on me. Not all the books below fit that criteria, but I there are plenty in my best of 2019 list, and I also wrote–earlier this month–a list of books I think everyone should read in 2020. I hope they help.
The other thing I thought I’d mention is something I’m proud of and excited to put out each morning. It’s called DailyDad.com and it’s one short note each morning–inspired by ancient wisdom and great books–about how to be a great parent. It’s not for everyone of course, but if you’re interested in it, check it out. (Dr. Drew, Casey Neistat, Charlamagne tha God and Brett McKay are all advisors on the project).
The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger and Address Unknown by Kressman Taylor If you’ve read Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl (one of the most important books ever written in my opinion) then you have to read Dr. Eva Eger’s book. Sent to Auschwitz when she was just a girl, Eva lost her mother and father. She was found by a US soldier in 1945, barely moving underneath a pile of corpses. She rebuilt her life only to, a few years later, need to escape Hungary with her husband, one step ahead of the communists. On the one hand, this is a book about the darkness of the human race…and on the other about the uncrushable spirit that allows us to endure, survive and triumph over it. Eva went on to become a psychologist (in her late 40s), met and studied under Viktor Frankl, and survives to this day, seeing patients and helping people overcome trauma. Incredibly, this book only came out in 2017. It’s sure to be a classic. More chillingly, but related: I also read Address Unknown, which was published in 1938, and in a few short, fictional pages, shows us exactly how fascism rises and how ordinary people can be turned against each other. Very timely.
Blood of the Martyrs by Naomi Mitchison This one came in as a recommendation a few months ago and it could not have been more in my wheelhouse. It’s the 1939 novel of a Stoic philosopher and group of slaves in Nero’s Rome and the Christian faith that eventually dooms them to persecution. Like Address Unknown, it was written in response to growing fascism in Europe and like The Choice, highlights the simple human bravery and goodness that stands strong in the face of it. Beautiful and unusual book that I am very glad to have read. You’ll definitely see some of its influence pop up the DailyStoic.com emails over the next little while. Related: The two best works of Stoic fiction remain A Man in Full and Memoirs of Hadrian.
Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant My friend Kamal wrote this book several years ago and it became a cult hit in Silicon Valley. Now the expanded, hardcover edition is out and will surely find an even bigger audience. Most ambitious people are very hard on themselves–if you actually knew what it was like inside the heads of many of the people you admire, you would not want to trade places with them. This is a book for those kinds of people–for anyone on one of those difficult journeys–who is looking to be kinder and more compassionate to themselves. The book has 4,000 reviews on Amazon for a reason. It works and its needed.
I’d Die For You: And Other Lost Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald Why don’t I read much new fiction? Because most of it is self-indulgent and terrible, but also because there’s still so many classics I haven’t got to yet. I am slowly making my way through Fitzgerald’s short stories. Even when he was writing just for money, he was one of the best writers to ever do it. Loved a bunch of the stories in here and always find something interesting in his observations. Also recommend: All the Sad Young Men, Tales of the Jazz Age, and The Crack Up. Gatsby, of course, deserves all the acclaim it has ever gotten.
No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money by David Lough Over the years I’ve read a lot about Churchill, but this book gives you a completely different sense of the man…in fact, you realize how easily he could have ended up like Fitzgerald (both were writers, both from great families with no money, both earned millions in their lifetime, both spend it as quickly as they made it, both ran themselves ragged trying to keep in front of the bill coming due). Churchill was lucky to have a day job, and lucky that people stepped in to save him (because they knew he was busy saving the world). But I liked this book because it gave you a glimpse into the flaws of the man, and serves as a cautionary tale. It’s a reminder too, to paraphrase a famous exchange involving Fitzgerald: “The rich are different than you and I.” “Yes, they have more money.”
The Reading List Email for Dec 15th, 2019
Every year, I try to narrow down all the books I have recommended and read for this email list down to just a handful of the best. The kind of books where if they were the only books I’d read that year, I’d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading. (You can check out the best of lists I did in 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011.)
I know that people are busy, and we don’t always have time to read as much as we’d like. Nothing wrong with that (though if you want to read more—don’t look for shortcuts—make more time!). What matters is that when you do read, you pick the right books.
This list is now 200,000+ people, which means I hear pretty quickly when a recommendation has landed well. I promise you—you can’t go wrong with any of these.
But…before I get into my favorites this year, I wanted to tell you about something I’m really excited about for 2020. We are kicking the year off with a New Year, New You Challenge for Daily Stoic. It’s a great way to start the year off right. Or if you just want to improve your reading habits in 2020, check out the Reading Challenge I have running as well.
Also if you want signed or personalized copies of my books as Xmas gifts this year, BookPeople.com is offering those. You can get the audiobook of Stillness is the Key for FREE with Scribd for a limited time too.
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
This is by far the book I have recommended to the most people this year—and it’s the one I have come back to and thought about most. I’ve heard from many important and interesting people in business, sports and politics who have said the same thing. In this well-written and entertaining book, David makes a convincing case for the benefits of generalization and experimentation, particularly early on in one’s career and life (Roger Federer being a great contrast to Tiger Woods). I don’t think I would be a good writer if I had trained in it from childhood—it was the experiences that I had in business, in marketing, as well as in researching that converged to give me a broad range of successful skills. Today, I am a proud multi-hyphenate and believe this book can help you become one too. I will also say that this book also doubly functions as a parenting book and is a must read for anyone with kids.
The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss
Last year, one of my favorite books was Stephen Greenblatt’s Tyrant, which somehow, despite being a book entirely about Shakespeare’s plays, manages to open a real window into what is happening politically and culturally right now, all around us. Elaine Weiss has done something similar and much more inspiring—in these chaotic, divisive and polarizing times, her riveting biography of how activists passed the 19th Amendment (the right for women to vote), shows us how hard and incremental transformational change actually is. It took suffragettes roughly 100 years to win their battle and even then, it nearly didn’t happen. Their fight took real guts, strategy, compromise, and brute force. It took brave women (and men) who put it on the line to make it happen. This wasn’t garbage social media virtue signaling. It wasn’t fait accompli because it was right. It wasn’t made to happen. It was willed into existence…against all sorts of reservations. I wrote this year about how poorly anger works as a political strategy (ironically, it made a lot of people angry). This book makes a better argument than I did and hopefully provides a road map to future generations of people trying to make the world a better and fairer place.
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
One thing I committed to doing this year was re-reading, specifically re-reading some fiction. I’m so glad I did because it meant getting to dive back into this book, which I loved and enjoyed even more the second time. This novel—it’s written as if it were the memoirs of the Emperor Hadrian speaking to his successor, Marcus Aurelius—is just an utterly beautiful book. Hadrian was complicated, as all people drawn to power are. Yet somehow he managed to identify and cultivate not just one but two heirs who were much better than he was, and for this, all of history owes a debt of gratitude. How did he do it? The message of this novel pretends to know, which makes it perfect for leaders, for parents, and for anyone thinking about their legacy. I can only imagine how much more beautiful the book is in its original French. In any case, if you haven’t read this book, do so. If you have, do it again.
The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks
What’s the second mountain? It’s what you starting thinking about once you have made it to the top of your field, once you have realized that material success or fame or recognition from your peers is not nearly as satisfying as you thought they would be. For Brooks, the second mountain is where we start thinking less about ourselves and more about other people. It’s the decision to leave Wall Street to move to your hometown and be a part of a community. It’s the choice to start a charity or to go back to school to become a teacher. It’s running for mayor or volunteering in a soup kitchen. To say this book will make you think about your life is an understatement. It will make you question everything in your life. Do read it. I know reading it has greatly shaped what I plan to do in 2020, so stay tuned!
Honorable mentions: I loved David Roll’s George Marshall: Defender of the Republic and I also liked General Mattis’ memoir, Call Sign Chaos. We need more leaders like those two. Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism was critical in my design to radically scale back social media use this year and Austin Kleon’s book Keep Going was an inspiration for me as a creative—these two books make a great pair. If you’re interested in the Stoics, I strongly recommend Donald Robertson’s biography of Marcus Aurelius How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. And How To Keep Your Cool, a short selection of important passages from one of Seneca’s greatest works (On Anger), is worth reading for anyone with a temper (that is to say, everyone). I probably got more quotes from Juan Ramon Jimenez’s The Complete Perfectionist than I did from any other book I read this year. Did you know Herbert Hoover wrote a book about fishing in 1963? It’s called Fishing for Fun: And to Wash Your Soul—I loved the subtitle and this short book. I read some epic biographies this year including William Manchester’s biography of Douglas MacArthur and T. R. Fehrenbach’s biography of Texas. These two writers were flawed but undoubtedly masters of their craft. I also really liked Daniel Immerwahr’s book How To Hide An Empire, which is about the “greater” United States. Finally, Susan Orlean’s The Library Book is another classic from one of my favorite journalists. A must-read for any book lover.
The (Very) Best Books I Read in 2018
Every year, I try to narrow down all the books I have recommended and read for this email list down to just a handful of the best. The kind of books where if they were the only books I’d read that year, I’d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading.
I know that people are busy, and we don’t always have time to read as much as we like. Nothing wrong with that (though if you want to read more—don’t look for shortcuts—make more time!). What matters is that when you do read, you pick the right books.
This list is now 125,000+ people, which means I hear pretty quickly when a recommendation has landed well. I promise you—you can’t go wrong with any of these.
But…before I get into my favorites this year, I wanted to tell you about something I’m really excited about for 2019. We are kicking the year off with a 14 Day–New Year, New You–Challenge for Daily Stoic. The one we did in October was awesome, and I had an amazing time doing it alongside thousands of you. This one is going to be even better and actually has some reading related challenges that I think you’ll love. Give it a look.
Also if you want signed or personalized copies of my books as Xmas gifts this year, BookPeople.com is offering those, and we also have some cool gift ideas in the Daily Stoic Store!
A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts To Nourish the Soul by Leo Tolstoy I read one page of this book every single day in 2018. It’s basically a collection of Tolstoy’s favorite passages from the ancient and classic texts, with excellent supplements from his own considerable wisdom. Each day draws on Chinese, Jewish, Stoic, Christian, Indian and Arabic sources (he quotes everyone from Emerson to Marcus Aurelius to Lao-Tzu) and manages to give good, actionable advice from all of these differing schools. It’s no wonder the Communists banned and suppressed this book, because it challenges everything they were trying to deny about human nature and the human experience. But luckily it did survive and has finally been translated into English. This book should be much, much more popular and I promise your mornings will be improved if you start them with it.
The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership by Sam Walker This was definitely the best business/leadership book I read this year. It was recommended to me by the lacrosse player Paul Rabil when I did his podcast. What a book! It proves that we have really missed what makes great teams and organizations work. It’s not star players, it’s not even how much they can spend–it’s whether they have great captains. Athletes like Bill Cartwright on the Chicago Bulls, Carla Overbeck on the US Women’s Soccer team, Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees and Jack Lambert of the Pittsburgh Steelers were not by any means the most famous or the most talented players, but they were the glue that held the team together. Walker’s chapter on “carrying the water” had some great insights re: Ego is the Enemy and I think this incredibly well-written book should be studied by anyone trying to build a great organization (or trying to find a role for themselves inside one). Related, and lesser known recommendation: Everyone should read Sadaharu Oh’s autobiography, A Zen Way of Baseball. He’s the greatest home run hitter of all time, a Zen master, and basically nobody outside of Japan knows who he is. Brilliant and beautiful book.
Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire by Julia Baird and Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill by Sonia Purnell I read so many biographies this year and these two biographies of two extraordinary British women were two of my absolute favorites. I knew nothing about Queen Victoria but Julia Baird does an amazing job of making her accessible and interesting–and captures just what life was like for a woman in the 19th century, even if she was a queen! I knew a lot more about Churchill but Sonia Purnell’s examination of Winston’s better half was truly revelatory. (Churchill said the best decision he ever made in his life was marrying Clementine and this book make it clear just how many times she saved his ass). Both of these books are entertaining, insightful and teach a ton about the times the subjects lived in. Any other biographies I liked this year? Thank you for asking! I was riveted (and appalled) by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian’s biography of Tiger Woods and probably talked to more people about about this book than anything else I read this year. I got around to reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Da Vinci just in time to go see The Last Supper in Milan. Truly excellent book about one of history’s all time greats. Evan Thomas Being Nixon: A Man Divided is one of the best books I’ve ever read about a politician. It’s worth reading whatever country you live in and whatever your political beliefs are. A final book I’d add this collection would be Rosanne Cash’s memoir, Composed. I heard about it from Steven Pressfield and it’s excellent.
Honorary Mentions: Robert Greene’s The Laws of Human Nature came out this year and it was well-worth the half-decade wait since Mastery. He is a living treasure and everyone should read this new one. I think the best book I’ve ever written, Conspiracy, came out this year as well (The New York Times said it was genius, so that counts for something…). Camus’ The Fall was the best novel I read this year. I really enjoyed the new series of translations that Princeton University Press has done of Cicero and Epictetus and Seneca. They are worth reading for sure. Kate Fagan’s book What Made Maddy Run? was one of the books I most recommended to sports coaches and parents I know. Finally, I made a concerted effort to read more eastern philosophy this year and really got a lot out of Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy by Philip J. Ivanhoe which is a collection of most of the classic Confucian and Taoist writings. After that I read The Bhagavad Gita, which is something I wasn’t ready for before, but glad to finally understand.
The Reading List Email for Nov 17th, 2019
Well, the book tour for Stillness is the Key is finally over and I am back at home. It was six long weeks on the road, but I managed to get a ton of reading in, as you can see from this picture. Over the last couple years, people have asked me about my reading practice and how I manage to get so much of it done. No, I don’t speed read. No, I don’t read more than one book at a time. But I am very deliberate and strategic when it comes to reading. If you’re looking to improve your reading practice and be much more intentional about what you read, I put together a really cool reading challenge for Daily Stoic that has gotten an awesome response. Harry Truman said that not all readers are leaders but all leader are readers–and he’s right. If you are a CEO or an entrepreneur, an executive or a parent (or aspiring to any of these things), you have to be a reader. You also need to be a certain type of reader and you have to be intentional and smart about it. I think this course will get you where you need to go. Check it out! Also if you haven’t read Stillness is the Key yet, and you like audiobooks, you can check out for free on Scribd (which is Netflix for books, and a great way to invest in your reading habit).
American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 by William Manchester Manchester’s epic series on Winston Churchill is one of my all time favorites so when this book showed up on my doorstep (sent by Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin strangely enough), I did not hesitate to read it. Just incredible. One of the most complicated but brilliant people of the 20th century. But here’s what’s crazy–MacArthur was also very much of the 19th century. His father was a Civil War hero (born in 1845) and Douglas grew up in forts on the American frontier, under the threat of Indian raids…and yet he lived on well into the nuclear age. His son Arthur MacArthur IV is still alive!! Anyway, beautifully written and as it happens, gives all sorts of insights into the current geopolitical situation as well as timeless insight to the perils of ego. Must read.
Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead by General James Mattis and Holding the Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis by Guy M. Snodgrass Huge Mattis fan–I’m fascinated by anyone who tries to live by their own strong personal code and of course I also love anyone who loves books as much as Mattis does (he has a great line in this book about how if you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate.) Yes, Mattis’s tenure in the Trump Administration is complicated, but that’s sort of the point, he had to wrestle with conflicting obligations–his duty to country and his personal beliefs and the causes he has dedicated his life to protect. (I write about how tough all that is that a little bit here. These situations are too complex for simple judgements). What I think is particularly impressive about Mattis is that he doesn’t talk about any of that political stuff in the book. Nor does he name names about people he has fired or had disagreements about. Again, the personal code: He doesn’t believe in criticizing sitting presidents. The Snodgrass book is, naturally, not a book Mattis is a fan of, as it was written by an aide without his permission. I get that. Still, there are several important insights in it and generally Mattis comes off well. Back to reading, I loved that at the end of the book Snodgrass revealed that Mattis scheduled one hour for Lunch/Reading everyday…as Secretary of Defense. A man after my own heart!
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell I’ll put here what I emailed Malcolm when I finished the book: “Just finished your new book in one sitting yesterday. So good. You are at the height of your powers and remain an inspiration to all of us trying to master an un-masterable profession.” It’s a little less practical or self-improvement oriented than his previous books, but far more thought provoking.
Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud Hardcover by Tom Mueller Important book, that is probably a bit longer than it needs to be. The stories of the whistleblowers in this book are all deeply moving and inspiring. The predictable reactions from the powers at be to these truth tellers are equally disappointing and disillusioned. You can almost feel the author despairing as he researches their stories, uncovering time and time again just how terribly they were treated for doing what was obviously the right thing. I was surprised to learn how baked in whistleblower protections were to the US constitution and early US law. We are seeing some of this play out in the news right now–and frustratingly the backlash against it. Like I said, I respect people who are earnestly committed to doing what they feel their duty calls them to do (even if I disagree in some cases with what their conclusions are). As a society we should respect that. I wish generally the book had been a little less timely (less political) and a little more timeless. Anyway, I’ll leave you with this Marcus Aurelius line: Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.
Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War by SC Gwynne I have raved about Sam’s books here before, namely Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell. This book follows the final year of the Civil War and it’s a good introduction to anyone who is interested in learning about one of the most seminal and transformative events in American history. It happens that one of the big inspirations for Sam’s books is one of my favorite books ever: A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. One of the blurbs on that book is “If every historian wrote like Bruce Catton, no one would read fiction.” It’s true and the same can be said about SC Gwynne.
The Reading List Email for Oct 20th, 2019
It’s been a great month since we talked last. My new book Stillness is the Key debuted at #1 on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal lists and I visited a bunch of cities across the US. As busy as I was, all the travel meant lots of time reading and thus, lots of books to recommend. Hope some of these below strike your fancy, and of course, if you haven’t picked up a copy of Stillness yet, I hope you will. If you have, please leave a review on Amazon. It helps. Or you can get it for FREE if you sign up for a free trial of Scribd.
Born to Run: An Autobiography by Bruce Springsteen I’d been meaning to read this one for a while and finally used being on the road as an excuse. Of course, the book is amazing. Like Shoe Dog, I appreciated that it spends far more time on the early years–the grind years–and far less on the glamorous years. It’s a book about hunger, about passion, about a love of craft and about pain. There is vulnerability in it and all sorts of beautiful observations about the human condition, and yet it’s entertaining too. It’s basically like a Springsteen song. Definitely recommend. His new album is good too. We also wrote something for DailyStoic.com based on one of the new songs.
Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life by Chase Jarvis Chase is an old friend. He was actually one of the first people to ever interview me for Trust Me I’m Lying. That alone would motivate me to return the favor and recommend the book to you, but it’s not why I’m doing it: Chase and I very much agree that the daily practice of creativity–professionally or as a hobby–is deeply important to a fulfilling existence. His book is great and there’s lots of great stuff here. You’ll also notice that the cover is exposed and blank. Why? So you can draw on it. Awesome.
Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Arthur Mizener I’m a tad more partial to All the Sad Young Men but there’s no question that F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the greatest short story writers of all time. I dove back into his story after reading Mizener’s 1951 bio of Fitzgerald, an old book that was largely responsible for rehabilitating Fitzgerald’s reputation after his death. Fitzgerald was a complicated, tortured but incredible talented man. Like Gatsby, he pined for something he could never have…and in the end it killed him. Still, the in-between was magnificent. I also strongly recommend Fitzgerald’s The Crack Up.
Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg Fascinating figure, and seems like a wonderful person to have known, and to have had in your corner. “If you’ve been blessed,” Campbell used to say, “be a blessing.” He was arguably the most successful and influential coach/advisor of all time, coaching CEOs and executives of the biggest companies in the world: Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple, et al. My only wish was that this book had been told as an oral history–just quotes and anecdotes from people who knew him. They could have fit a lot more in it. The standard biz book structure underwhelmed the message.
Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Coach of All Time by Ian O’Connor I read the Halberstam book as a source for Ego is the Enemy and remain fascinated by Belichick. Supposedly he doesn’t like this book or the author, but that doesn’t mean there is not some good stuff in here. Couple takeaways I really liked: When Belichick looks for talent, particularly on the coaching side, he looks for people who played Division II or III football. Why? Because you really have to love the game to want to play at that level. His philosophy for rehabilitating players who have struggled elsewhere? “I don’t care how you got here. It’s what you do when you get here.” He plays the best players each week, he says, and the good news for athletes is, “Whoever that is is decided by you.” Anyway, good biography. It left me wanting to really read a biography of his father, a long time assistant coach for the Naval Academy. Hope someone writes one one day.
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George I spent the last couple weeks reading this to my three year old, which was awesome. It was a gift from Jeff Waldman, who helped me build this tree fort earlier in the summer. Somewhat of a dark premise–overlooked, unwanted kid runs away from his family to live in the woods and off the land–but overall the book is really positive, empowering and beautiful. This has just enough pictures to keep a young kids’ attention and it’s filled with all sorts of action and lessons and interesting observations. Worth reading for adults too. Up next is Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, though I am sure we will re-read both many times.
The Reading List Email for September 15th, 2019 x
It seems crazy but Stillness is the Key is out in just two weeks! I can’t thank you guys enough for all the support. Barnes and Noble has sold out of their 3,000 copy run of signed/numbered editions, but stay tuned as we might be able to do another round. The book is selling great on all the other platforms. There’s still a little time left to claim all the preorder bonuses.
It would mean the world to me if you checked out this book. I can promise I put everything I had into the book–and that the wisdom contained in it is the accumulation of hundreds of the most brilliant thinkers from all of history. If you feel overwhelmed in this busy world, if you are trying to reach another plane of performance, you’ll like this book. Please check it out. It’s available in all formats (audio, print, ebook) and I look forward to hearing what you all think!
The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss I bought this book nearly a year ago but I kept misplacing it. I’m glad I got to finally read it. In these chaotic, divisive and polarizing political times, a book like this is important. Because it shows how the democratic process actually works–which is to say by small, incremental movements…which add up to transformative shifts. The passage of the 19th Amendment (the right for women to vote) took over a hundred years. It came down to the wire. It took real gut, strategy, compromise, and brute force. It took brave women (and men) who put it on the line to make it happen. This wasn’t garbage social media virtue signaling. It wasn’t fait accompli because it was right. It was made to happen. It was willed into existence…against all sorts of reservations. In fact, I thought the most fascinating characters in the book were the “Antis”–the women who were adamantly opposed to giving women the right to vote.
Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived by Rob Bell This is one of Pete Holmes’s favorite books. I asked him where to start with Rob Bell and he suggested here. I thought this book was beautiful, heartfelt and inspiring. Rob Bell is a pastor and this book is definitely about faith and god and Christianity (which don’t usually appeal to me), but it’s more than that. It’s about the meaning of life and why we should be good people. Bell rejects the idea that there is such thing as hell (from my limited reading, the Bible is surprisingly less clear than you’d think about there being a place of eternal punishment after death for sinners and unbelievers), instead his take is that many people live in hell right now. Because of the decisions they make. Because of how they treat people. Because of their inability to forgive or to care or to do good. This just happens to be a wonderful description of Stoicism as well…
The Soulful Art of Persuasion: The 11 Habits That Will Make Anyone a Master Influencer by Jason Harris I blurbed this book because Jason is a friend and because over the years, I have watched him pull of some of the biggest and most interesting marketing campaigns in the world. Here’s what I wrote: “Nobody knows more about the art of selling ideas than Jason Harris. This book is a peek inside the mind that some of the biggest companies in the world rely on to launch their products. And now anyone can apply these principles. Read it.” If you’re building a brand, trying to tell a story or looking at a career in marketing, you should study Jason’s work.
10 Years a Nomad: A Traveler’s Journey Home by Matt Kepnes Nomadic Matt is also a friend and the first person I go to for travel advice. My company Brass Check worked on this book a bit, but even if we hadn’t, I’d tell you that Matt’s story of traveling the world for the last ten years (and then trying to find out what home means to him) is worth reading. His book How To Travel The World on $50 a Day is also good. Selfishly, I think Matt should travel less and write more.
A Man Called Ove: A Novel by Frederik Backman Ricky Van Veen recommended this one to me. It’s rare that I haven’t even heard of a book with 16,000+ reviews on Amazon, but it was a total surprise to me. The novel is great. It’s about a grumpy old man whose life is changed after the loss of his wife and the arrival of a new neighbor. The book is sappy and sweet, and also funny and genuine. It deserves all the success its received and it certainly says something about our culture that the novels that get all the media attention are usually dark, horrible, narcissistic odes to nihilism where as sweet books like this one–which teach real lessons about how to be a better person–are looked down on. But thankfully, more people read books like these, even if they don’t get the critical recognition.
Myself and Strangers: A Memoir of Apprenticeship by John Graves I was at Half Priced Books in Austin and came across this one. I love John Graves and had no idea he’d written a memoir of his younger years. I also don’t have any hesitation in saying that he was a handsome man. Anyway, I loved this book–also about his nomadic travels–and his musings on beginning his career as a writer. The best place to start with John Graves is his book Goodbye to a River and then Hardscrabble, his book about his ranch in Texas.
Henry Clay: America’s Greatest Statesman by Harlow Giles Unger Another Half Priced Books find. Books like these are also helpful in our current political climate where you have people screaming “This is not normal!” all the time. Um, things have always been ridiculous. Henry Clay was seated in the Kentucky General Assembly while legally ineligible due to his age to hold the position. (How’s that for violating norms?). There was the Corrupt Bargain and duels between sitting members of Congress and all sorts of other nonsense. Plus slavery was legal! Things are bad today, yes, but they’ve always been bad and are almost certainly getting better, no matter how it may seem when you turn on CNN. It’s always good to turn to history to get this perspective. I wish more people would put in the work…especially the ‘pundits’ who pretend to know what they are talking about for a living.
Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal Nir’s last book Hooked is one of the best marketing and product development books I’ve read. This book is a very different one. Instead of telling marketers how to hook customers, he’s telling customers how to get unhooked (Unhooked would have been a better title IMO). There’s a lot of good stuff in here for anyone looking to do more of what Cal Newport calls “deep work” and how to focus and be present. My blurb was: “An essential book for anyone trying to think, work, or live better.”
The Reading List Email for August 4th, 2019
Before I get into this month’s recommendations, I have one book I’d very biasedly like to recommend. I’m biased because I’ve spent the last three years or so working on. It’s my next book, one that completes a trilogy I began with Obstacle and Ego. The book is Stillness is the Key and it comes out on Oct 1st. Stillness is one of the most powerful forces in the world–it’s the ability to be calm, to slow down as the world speeds up, to make complex decisions, to find your purpose, to get your life in order (even amidst chaos and pressure). Stillness is the key to what we want and what we need to be better people, better thinkers, better doers. To me stillness is Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis, it’s Marcus Aurelius with his journals, it’s Tom Brady down 28-3 in the Super Bowl, it’s Martin Luther under interrogation: Here I stand, I can do no other.
Anyway, I’m as proud of this as anything I have ever written. I’m announcing the book to you guys here, first and early, so you can get your first crack at the 3,000 limited edition signed and numbered copies Barnes and Noble has. They’ll go fast! I also have some more preorder bonuses here if you want to check that out. Give the book a look. I think you’ll like it.
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar I began re-reading books earlier this year and then again with our most recent Daily Stoic Challenge, I re-committed to reading more fiction. This novel–essentially a faux-but-deeply-realistic memoir of the Emperor Hadrian for the benefit of his successor Marcus Aurelius–is just an utterly beautiful book. Hadrian was complicated, as all people drawn to power are. Yet somehow he managed to identify and cultivate not just one but two heirs who were much better than he was and for this all of history owes a debt of gratitude. I can only imagine how much more beautiful the book is in its original French. In any case, if you haven’t read this book, do so. If you have, do it again.
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler This is also a long time favorite that I re-read. I know the title is weird, but it’s a wonderful novel–the moral of which happens to follow almost exactly the arc of the rise and fall of American Apparel. Not coincidentally, it was Dov Charney’s favorite book. Life imitates art…but we should read this book to prevent that from happening to us. It’s a pretty good movie too and a fun peak at an under-rated North American city in my opinion. If you liked What Makes Sammy Run? read this.
Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore I don’t know why I picked this book up at Costco (it was right next to David Roll’s biography of Marshall which I recommended last month–that’s how I saw it) but wow. Even the footnotes in this book are fascinating. Maybe too fascinating because they were on almost every page. I wrote last month that it was disappointing in Finding Florida that the author was ultimately disillusioned by all the terrible deeds of his subjects. This book shows that it is possible to write about seemingly endless amounts of violence, deceit, destruction, tragedy, and pain and still not only tell a gripping story, but actually be human and funny. The sheer span of history this book covers–basically the beginning of civilization to the Six Day War–and the vast diversity of characters (Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Roman, Socialist, Imperialist, Crusaders and modern nations) is almost unbelievable. You wouldn’t think Abraham Lincoln would pop up in this book, but he does in an interesting way. Basically everyone you’ve ever heard of does at some point. I was almost never bored and learned more than I even knew I didn’t know. Really great book.
Genesis (The Rational Bible): A Commentary by Denis Prager A few months ago, I read Denis’ commentary/translation of Exodus and then followed up with this one. I found it very interesting and am certainly better disposed to making sense of (and getting anything out of) it as an adult than I was as a kid going to church. Denis’ commentary is interesting and helpful, if at times a bit simplistic and dated. The same trait that serves him well filling up hours on the radio does not always stand up as well in writing, but nevertheless, I am glad to have read this. He also wrote an interesting article when this book came out about its suspicious non-appearance on the New York Times Bestseller list–something I have experienced myself and have prepared myself for with the launch of Stillness.
The Reading List Email for June 9th, 2019
Exciting news to kick off this email with: my book The Obstacle Is The Way is on sale on Amazon Kindle for $1.99 for the next few days. This is the absolute cheapest it will ever be, so if you haven’t read it–maybe give it a shot? If you have and want to give it to a friend, now’s a great time. Almost exactly five years ago I released The Obstacle is the Way and we weren’t sure how it was going to do. The launch went fine…but then about eight months later, it really picked up. It’s since sold over 500,000 copies, been translated in 30 languages and used and read by the championship teams in basically every professional sport you can think of. The response has been completely mind blowing and life-changing and so I’m excited to kick off this anniversary with a discount to all of you. Enjoy!
A Theory of War: A Novel by Joan Brady The re-reading kick continues–and this novel remains, upon second reading, one of the best I’ve ever read. It was introduced to me when I was just starting out in Hollywood by Aaron Ray (someone who I asked that What books changed your life? question to). It haunted me when I read it the first time, and now as a father, it made me viscerally upset. But it’s so so good. It’s not a book about war, if that’s what you’re worried about. But it is a book about a personal war–the war of a young white boy sold into slavery (18 years of indentured servitude) after the Civil War–of revenge after horrible wrong that was done to him. But it’s also a book about the war of the human spirit, which seems to be able to overcome just about anything. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I wish it was better known.
The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation by Rich Cohen If Rich Cohen writes a book, I read it. Period. This book is a good example of why. He’s an amazing story teller, a brutally efficient writer and a profound observer of the human condition. My two favorites of his are Tough Jews and The Fish That Ate The Whale…this one deserves to be up there alongside those two, which is very, very high praise as far as I am concerned. I had no idea who Albert Hicks was, but as usual, Rich manages to portray a full, humanizing picture of another complicated (and in this case, downright evil) individual…and you get a history lesson of the world he lived in as bonus. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Rich Cohen is possibly my favorite living non-fiction author. He’s up there with Robert Greene and Michael Lewis. Read his stuff.
The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live by Heather B. Armstrong One of the reasons I like popping into bookstores is you end up discovering stuff you would have missed otherwise. I stopped into an Indigo when I was in Ottawa last month and found this new book about Heather Armstrong’s experimental battle with depression and loved it. I read it in one day. Heather was one of the pioneers of blogging but I think this might be one of her most important contributions to the culture. It’s a moving and vulnerable memoir about the experimental treatment that essentially stopped her brain nearly a dozen times in what was essentially a hard reboot of her system. And the good news is that it seems to have worked!
Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong My book Perennial Seller was all about work that stands the test of time, work that might not be immediately popular but manages to touch something within us, within culture that makes it meaningful and long lasting. On one level Seinfeld is a show about nothing…yet if it really was about nothing, it couldn’t have lasted or resonated as it has. To me, it’s a show about the absurdity of modern life–it’s frustrations, it’s tiny pleasures, the struggle to fill the void. This is a wonderful book about how that show came into being, how it was made and why it worked like it did. Lots of good lessons here for anyone making anything…also entertaining for anyone who has watched the show.
How To Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius by Donald Robertson This is going to sound like a strange way to describe this book, but I found it to be very sweet. Again, not what you’d think for a biography of a famous Stoic, but it’s how it reads. Donald is so patient and so caring towards Marcus Aurelius that it gives you a totally different appreciation for this great man (and for me to say that about Marcus takes a lot). This is a wonderful and important book that anyone interested in Stoicism or in being a better leader should read. We did an interview with Donald for DailyStoic.com which I also recommend reading.
The Reading List Newsletter for May 12th, 2019
This month has a bunch of books I was lucky enough to read before they came out and have been waiting for months to be able to tell you guys about. Of course, that means the list leans a little newer than usual, but I did read some weird, obscure, old stuff to balance that out. Hope you like them. If there isn’t enough that tickles your fancy in here, then I have a magical trick I think that will unlock a whole bunch of great books for you. It’s basically the strategy I’ve used in my life, and is responsible for pretty much all the best authors I’ve recommended over the years. Try it–it works (just not on me…my best recommendations are here). Oh in case you missed it last month, this newsletter is now sponsored by ButcherBox, which I am addicted to. If I could sell my cows to them, I would. But for now, I just have to settle for getting most of my family’s dinners from them. See the rest of the info at the bottom.
East of Eden: A Novel by John Steinbeck My year of re-reading continues. I read this book in college as part of a class on novels and film (we read books and then watched the movies). I think the weirdness of the movie warped my memory of what a beautiful and vast novel this is–just how many characters are in it, how long a period it covers, and the timelessness of the themes. Did I even know what “east of Eden” was referencing as a title or the biblical roots of each of the characters? No. But that’s why re-reading is so wonderful. It was also cool because I re-read the same copy from 13 years ago, and I could see all the notes I had made and passages I had highlighted. For instance, I forgot the surprise appearance of Marcus Aurelius (who Lee, my favorite character, was a big fan of).
The Rational Bible: Exodus by Dennis Prager Speaking of biblical themes, I have been slowly making my way through some Christian and Jewish readings. I read a fascinating translation of the New Testament last year, and this time I decided to give the Book of Exodus (that would be the book about Moses, the ten plagues, the ten commandments and so forth). I chose this Dennis Prager commentary version, because why not? I heard good things. It was definitely helpful, I don’t know if I would have made it all the way through or gotten nearly as much out of it without his essays or explanations. If you’re not a fan of his conservative politics, I can assure you they make almost no appearances in the book. It’s mostly an exploration of good vs evil, suffering, morality, and of course, faith. If you are fan of his politics–and it’s perfectly reasonable to be–then I think it makes the book more interesting because so much of Prager’s eloquent case for public morality is contradicted by his complicated stance on Trump. It almost adds an entire new meta-lesson, and I suggest this great piece to help with that.
Comedy Sex God by Pete Holmes Speaking of speaking of biblical themes, I am a big Pete Holmes fan, who you might know from his standup and his amazing series, Crashing, which ran on HBO (you can also listen to the three hour podcast we did together a few months ago). Pete’s background is similar to mine: Grew up in a religious family (though his much more than mine), left it behind but remains a seeker of truth through philosophy, history, literature and interesting people. He’s also very very funny. You’ll like this book if you’re a fan of his…and it’s also probably a good read for anyone with a background similar to the one I mentioned above. Cannot recommend his podcast highly enough either. It’s one of the few I listen to regularly.
Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope by Mark Manson In the totally opposite–but somehow the same–direction, Mark Manson’s new book is really good. The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck was a massive and very deserved hit. His next book is out on Tuesday. I think Mark is a great writer and he has the ability to make really advance and big ideas not only entertaining but really accessible (his books don’t sell lots of copies because they’re dumb. It’s because he manages to not make his readers feel dumb). It can very much feel like the world is falling apart these days and to me this is a perfect book to read to combat that hopelessness and frustration. My blurb for the book, which is on the back cover: “Just because everything appears to be a mess doesn’t mean you have to be one. Mark Manson’s book is a call to arms for a better life and better world and could not be more needed right now.”
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein I really liked David’s first book, The Sports Gene, but I think this one is even more relevant and applicable–especially to anyone who is a parent. Anyone who followed my recommendation on the Tiger Woods biography, already got a lesson on the perils of specialization in childhood and teenager years, but here David makes a brilliant case for the benefits of generalization and experimentation, particularly early on in one’s career and life (Roger Federer being a great contrast to Tiger Woods). I don’t think I would be a good writer if I had trained in it from childhood–it was the experiences that I had in business, in marketing, as well as in researching that converged to give me a broad range of successful skills. Even now as a writer, I take range seriously (part of the reason I wrote Conspiracy was to expand that range). Anyway, great book. It doesn’t come out until the end of the month, but definitely read it.
Fishing for Fun: And to Wash Your Soul by Herbert Hoover Bet you didn’t know Herbert Hoover wrote a beautifully illustrated book of meditations about the art of fishing, did you? Neither did I! I have no idea how I found it, but I’m so glad I did. According to Amazon, it was review upon publication by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Wtf? Anyway, great little read here, even if you don’t like fishing (which I do, provided I don’t have to get up early and don’t have to do it for more than hour or so). It’s mostly about what the subtitle hints at–washing the soul, finding peace, enjoying the outdoors. Three things I think are in desperately short supply these days.
The Reading List Email for April 21st, 2019
It might seem weird to be sending this on Easter Sunday, but for me, today was one of those perfect days I was trying to write about in this article. A little family. A little work. A little exercise. A little reading (East of Eden, as it happens). A lot of stillness and not many interruptions or obligations. The key, I think, is to try to make these kind of days the rule and not the exception. Good luck to all of you in that pursuit!
Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon I have been waiting to recommend this book to all of you since I read an early copy this year. I’ve always been a big Austin Kleon fan and frankly I was a little nervous about this book. Following up a successful series is really hard, especially a monster hit like Steal Like An Artist…but Austin not only does that here, he crushes it. This book is so good and so perfect for the moment, whether you’re an artist or an entrepreneur, a parent or a movie producer. There are so many strategy for pushing through despair, chaos or that looming sense that the world is falling to piece around us. Austin doesn’t promise any magical solutions but he does think that all of us sitting down and getting to work–making good stuff–can add up in a big way. I think he’s right and I really loved this book.
All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir by Erin Lee Carr Many years ago I read David Carr’s The Night of the Gun and recommended it here. It was a riveting memoir of addiction, perseverance and fatherhood (as well as an interested meta-take on the genre of memoir and memory) by one of the best journalists on the planet. And then suddenly in 2015, David Carr collapsed on the floor of the New York Times building and died. His daughter, a successful and talented documentary filmmaker (HBO, Vice etc) has written a memoir of that loss and her own journey through addiction and her twenties. I think the books go quiet well together and very much enjoyed this new book, especially as a young father now myself.
How To Hide An Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr I’d been meaning to get to this book and finally picked it up at the beach. You wouldn’t think a history of the territories and colonies of the United States would be that interesting (you might not even have known that the US had any) but it is and we have. I do feel like there are a few moments where the author was hiding the ball in order to make his point (for instance, Congress had already granted the Philippines provisional independence in 1935, which in and of itself is a striking event in the history of imperialism and very much changes the dynamic of the Japanese attack in 1941 and the US’s response). But this is a minor quibble, not only is this book not boring, it’s funny and revealing and introduces you to a whole cast of characters and events you want to study more. I hope this book gets taught in high schools and colleges.
This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History by T.R. Fehrenbach Last month I recommended Fehrenbach’s history of Texas so I was eager to pick up something else from him. It turns out that this history of the Korean War is a favorite of General James Mattis (a hero of mine). For good reason, it turns out, because the book is incredible. Anyone trying to figure out what’s going on over there…and understand what’s happening in this world of declining American power would do well to read this book. It’s gritty. It’s real. There are of course some alarming moments of racism and darkness, but then again, this is a book about a muddy, terrible war in a distant land, written in epic form by a larger-than-life writer who actually fought in it.
Civil War Stories by Ambrose Bierce My re-reading kick continues as I re-read the short stories of one of the greatest writers who ever lived: Ambrose Bierce. He also happened to be a big fan of the Stoics (hard not to be when your father was named Marcus Aurelius Bierce). Even reading these stories for the fourth or fifth time, it’s hard not to be sucked in and surprised by their turns. It’s also hard to believe they were written nearly a century and a half-ago. If you don’t have time to read this whole book (and it’s very short and cheap) and least read The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. It’s probably the best short story ever. You can read it free online.
The Reading List Email for March 24th, 2019
Lots of reading this month that I’m excited to share. As always, time on airplanes has worked to my favor in terms of getting some reading done. There’s also an article I wrote (inspired by a page in one of my favorite books, Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom) that I hope you’ll read: It’s Not Enough to Be Right. You Also Have To Be Kind. The world would be better if we stopped forgetting that. Also I’ve been hard at work on this new everyday carry piece, which I take with me as a reminder of one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Aurelius: “Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.”
What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg This year I committed to re-read a number of the most influential books in my life and Sammy is at the top of that list (I read it first when I was 19 and it even shaped the ending of Ego is the Enemy) I love more each time I read it. It’s a cautionary tale about ambition and drive–and the things we’re willing to do to get to where we thing we need to get. It’s also funny and beautifully written. Budd Schulberg was one of the last great American novelists in my opinion–he wrote books that tried to teach big lessons. A novelist today would make Sammy the hero of the book or would just wallow in his awfulness. But Schulberg didn’t just hold up our dark side as entertainment, he did it to tell us something, to advocate for our goodness and purer side. Love this book.
Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi Another re-read that I adored even more now that I am a parent. It’s the story of the extraordinary childhood and education of Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, basically the Ellen or Oprah of Japan. She was precious and strange and met exactly the right kind of teachers who knew exactly how to cultivate those virtues in her. This book has a special place in my heart because it was a favorite of my friend Seth Roberts, who died suddenly a few years ago. I think about him every time I think of the book.
Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans by TR Fehrenbach Man some people can just fucking write. This book is just spectacularly epic. I first heard about it in Robert Caro’s series on Lyndon Johnson (a must read for any thinking person) but was reluctant to pick up such a big book about one state. But this book is really the history of America and the brutal, brave, wandering spirit of the pioneers who tamed a wild land. Almost every page of this book is brilliantly written and fascinating. I think he gets a lot wrong about the Civil War and Reconstruction and there are lines in it that make you think that he was very much a product of his time (a white guy born in Texas in the 1920s). I don’t want to say he’s racist, but let’s just say there are some sweeping generalizations that don’t hold up well…His style of history is unflinching and politically incorrect–it’s also about story and personality and probably values those two things more than strict fact. The result is the kind of book that helps you understand something in a way that most boring, academic histories fail to do. Anyway, 1000% recommend.
The Library Book by Susan Orlean You know who else can just fucking write? Susan Orlean. I love her and I especially loved this book because Downtown Los Angeles is one of my favorite places in the world. This book is about the unprecedented library fire that destroyed millions of books in the Los Angeles Public Library in 1986, and the surreal case to catch the arsonist (or not) behind it. Like all Susan Orlean books this is really just a pretext for her to explore a whole bunch of other fascinating topics, which she does with great skill. Loved this book. Also really like her book Rin Tin Tin.
Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment by Garry Wills Last year I recommended his book The Kennedy Imprisonment, which I enjoyed, but Wills is a much better writer when he is talking about a president he likes. Of all the biographies I’ve read of Washington, I probably learned the most from this one because more than anything it’s about what Washington meant to the people of his own time–a position I had not considered before. Lots of wonderful insights here and some brilliant writing to boot. Also the story of Cincinnatus is one of my favorite legends in all of Roman history.
The Reading List Email for February 24th, 2019
Lots of reading this month, as well as lots of time getting caught up on updating my common place books. It can be tedious transferring the quotes and stories from the books I’ve read, one by one, onto notecards. Sometimes, thirty or forty cards deep on a book on a busy day where I have a bunch of stuff to do, I find myself wondering if it wouldn’t be better to pay someone to do this for me. Then I think about the books I’ve written and the things I’ve been able to do in my life and I realize that almost all of it traces back to this exact ritual. It’s the reading, it’s the marginalia, it’s taking the time to go back through the books, it’s the terrible hand writing, it’s organizing the material, it’s going back through them again when researching or struggling with something–that’s been my edge. So I keep going, even when my hand hurts. Hope you do too!
Also in fun news: A new updated and expanded edition of my book Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing and Advertising is out in the US in all formats (audio, ebook, paperback). It was the second book I ever wrote–way back in 2012/2013–and so much has changed since then, so I went through and added a bunch of stuff and improved on parts that I thought could use it. (A glimpse at just how much has happened in the last 6 years…) If you’re launching anything, building anything, or responsible for selling or marketing anything, this book will help. Check it out! (also ignore the date on Amazon. It is updated).
Digital Minimalism: Choosing A Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport Anything by Cal Newport is worth reading, but this new one is particularly important for anyone struggling to manage their time (and manage the amount of time they spend on their digital devices. This book was why I quit Facebook earlier this year. My conversations with Cal were also why I have almost no social apps of any kind of my phone. More recently, I’ve taken to leaving my phone in the car or in the other room when I am doing stuff. There’s no question I’ve gotten all sorts of benefits from the internet, from smart phones and from social media (you probably wouldn’t be reading this email or my books without them) but my life was better when I controlled these technologies and when the space they took up in my day was far more limited. Basically all the smart and successful people I know are wrestling with the same thing. So this is an important book that you all should read. And read Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You as well.
Simon Bolivar: American Liberator by Marie Arana What an incredible man that so few people know about. He’s like George Washington if after freeing the colonies from Britain, Washington had taken Louisiana from the Spanish, freed Nova Scotia and Canada and then for good measure, kicked some foreign powers out of the Caribbean. In 2017, I read The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which is a beautiful haunting novel about Bolivar’s last days, but this biography is a fuller and complete portrait of his entire life. There’s great stuff in here about strategy, power, ego, even Bolivar’s daily routine and reading habits are fascinating. The fatal flaw for Bolivar is that he was better at revolution than he was at governance, and that that’s what makes him a tragic figure compared to Washington. Anyway, very glad to have read this.
How To Keep Your Cool by Seneca This is a short selection of important passages from one of Seneca’s greatest works, On Anger. It’s worth reading for anyone with a temper (that is to say, everyone). It was originally written to be a kind of moderating influence on a young Nero, who Seneca was advising, but it has endured through the centuries as a warning to keep our cool and to not give in to rage or resentment or our hotter passions. It’s been wonderful to re-read Seneca as part of these editions and I plan to keep doing it. Besides, I am a big James Romm fan and he is the translator.
How To Think About War by Thucydides I first read Thucydides in college, and made my way through the whole book with the help of Robert Greene and many Wikipedia pages. Going back through the three or four choice speeches that comprise this book (Pericles, Mythilenean Debate, Melian Dialogue, etc) was not only edifying but very timely. I did find the intro on this to be snarky and ironically, emblematic of the kind of academic superiority that causes nations and leaders to ignore the timeless lessons of Thucydides, often at great cost through wars and treasure and bad policies. History of the Peloponnesian War is one of the most important collections of real and practical wisdom about human nature and strategy ever collected. We turn up our noses at it (or reject it as antiquated) at great peril. And even if it wasn’t, Thucydides is like Shakespeare–he’s influenced so much of Western thought that even if you don’t like it, you still have to understand it, just to understand why history and literature have evolved as they have.
Wellington: The Iron Duke by Richard Holmes When I was in Dublin last month, I took a long run to see the Wellington monument in Phoenix Park. I’d been a few times before but never gotten the time to see it up close. Staring at it, it struck me that Wellington is another one of those world-changing figures that most people know little so about. He beat Napoleon. He could have easily been sent to America to fight George Washington. He was Prime Minister of England, twice. The famous boots are named after him. Yet for most of my life, I thought his name actually was Wellington! (It’s Arthur Wellesley.) It took me a while to find a good biography, but this one is worth reading. It’s full of Wellington’s fantastic aphorisms and his strategic insights. It goes through his campaigns without being boring, and best of all, it’s tightly packed and easy to read in a few days. Apparently there is a BBC series adaptation of it which I am going to check out.
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Dr. Sue Johnson One of the best relationship books I’ve ever read. Strongly recommend. In the middle of the 20th century John Bowlby discovered what we now call “attachment theory” and it forever changed how we understand parenting. It’s very possible that Sue Johnson’s theory of Emotionally Focused Therapy and attachment theory in relationships could be just as paradigm shifting. There’s still a bunch more reading and work I want to do on this, but I really liked it. Next step for me will be listening to Dr. Johnson’s conversations with Dr. Drew (who is also a big advocate of EFT)
The Reading List Email for November 18th, 2018
Reading a lot of biographies lately as I get into the final stage of research for my next book. To me, there is nothing more rewarding than reading a great biography. You learn about a unique person. You learn about the time and place they lived in. You learn from their strengths and weaknesses. You learn about the costs of ambition and power and success on themselves and their family. My general rule about biographies is that older ones are better. It’s good to let them age a bit. Generally the more awards or critical praise they have gotten, the worse they are. Longer is usually better, but not always. Biographies are also a great chance to add diversity and perspective to your general worldview (as you’ll hopefully see from my selections below), but make sure that race and gender aren’t the only type of diversity you’re seeking out (ideology, experience, style, time period, etc are just as important).
Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt I loved Greenblatt’s The Swerve and Will in the World. This book is just as good. I wrote a couple months ago about how the best way to understand what’s happening in the world is not reading or watching the news, but studying great writing from the past. That’s why I loved this book and am repeating John Lithgow’s blurb from its back cover: “Tyrant is a striking literary feat. At the outset, the book notes how Shakespeare craftily commented on his own times by telling tales of tyrants from centuries before. In an act of scholarly daring, Greenblatt then proceeds to do exactly the same thing.” His books are also an excellent introduction to the classics, and that’s been helpful to me as a mostly self-directed reader.
Buddha by Karen Armstrong This book was well done. Scholarly without being pedantic, inspiring without being mystical. Armstrong is actually a former Catholic nun (who teaches at a college of Judaism), so I loved the diverse and unique perspective of the author. After this book I read Michael Schuman’s biography of Confucius which is exactly the kind of biography I don’t like. The introduction is about the author (who cares) and then the book proceeds to tackle the subject from the prospective of a journalist (usually the least interesting perspective). Meanwhile, Armstrong never misses the point of a good biography: To teach the reader how to live through the life of an interesting, complicated but important person.
Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire by Julia Baird This is just a spectacularly written biography. Like one of the best biographies I’ve read in a long time. It’s long but never tedious. It covers an immense swath of history that most readers are not familiar with, but manages to make it all very understandable and interesting. Honestly, I’ve never even heard of Queen Victoria’s husband before and was fascinated by their relationship (as well as the relationships she had after his death). I didn’t know about their role in the US Civil War, or just how many administrations she survived. I thought the author did a great job capturing just how difficult life was for a woman in 19th century, even a queen (10 kids!). But mostly, I loved hearing how she ruled and managed power. Just an extremely good book and I highly recommend. I also read Alison Weir’s biography of Queen Elizabeth I but have to say she falls far short of Baird. Almost three hundred pages into the book Weir is still bogged down in the Queen’s personal life and speaks little about her role as head of state, foreign policy, etc etc (In a way, it’s almost sexist. No good biography of FDR would spend that much time on the minutia of his private life). She was running an empire. Tell me about that! There’s some good stuff in it but one has to be very patient to find it.
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight I wanted to love this book more than I did because Frederick Douglass is one of my heroes. This is a guy who literally escaped slavery, who taught himself to read and write, who became one of Lincoln’s trusted advisors during the Civil War. To me, Frederick Douglass is one of America’s founding fathers–because without him, the second founding of this nation (post-Slavery) would not have happened. That being said, most of the best insights about Douglass come from his own writing. My Bondage and My Freedom is one of the greatest memoirs ever produced. There is some great stuff in this book–I didn’t know about Douglass’s relationship with John Brown for instance, or much about his children. The author raises more questions than he answers. Did Douglass have a bunch of longterm affairs with two supporters who lived with him? Yes or No? The book doesn’t answer…but it does spend many pages talking about the women. Was Douglass an absentee father? It seems like it, but the author never makes a case one way or another. It’s almost as if the author was scared to judged Douglass as a person, the way that a biographer of another subject would have been more comfortable getting inside the skin of their subject. This is why older biographies are typically better, as they do the real work of the biographer without fear of political correctness or modern moral ambiguity.
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution by David Quammen Robert Greene recommended this one to me when I asked for a favorite biography of Darwin. I liked this. It is written by a journalist, but one who actually seemed to like and understand his subject. He presents Darwin as a complicated, eccentric, hypochondriac who almost seemed to dread the discovery he felt himself drifting towards. I thought that was a unique take. The book is funny and quirky and really gets inside Darwin’s mind. I took a moment to re-read Paul Johnson’s biography of Darwin which takes a bit more hagiographic approach, which while inspiring and exciting, probably contains some undeserved certainty. I just found it fascinating how relaxed and methodical Darwin was. Maybe that was partially fueled by procrastination, but I appreciated that he wasn’t this intense, driven figure. He was just doing what he loved.
Three Uses of The Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama by David Mamet I’ve meant to read this book for several years. Every time I was in a book store it would pop into my head to read and then they’d never have it. Finally, I ended up ordering a copy on Amazon when I remembered and burned through it as I sat on the runway for a delayed flight. It’s classic Mamet: Contrarian. Certain. Funny. Incisive. A good read for anyone who is or wants to be a writer, who works with stories for a living or loves the arts.
The Reading List Email for October 14th, 2018
Last month had me giving six talks in four countries in ten days, which meant a lot of time on the road and in the air. It also meant lugging some heavy books across some big oceans (here’s a shot of some of the books I carried). But it was worth it. I estimate I spent a bit less than 50 hours in the air or car and I didn’t watch a single movie (or buy wifi). I just read and wrote. It was wonderful.
Almost as wonderful as the exciting news I have for folks in the US: Ego is the Enemy is for sale as a $1.99 ebook for the next week. If you haven’t read it, maybe give it a shot. If you have, maybe it’s a good excuse to give it as a gift. Or if you can, leave a review…it’s almost at the 1,000 mark on Amazon!
The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene Only two weeks before this epic book by Robert Greene is out (bonuses here if you preorder). Robert has been writing this book since Mastery came out in 2013 and it shows–it’s a spectacular masterwork that builds atop all his other books. Robert’s book have always been an unvarnished look at how the world really works, for better and for worse. What I like about this book is that it pushes us to question our own biases, our own assumptions, irrationalities and tendencies. It’s almost as if we believe other people have a ‘human nature’ but we don’t–we’re logical, fair, motivated by higher purposes always. Of course this is silly. Lots of good stuff here for anyone in a position of leadership, who works with an audience or studies human behavior.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear This book is out on Tuesday and it’s also very good. An atomic habit is a tiny habit or change that can have an enormous impact on your life. Getting up a little earlier, deleting social media from your phone, automating your savings, developing a system, these are atomic habits. Me personally, I don’t feel like I am particularly talented or even that disciplined, but I have a number of atomic habits that I started early on that have had a massive compounding benefit. My blurb of this one: “A special book that will change how you approach your day and live your life.”
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande and Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder by Chip Conley I was given this book after a talk I gave in Vancouver to a company that provides in home nursing. You’d think I’d have read it already (I carry a memento mori coin in my pocket everyday) but I hadn’t. It’s really a beautifully written, thoughtful book about death and aging. At a different talk I gave in Utah, I met the entrepreneur Chip Conley (Airbnb, Joie de Vivre), who wrote a wonderful book about the importance of surrounding oneself and benefiting from the wisdom of “elders.” Coincidentally, one of the elders in my life, George Raveling, unsolicitedly reached out to me about this very book and if George likes a book, I usually read it. Related to all this: here’s a piece from me about what I learned spending some time with one of the oldest people in the world.
How To Be Free by Epictetus and How To Be A Friend by Cicero Loving this little series of classic philosophy tests put out by the Princeton University Press (it’s called Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers). I’d read the essays already but these are freshly arranged, translated and work as great refreshers. It’s easy to forget that not that long ago philosophers actually wrote about practical, simple questions about life: What does friendship mean? How can I keep my mind clear? And even though these writers were far more brilliant than most of today’s philosophers, they wrote in accessible, straight forward prose that just about anyone can understand (and more importantly, use)
Faith: A Journey for All by Jimmy Carter I’m not a person of faith or a big fan of Jimmy Carter, but I thought this book was thoughtfully and earnestly done. I’m a big fan of Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Commencement Address where he talks about what a world devoid of faith and belief looks like, and I think this book is powerful along those same lines. The book is also an indirect testament to the importance of dignity, sobriety, selflessness and kindness in our world leaders (something that is sorely lacking today). I got a bunch of books that I will be reading next out of the epigraphs and bibliography of this book.
The Reading List Email for September 23rd, 2018
I am writing this from a tiny airport in Washington as I wait to board a flight. Before we left for the trip (Vancouver then Washington then Milan and Sao Paulo) my wife counted that there were fifteen books in my backpack and suitcase. That is the downside of my dependency on physical books…but after many years I’ve found the weight more than makes up for itself. Related to investing in oneself, if you’re looking to build self-discipline or push yourself out of your comfort zone, I am doing a 30 Day Stoic Challenge starting October 1st (kicking off International Stoic Week) that you’re invited to join. It’s got almost a full book-length work of new material from me, plus a bunch of cool extras that will help build new habits and insights. Hope you check it out and looking forward to seeing you (and myself) on the other side of it. Let’s go!
Composed: A Memoir by Rosanne Cash Steven Pressfield mentioned this book a few times in his new book The Artist’s Journey, so I picked it up. It is wonderful. I had not listened to any of Rosanne Cash’s music before so it was a treat to pair the book and her greatest hits together. There are some great ’turning pro’ stories in this book and some fantastic insights about parenting, about recovering from trauma, and what it means to be an artist. Beautiful memoir that inspired some stuff that will be in my next book as well as the emails we do for DailyStoic.com. Definitely read.
Katerina: A Novel by James Frey I thought the review of this book in the Washington Post was a complete hit job and totally unfair. In fact, I read an early manuscript of it several months ago and have been dying to recommend it. It’s a beautiful novel that perfectly captures the crazy, delusional, yet earnest force that drives someone to be a writer. It also captures dysfunctional relationships, the early seeds of addiction and what it means to look back at phases of one’s life with distance. Controversial backstory aside, James Frey is an extremely talented writer and I liked this book as much as I liked his novel about Los Angeles, Bright Shiny Morning.
Hunting Trips of a Ranchman & The Wilderness Hunter by Theodore Roosevelt This single volume collection of Theodore Roosevelt contains some of the most beautiful nature writing I have ever read–better than John Muir, better than Edward Abby. The stories are riveting as well. The fact that the guy who wrote them also happened to go on to be the President of the United States (a very good president at that) is nearly unbelievable to me. Had these two books alone been the extent of Roosevelt’s legacy, it still would have been a full and important life! There is obviously a lot in here (lots of dead animals) that will turn off non-hunters or animal activists but I hope they can see past the fact that this was a very different time and enjoy what is truly incredible writing. Roosevelt did plenty for conservation–more than just about anyone. The writing also gives one a full sense of just how wild this country was even as late as the beginning of the 20th century. Really enjoyed these. The Modern Library edition which I read also has a solid intro from Stephen Ambrose.
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twlya Tharp I don’t like dancing at all (Cicero is right: Nobody dances if they are sober…unless they are a lunatic) but this book by the choreographer Twyla Tharp was very good. Not only is it a good meditation and discussion of creativity but she has a bunch of really practical exercises and strategies for coming up with ideas and building creative works. I’m usually pretty cynical about exercises like that but hers are good. She does make one mistake which non-writers tend to make which is to mess with the “form” of a book in an annoying way. The book is awkwardly sized and features a bunch of odd (artistic!) font choices that don’t improve the message in any way. It would be better if it looked and felt and read like a regular book.
American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee Another airport find, in this case, during a trip from hell out of NYC. But I survived and read most of the book while I sat there. (It also happens that I’m in a writer’s group with the author in Austin). Fascinating story about a single, particularly charismatic and adventurous wolf in Yellowstone that manages to explore the controversial re-introduction of predators in America, what wild really means, the ethics of hunting, the politics of conservation and all that. It’s also just exciting and well-done story-telling. My favorite book in this genre is Steven Rinella’s American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon which is an absolute must read. Pairing the two together–one from a hunter’s perspective, the other from a conservationist (but again two spectacular narrative storytellers) is a great idea.
Enough: True Measures of Money, Business and Life by Jack Bogle Jack Bogle earned more money than one would need in several lifetimes, so it was refreshing to see this book–written right after the 2008 Financial Crisis–about what it means to have enough. Rockefeller’s line was that if you feel rich on $10, you’re rich. And the other side of that is if there is never enough for you, you will always feel poor and insecure. Some great lessons and quotes in this book, which I found to be surprisingly deep and well-researched. Also there is some irony here that the foreword was written by Bill Clinton but oh well.
Gridiron Genius: A Master Class in Winning Championships and Building Dynasties in the NFL by Michael Lombardi Mike Lombardi was the reason my book The Obstacle is the Way was introduced to professional sports (he spread it through the Patriots locker room during their 2014 Super Bowl winning reason). He also gave me a ton of good ideas for Ego is the Enemy. All of which is to say he is one of the most interesting voices and figures in the NFL, and one of the smartest too. This book is an excellent look at leadership and what it takes to win at the highest level. Unlike me, Mike’s writing is just based on reading history. He’s actually done it (got rings with Bill Walsh and Bill Belichick). This is a great book that I got a lot of great stuff out of. Check out our interview with Mike at DailyStoic.com for more insights.
The Reading List Email for August 26th, 2018
Two articles from me this month on the importance of reading and bookstores: Good Things Happen In Bookstores and Why Everyone Should Watch Less News (And Read More Books). Hopefully some of the recommendations below will give you something to read instead of watching the endless cycle of outrage porn that has become our media system. Remember Marcus Aurelius: “Are you distracted by breaking news? Then take some leisure time to learn something good, and stop bouncing around.” To the Stoics, leisure wasn’t sitting around eating Cheetos, it meant quiet, reflective time with oneself and the ideas that matter. And there is no place that encourages that more than local bookstores. I know I link to Amazon a lot in this email, but please support your indies. They matter. They make a difference!
Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson Loved this book. I used his Steve Jobs bio as a source for The Obstacle is the Way and his Benjamin Franklin bio for Ego is the Enemy, and this one is better than both–if only because you never really want to punch Da Vinci in the face like you do Steve Jobs. Isaacson structures the book around each one of Da Vinci’s works and notebooks so you come to understand the artist’s life through his career. I didn’t love that the book was printed in glossy white paper, but that was probably a compromise to include color photos of the artwork. Really biography at its finest–an author who understands, appreciates and contextualizes the work of a giant of history. Learned a ton from this book.
Being Nixon: A Man Divided by Evan Thomas It’s no surprise that this equally masterful biography was written by a friend and collaborator of Walter Isaacson. It too is biography at its finest, and arguably much more impressive in that Thomas allows the reader to understand–even empathize with–a complicated figure they are not predisposed to like. Nixon really was a man divided: a brilliant politician trapped in an introvert’s body, a soft-hearted man prone to hating, a big thinker who obsessed over petty matters. I took a ton of notes on this one and I think anyone trying to make sense of today’s political mess would do well to understand this book. So many contemporary themes: corruption, intellectual arrogance (from the left), a divided country, rising China and desperate Russia, political spinelessness as well as political incompetence, treason… Anyway, do read. And thanks to Robert Greene for the recommendation.
Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey and My Morning Routine: How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired by Benjamin Spall Both are solid compendiums of the lives and routines and best practices of some of the best writers, thinkers, entrepreneurs and musicians–living and dead. Daily Rituals was a book I’ve had for a long time and delayed reading. I’ve always found it somewhat ironic how remarkably unproductive the author was–the book sold in April 2009 and didn’t come out until April 2013. The blog hasn’t updated in nearly a decade. WTF? How about, you know, applying some of the insights learned researching all these great artists? But that can be the danger of routine porn… Still, I missed out by waiting because the book has a lot of wonderful nuggets in it. It can be a bit pretentious with an annoying affectation of Britishisms like “going on holiday” and “morning toilet” but that didn’t stop me from getting a lot out of it. I wish I had read it when it came out and got over my prejudices. Benjamin Spall’s Morning Routines book is much more democratic and accessible. It’s less concentrated and filtered (it’s interview-based rather than research-driven) but still good for anyone looking to get their act together in the AM.
Only To Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel by Lawrence Osborne I’ve read every Raymond Chandler novel ever written. He is one of the greatest novelists to ever do it and one of the best to capture the city of Los Angeles. Very happy to hear his estate is continuing to publish novels around the Philip Marlowe character. This short novel finds Marlowe retired, at 72, living in Mexico in 1988. An insurance company comes to him with one last case. Twists and turns and wit ensues. Worth reading if you’re a fan of Chandler or the detective novel.
The Artist’s Journey: The Wake of the Hero’s Journey and the Lifelong Pursuit of Meaning by Steven Pressfield and Running Down A Dream: Your Road Map To Winning Creative Battles by Tim Grahl I’ll give you my blurbs for both these books. On Steven’s: “Wherever you are, whatever you’ve been called to make…you need to read this book.” On Tim’s: “Running Down a Dream is a book about how to do the thing most people want to do but tell themselves is too scary, too hard, too unlikely. Tim Grahl is not some once-in-a-million-years genius. He’s an ordinary person who has managed to do what most ordinary people think is impossible. That’s why you should listen to him.” Pressfield’s The War of Art and Turning Pro were two instrumental books in my journey to becoming a writer. His new one deserves to be up there alongside. As I said, Tim is a good example that anyone can do this, if they want it bad enough and are willing to put in the work.
The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age by Patrick Parr I read this after the suggestion of a subscriber, only to find that it was also raved about by my friend George Raveling on Tim Ferris’s podcast. It’s a very interesting look at a formative period of MLK’s life–the three years he spent at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania from age 19 to age 22. I was fascinated by the fact that his dorm was previously a Civil War hospital and MLK’s hall actually had graffiti in it from Confederate soldiers (our greatest Civil Rights Activist lived in the same building as soldiers who nearly gave their lives to keep his people enslaved). He also fell in love with a white woman, loved to play pool and had a bad habit of plagiarizing in his school papers. There was also evidence of his greatness, and I particularly liked his early sermon “What’s Your Life’s Blueprint?”
The Reading List Email for July 22nd, 2018
Knee deep in research for the next book, and have been churning through books on a bunch of different topics. That’s the fun part. The thousands–literally, thousands–of notecards that I’ve piled up in the process is less fun. Well, actually, it’s still fun, my hand just hurts and my handwriting is becoming borderline illegible. In any case, this is the job. Nothing better than getting paid to read books! Related to that, some exciting news: My book, Conspiracy (which is about an incredible story that people think they know…but don’t) is $1.99 on Kindle in the US this week. The New York Times called it a “profound masterwork” so maybe give it a shot? That’s pretty cheap. It’ll make you think about some things, I promise.
The Art of Happiness by Epicurus I’ve had this translation on my shelf for years and never got around to it, but I saw it at an airport last month, bought it again and read the whole thing on one flight. Epicurus was a rival to the Stoics…and today both schools rival each other for title of most misunderstood school of philosophy. Epicureanism is not hedonism. In fact, Epicurus preaches restraint and self-discipline. “The pleasant life is not the product” of drinking and sex, Epicurus said, “on the contrary, it is the result of sober thinking–namely investigation of the reasons for every act of choice and aversion and elimination of those false ideas about the gods and death which are the chief source of mental disturbances.” That being said, Epicurus was much more explicit about joy and happiness than Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius. The Epicureans were less concerned about duty and honor and other earthly obligations–they were more Eastern in that way. They were also pithier, in my opinion. Which is probably why Seneca joked, after quoting Epicurus, “I don’t mind quoting a bad author if the line is good.” Anyway, read this…and it’s probably ok to skip the stuff about atoms.
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy by Philip J. Ivanhoe Don’t dismiss over the boring title! The book is an amazing anthology of the best of Eastern Chinese philosophy (most of it pre-Zen Buddhism). I folded so many pages reading it that I dreaded having to transfer my notes to notecards. It took forever but it was worth it. This is a great introduction to Confucius, The Daodejing, and other important texts. You’ll be seeing stuff from it in my next book and the daily emails for DailyStoic.com for sure. (I heard about this book from The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life by Michael Puett)
Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm I am an enormous Janet Malcolm fan (her book The Journalist and The Murderer is incredible and very much shaped Conspiracy). This book is joint biography of Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice B. Toklas. It’s a very strange story–how did a famous American Jewish lesbian author end up in occupied France during the WWII and manage to survive the Nazi’s? It’s a weird biography too because you certainly don’t leave it particularly fond of Gertrude…you don’t even leave it convinced that she was a particularly talented writer. But it is an insightful look–as all Malcolm’s books are–into the human and artistic condition. I felt like the dynamic between Stein and Toklas very much captured the two people that are inside every artist (the kind and giving person and the cruel, self-absorbed person). Much to think about here.
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy by Robert Dallek and A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power by Garry Wills After reading Thirteen Days last month, I went down a rabbit hole on JFK. Lots of good stuff in these books, and from different perspectives too. Arthur Schlesinger’s book I got used at Powell’s in Portland (an awesome indie) and it’s beautifully written and a unique perspective given his role in the White House for many of the events he was writing about. An Unfinished Life I got at the B&N in Dana Point, at the recommendation of a wonderful manager there. The book is quite good–a bit too positive about JFK’s virtues and potential. The Kennedy Imprisonment is all about the darker side–the downsides of the cult of charisma and the Kennedy’s obsession with power. At the same time, the book is so absurdly negative at times that it’s almost painful. Anyway, these four books gave me the well-rounded picture I was looking for. There doesn’t seem to be a Robert Caro for Kennedy so it took four authors to get there.
The World is a Narrow Bridge: A Novel by Aaron Thier Aaron Thier is one of my favorite contemporary novelists and this book is excellent (please read Mr. Eternity too). This book is strange to describe. It’s a young couple in Florida, thinking of having a baby, when they are approached by Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. He forces them to become his prophets and to tour America spreading his word. Look, I know that sounds strange, but somehow this is the perfect book to read write now. It’s a book about coming of age in these chaotic, alarming times. It’s a book about starting a family. It’s also deeply funny and moving. Its title it based on a profound Jewish epigram. I wrote a little article about it here, connecting it to Stoicism. You might like it…and you should like the book too.
The Reading List Email for June 24th, 2018
Got into a nice groove reading in the last month (4 books in 4 days, something I haven’t done probably since college), which is usually a sign I’m exploring something I am excited about. Below are the ones I wanted to recommend to you. Also, I wanted to share two articles this month that were inspired by two of my favorite books: “How To Recover When The World Breaks You” (based on Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms) and “How To Be A Professional Son (Or Daughter)” (based on Robert Caro’s epic series on Lyndon Johnson.) Oh, and it looks like Conspiracy is being turned into a movie with the director from Hunger Games and the award-winning screenwriter behind The Big Short. More to come on that…
Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Robert F. Kennedy Most of us are familiar with the Cuban Missile Crisis, but have you really stopped to think about the self-control, the clarity and the understanding of game theory and human nature required to navigate such a scenario? As Kennedy writes, the command room during the crisis was filled with a lot of people giving the kind of blasé advice where—if they were wrong—no one would be around to hold them accountable for. Kennedy, a man not without flaws, masterfully weighs so many options, so many competing opinions, so much uncertainty (Khrushchev too, though he gets less credit since he put the events in motion). This memoir, which has a great foreword and afterword updated with declassified information, is essential for any thinker, any leader, and any student of history.
Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel and Zen Bow, Zen Arrow: The Life and Teachings of Awa Kenzo, the Archery Master from Zen in the Art of Archery by John Stevens Earlier this month I was sitting back taking notes after my reading of both these books when my wife yelled “HOGS!” I rushed downstairs, grabbed my rifle, and as I walked slowly through the trees towards the small pack of wild hogs, I practiced both the breathing exercises in the book and the art of letting the shot fall from the weapon (rather than being forced). It was a rather perfect moment—and so too was the delicious boar sausage I had made afterwards. Of course, Master Kenzo would say that whether the shots hit their mark (three of four did) is irrelevant. What mattered was the moment and the practice. Because these are ultimately not books about archery, but about zen, and the mastery of the soul. Both very good, the former deserving of its reputation, and the latter a helpful guide to understanding it. I also read Eugen Herrigel’s wife book Zen and the Art of Flower Arrangement which is not nearly as good but has some nice insights.
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and Anne Frank: The Biography by Melissa Müller I picked up Anne Frank’s Diary, which I had not read in high school, during a stop at the San Diego Airport. I’m not sure I could have fully appreciated the wisdom, the tragedy and the profound inspiration of this book as a teenager. Today, paired with Melissa Müller’s biography and our chaotic international (and now domestic) world, it hit me fully and deeply. (You might like this short essay we did for DailyStoic.com about Anne Frank and the obligation we have to stand up to evil). If you’ve never been to Amsterdam, consider a trip to see the Anne Frank House/Museum, for it is equally powerful. “Paper is more patient than people,” Anne Frank wrote, it is also far less cruel than our world, which unlike the diary, snuffed out the life of this young prodigy. But the concluding note from Miep Gies in Melissa Müller’s biography reminds us that Anne Frank is not the representative of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust, she is one of the millions of people—all of whom had their own hopes, dreams, and lives snuffed out by the cruelty of man and survive to us only on paper, and in some cases, not even there.
The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie This was not an easy book to read—nor to write I imagine–but it is a biography of four important, intersecting lives that too many people are not familiar with: Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor and Thomas Merton. All four were Catholic, all four were brilliant writers and all four were philosophers of the human condition. (It’s not a coincidence that Pope Francis singled out two of them for posthumous recognition during his visit to America in 2015). I am deeply partial to Walker Percy, whose novels rank among my favorite, but knew next to nothing about Merton or Dorothy Day. The book is a little long, but there are some great passages here and a good starting point for anyone looking to explore these lives.
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton A recommendation from a reading list subscriber that I ended up very much enjoying. It’s a wonderful novel with all sorts of twists and turns, as well as hilarious quips. In a time that is populated with far too many people who simply want “to watch the world burn,” this excellent passage was one I wrote down and saved in my notes:
Do you see this lantern?” cried Syme in a terrible voice. “Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it.”
The Reading List Email for May 27th, 2018
Too much of this month was spent in airplanes or stuck on bedrest. When I could think clearly, I could read, but most of the time I couldn’t. Ordinarily this would have been annoying but this month it was particularly distressing because each one of the books I read below was so good that I hated putting them down. The spread is more diverse than usual—narrative nonfiction, the story of a young girl who died tragically young, two European novels and a bunch of other weird stuff. Almost all of them came by recommendation too (people always ask me where I find the books I read. The answer is: I don’t ask people that question. I ask “What books do you recommend?”) Hope you like them…and if you have time and are looking for a book that I think has become only more timely since it was published, I hope you can give Conspiracy a glance. The New York Times called it “one helluva page-turner” and The Sunday Times of London said it was “riveting…an astonishing modern media conspiracy that is a fantastic read.” So don’t take my word for it. Anyway, try these too.
And if you want to try any of the books below for free—as ebooks or audio—my friends at Scribd can hook you up. Click here to sign up for a one month trial of unlimited audiobooks and ebooks plus free subscription to magazines like Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Fortune and others. Sign up today.
What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen by Kate Fagan The first thing I did when I read this book was recommend it to every college coach that I know. The second thing I did was email the author to let her know how deeply moved I was by the book. You may remember the ESPN story from a few years ago: Maddy was a beautiful, All-American track and field athlete who by all appearances was living her dream. She made it to the Ivy League. She had friends. She was active on social media. Then on January 17th, 2014, she killed herself by leaping off a parking garage. This book is a haunting, thoughtful examination of an all-too-common story where someone looks perfect on the outside, but is deeply pained on the inside. It’s a story of people who tried to help but couldn’t reach her, a story of other people who thought they were helping but only made things worse, and a story of what pressure, bad choices, and technology are doing to young people. If you have kids, work with kids, whatever—read this book. Also, the title of the book is a reference to one of my favorite novels, What Makes Sammy Run?.
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne How many times did I pass this book in airports? Why did I never pick it up? I’m a huge S.C. Gwynne fan too (Rebel Yell: A Biography of Stonewall Jackson), it makes no sense. This book is amazing. It turns everything you think you know about the American frontier, about Native Americans, about Indian policy on its head…oh, and it is a gripping, unbelievable story. The last of the Commanches war chiefs was the son of Cynthia Ann Parker, a white woman who had been kidnapped by Commanches in 1836? Unreal. S.C. Gwynne is a magnificent writer whose work is filled with beautiful observations that will blow your mind. My favorite is when he compares the Commanches to the Celts or the Mongols, defining them as one of the greatest fighting people who ever lived…and they were armed with repeating rifles and ruled over an empire of millions of square miles. And who were they fighting? White settlers in the late 1800s, people who had studied Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson, who had invented the telegraph, and wanted to live in houses with glass windows. It was clash of civilizations. Horrific, brutal, inevitable. It’s just an insane book and insane story.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel by Milan Kundera I read in How To Turn Down A Billion Dollars that this book was Evan Spiegel’s, founder of Snapchat, favorite book—not novel, book. When I hear successful people rave about a specific book as life-changing, I try to read it. Even if I don’t like the book or agree with it, I learn something. This is certainly a beautiful novel, though I think a strange one to have as your favorite. It is filled with a number of provocative insights and descriptions (of love, of fear, of random chance, of history). I did have trouble liking the protagonist or really any of the characters very much. I mean, none of the horrible pain the characters would have felt had the main guy just not cheated constantly on his partner (who, by the way, repeatedly told him how much pain this caused her). I wonder how much the ephemeral nature of relationships in the book, and the near immediate-gratification / nihilism that it ultimately espouses, influenced Snapchat or how much social media is merely a reflection of that ethos.
The Fall by Albert Camus Now if you told me this was your favorite novel, I’d find that to be interesting and revealing. To me, this book is the story of “what happens when good men do nothing.” It’s about the Bystander Effect and about how emergencies and crises are moments of truth when our principles are tested. The narrator of this book is someone who failed that test and is haunted by it for the rest of his life. I will say it is not exactly the clearest read—it’s an odd format and style—but I got through with the help of Wikipedia and some reviews. Was definitely worth it, and I loved the book. Thank you to the random fan who bought this for me in Seattle while I was on tour for Conspiracy!
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick I believe this is my second Philbrick book after In the Heart of the Sea? It’s excellent narrative non-fiction, as always, and paired nicely with what I learned in S.C. Gwynne’s book. Did you know that one of the passengers on the Mayflower was also a passenger on the shipwrecked Sea Venture, the news story that inspired Shakespeare to write The Tempest? I mean how insane is that? And it gives you a sense of both how distant and how recent history really is. This book tells the story of the landing of the Mayflower, the hubris and the perseverance of it. It shows the courage and the stupidity of the settlers, and does a good job showing equally the inspiring and high minded ideals of the Mayflower Compact as well as the original sin of the creation of America (our treatment of the natives).
Theodore Roosevelt: A Literary Life by Thomas Bailey and Katherine Joslin This was recommended to me by Brett McKay of The Art of Manliness who has turned me onto lots of great stuff. He was right again with this book. Theodore Roosevelt is one of the great all-time world leaders…and on the side he was one of our all-time great writers and historians and readers. This was a man who, in addition to becoming President of the United States, wrote some 47 books in his lifetime, who read a book a day even while he was in office. This is a bit of a nerdy read but there is solid stuff in here about his influences, his style, and his belief that words had to be matched by deeds. Related to this, one of my favorite books about my other favorite president is an even better book in this genre—Lincoln: Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan. I also loved Edmund Morris’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, which I read at 19 years old and changed my life. Brett had a good list of book recommendations from TR as well.
The Reading List Email for April 22nd, 2018
The book tour for Conspiracy has finally come to a close. It was nearly two months on and off the road, which meant two good things for me: Lots of swimming, lots of reading. I read on airplanes, in airport lounges, in Ubers, in hotel rooms, in mediocre hotel restaurants and everywhere else I could. I also got caught up on a lot of notes from the backlog of books I’d read but still needed to transfer to notecards for future projects. Thank you to everyone who came out and to all the indie bookstores who supported the launch (you can still get signed copies at BookPeople.com if you missed any of the stops). Related news to my books: For the last several months we’ve been working on these challenge coins to go along with The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy. If you want a vivid, physical reminder of the philosophy in those books, check them out. They are good to carry with you, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. I hope it’s not weird to say that I carry them too. And finally, I also wrote this op-ed in the New York Times about the connection between Stoic philosophy, power and today’s politics. Enjoy!
Grant by Ron Chernow I put off reading this book originally because I’m such a Grant fan and have read so much about him that I felt guilty spending another thousand or so pages on him. Of course, this is silly because Chernow is specular at everything he does and there was much in here I didn’t know. The story of Grant’s dogged fit to push through the 13th-15th Amendments, and to fight to protect the rights of the new black citizens his soldiers had died to create, is both heartbreaking and inspiring. It’s a version of American history that every schoolchild in the country should be taught—that the struggle is not something we should be ashamed of but something we should be encouraged by. Grant almost did it. And that’s why we can’t ever stop trying. Grant’s younger years are amazing as well. He went from chopping and selling firewood for a living to the president of the country in roughly a decade. Unreal. I think Chernow focuses too much on the alcoholism in this book—certainly much more than Grant or Lincoln or anyone else living at the time did, and it’s one of my few criticisms. He also presents Grant as a hopeless rube who was constantly taken advantage of, but that strikes me as too simplistic as well. Anyway, read this. Also read anything by Bruce Catton on Grant, Grant’s own memoirs and the Brooks D. Simpson bio about Grant’s early years (which I used in writing The Obstacle is the Way.)
Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen Mark Manson recommended this book to me. I ended up liking it more than he did and strongly suggest everyone read it. Note that the author is speaking of classical liberalism, not Democrats. The premise, as I understand it, is that a political philosophy that was designed to create freedom as liberalism, was created with the understanding that it would be operated with the checks and balances of culture, religion, and important concepts like patriotism, duty, honor and self-discipline. The paradox of liberalism has been a slow and steady undermining of those parallel institutions and thus have created the chaos we face today. Nothing illustrates this better than most critics of Donald Trump—they don’t like him, but they can’t exactly explain why, nor can they present much in the way of an actual alternative. But the truth is that it wasn’t Trump who destroyed our norms, it was us and our parents and their parents that gutted these things for our own selfish reasons…and now here we are. Anyway, this book is a bit overwritten, and I hope I didn’t make it sound like it was about modern politics, because it isn’t. It’s very good and should be read.
The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides by Aeschylus Whenever I am in LA and out of books, I like to go to The Last Bookstore downtown and pick up a random used copy of something from the Penguin Classics section. I picked up this set of three plays by Aeschylus and loved it. I was actually kicking myself while reading because it would have been the perfect thing to have read while researching Conspiracy. The first play is about a dark act of vengeance. The second about vengeance on the person who got vengeance. And third is the creation of the first jury trial and the ideals behind the Western justice system to stop the cycle from continuing. It’s really beautifully written, yet still entertaining, readable and profoundly wise. I would suggest reading the Wikipedia entry for each play first, study the themes and then read.
Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian One of my flights towards the end of the book tour sat on the runway for nearly two hours. I didn’t care at all. Why? Because I was reading this book. What a book! And how I came to feel for Tiger Woods and the childhood he had stolen from him. This is not to excuse the cheating (on his wife or allegedly in the game of golf), but it does explain it. Woods’ father trained him to be an assassin. To feel nothing. To regret nothing. To stop at nothing. How else could the story have gone? The saddest part is that his eventual scandal and time in rehab seems to be what finally cracked him open and made him at least partly human…and perhaps in the process deprived him of his one joy in life: dominating the game of golf. Anyway, this is an epic book about an epic life. Loved it.
Silence by John Cage and Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists by Kay Larson Going into these books I knew next to nothing about John Cage and came away an enormous fan of him as an artist, if not his art itself. In these books, you find Cage to be a somewhat tortured soul who turns to Zen philosophy to push the boundaries of music almost to the degree that Duchamp pushed sculptures and modern art. I loved Cage’s book for the Zen stories he told and the bio for explaining the man behind. Really good.
How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher Billy was nice enough to send me this book. Having just written a book myself about an enigmatic, ambitious billionaire, I loved seeing what Billy was able to do with Evan’s story. Evan comes off in the book as a mix between brilliant and out of his depth, particularly in his battles against Mark Zuckerberg. I did enjoy Spiegel’s memo on secrecy and some of his other power plays, and yet one can’t help but think his charmed life makes him the representative millennial: sheltered, over-educated, disruptive yet only superficially so, and somehow with all this, rather boring. Worth reading, even if you don’t use Snapchat (which I don’t…partly because, like I said, Spiegel has been so outmaneuvered by Zuckerberg).
Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon by Robert Kurson I will read anything that Robert Kurson writes. Shadow Divers is one of my favorite non-fiction books ever and Pirate Hunters is just as good. When Rob told me he was rushing to do this book in order to tell the story of these astronauts while we were still lucky enough to have them alive, I was beyond excited. Definitely read this book. They don’t make guys like Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders like this anymore. I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my other favorite writer’s new book, Aaron Thier’s The World Is A Narrow Bridge, which I think captures why reading about these astronauts and being inspired by them is so important: “Some people are so smart they can put a guy on the moon, and other people are so dumb or crazy that they can’t be convinced it ever happened and that’s the problem of human society right there.”
The Reading List Email for March 4th, 2018
Back to our regularly scheduled programming, right? First, I want to thank everyone who gave Conspiracy a chance last week. If you have a second, I’d be honored if you gave it a review on Amazon. For those of you who are still on the fence—I get it, the book is a big departure for me. It was an enormous leap for me stylistically, creatively, emotionally. But it’s seeming to have paid off. The New York Times called Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue a “profound masterwork,” and the Washington Post marvelled at it as “a genuinely startling proposition.” There’s a lot of great books recommended in this month’s email, but before you check them out, I’m asking if you can give this excerpt from the book a shot. TechCrunch ran a section of one of my favorite chapters in the entire book, the secret meeting between the billionaire Peter Thiel and an ambitious young upstart who dared him to take on Gawker. It was a meeting whose existence was entirely unknown before I put these words down, a meeting that resulted in the destruction of a $300 million dollar company and has changed the direction of journalism forever. Anyway, give it a shot. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. You’ll like the book too, I promise. And here’s an article from me as to why I had to write it. Or you can just read the first page. It’s awesome.
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant To His Son by George Horace Lorimer I re-read this book for a project I am working on and I loved it as much the second time as I did the first. These fictional letters from a father—a successful businessman in Chicago—to his son—an earnest but somewhat lazy college student—are perfect for just about everyone. If you’re a parent, you’ll read it one way. If you’re an ambitious upstart, another. If you’re a boss or an entrepreneur, another still. I don’t agree with all the advice of course, much of it is harsh and unfeeling, but there is a lot here. I remember thinking on my first read, “I wish my father had given me advice like this” but as I’ve gotten older I realized that the reason I liked the book was that he had, I just hadn’t listened.
The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World’s Greatest Teams by Sam Walker The lacrosse player Paul Rabil recommended this book to me when I did his podcast. What a book! Sports are filled with so much mythology and bias that we really don’t have a good sense of what creates and sustains a true champion. Here Sam Walker has developed a real methodology for it, and discovered the commonalities between the San Antonio Spurs, the New Zealand All Blacks, the Montreal Canadiens, the Boston Celtics, the USA Women’s Soccer team and others. The core of it is that these teams had great captains—not star players, not big salary caps, but captains. People like Bill Cartwright on the Chicago Bulls, Carla Overbeck on the US Women’s Soccer team, Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees and Jack Lambert of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I disagree with some of his methodology (how are the Patriots not included???) but this is an incredibly well-written book that should be studied by anyone trying to build a great organization. His chapter on “carrying the water” had some great insights re: Ego is the Enemy.
Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey Turned out a friend and I were reading this book at the same time. The memoirs of three seasons as a park ranger at the Arches National Park, the book contains some of the most beautiful passages about nature and the wildness of the wilderness that I have ever read. I read up a bit on Abbey after, and he doesn’t sound like the best dude, but that whole generation of writers seems to be filled with a lot of narcissistic jerks. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of wisdom and beauty in their prose though! It inspired me to plan another National Parks trip this summer. And if you haven’t seen the Ken Burns documentary series, you’re missing out. The section in this book about his journey down the Colorado river is as good as anything in John Graves’ Goodbye to a River (also a favorite) and I wish it was its own book, that’s how good it is.
The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher The premise of this book is an interesting one, if likely incorrect: We live in a post-Christian nation and Christians must look to develop and maintain their own inner culture now that their reign as a dominant cultural and political force has come to an end. When the author talks about taking care of your own family and participating in a tight-knit community in your own hometown, he sounds spot on (and right regardless of faith). When he rails against homosexuality and everything else…well it sounds like that’s really what has him upset. I’m always open to reading books of people with radically different viewpoints than my own and so in that way this book was an important read. In many cases, I felt like just telling the author that everything was going to be OK. He needed a dose of Stoicism, the relief that comes from knowing the world has always been in a state of chaos and decline and that there was honor and dignity in being good and cheerful despite it all. There’s no reason to whip oneself, literally or figuratively.
Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child by Thich Nhat Hanh Hanh is so prolific and so wise, I sometimes suspect he’s not a real person. He’s like one of those ancient authors that’s really like 20 different people over a couple generations. This book was wonderful and I think is important for anyone that has some anger and frustration about their childhood. I’ve done some inner-child work in therapy and this book has a number of beautiful, insightful, eastern-inspired ways of taking that little kid inside you—the one that wants to lash out, the one that feels perpetually hurt or slighted—and comforting and calming them. As always with Hanh, his writing is both timeless, personal and yet still somehow backed with real research. Give this book a read. Also recommend: Taming the Tiger Within and his two books on walking and sitting.
The Reading List Email for January 21st, 2018
Before I get into my first set of recommendations for the new year (here are my favorites of last year), I have some exciting news: My next book is out in roughly one month. It’s an almost unbelievable story of power, ambition, destruction, poetic justice—and most of all a story of conspiracy. It’s called…Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker and the Anatomy of Intrigue. More details to come, but for now the book is tightly under wraps by the publisher. The good news I can share now is that I will be doing a number of in-person events across the country in March and I hope to see many of you there (info here for tickets, dates, etc.) In the meantime, here are a bunch of recommendations to tide you over, and be on the lookout for more stuff from me!
I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers by Tim Madigan and The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers by Amy Hollingsworth I know this seems crazy, but I think I’ve earned some trust with my recommendations over the years. These two books came my way after I watched this short documentary called “Just the Way You Are”. I’d obviously watched Mr. Rogers growing up but knew next to nothing about him as a person. After reading the books, I say with only slight exaggeration that if he had lived a few centuries ago, he probably would have been canonized as a saint. I openly cried at least two times in both books. One of the times in public, on a plane. I’m not saying they are the best books ever written but as far as I know they are the two of the best about what seems like one of the most thoughtful, kind and empathetic person ever. A lot to learn here and a lot to make you think.
Sadaharu Oh: A Zen Way of Baseball by Sadaharu Oh As a testament to my embarrassing American-ness, I’ve never heard of Sadaharu Oh until a baseball coach I know mentioned him (and therefore didn’t know he was a better homerun hitter than Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron or Barry Bonds). They recommended this book and I found an old used copy on Amazon. It turns out that in addition to being an incredible athlete, he’s also a beautiful writer and storyteller. I’ve recommended and written about Musashi before—well, Sadaharu actually designed his infamous swing around the teaching of Musashi (famously practicing pitchers with a sword). This book was great. It’s a memoir more than it is a book about baseball so even if you don’t like sports, I promise you will get a lot out of it.
The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca by Emily Wilson Perhaps there is no historical figure more appropriate for today’s times than Seneca. He was a philosopher drawn into politics—he wanted to make a difference in the real world and then found himself in the court of Nero, trying to contain a wildly insecure, inexperienced leader who some thought was deranged and others thought was brilliant (sound familiar?). Seneca loved nothing more than quiet, reflective time alone…yet he also needed and wanted fame, fortune and impact. And it was these competing desires—between his philosophy and the real world—that created an incredible life and an incredible set of lessons. I deeply enjoyed James Romm’s book Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero which is a more tragic and personal look at Seneca, and for that reason had held off reading Emily Wilson’s biography. That was a mistake, because hers is also very good. Her translations of Seneca are excellent and her insights are provocative. Must read for any student of history or philosophy. (Also, read the interview we did with Emily for DailyStoic.com).
A Conspiracy Of Decency: The Rescue Of The Danish Jews During World War II by Emmy E. Werner The lawyer for Penguin Random House who did the legal editorial review for Conspiracy recommended this book to me. I’m glad she did as I would not have heard of it otherwise. It goes to my point though: Not every conspiracy is evil—the word is neutral, its usage is not. This book is about the elaborate, multi-year, multi-faceted conspiracy of the people of Denmark to keep the Nazis away from their Jewish citizens. Although Denmark was occupied by Germany fairly early in WWII, only a small fraction of their Jewish population fell victim to the Holocaust. Why? Because the Danish hid them, smuggled more than 7,000 Jews to Sweden, foiled German plans, rose up against the German occupied forces and generally made what other countries made too easy, very hard. This book was a reassuring read in a time of political chaos and a rise of alarming divisiveness: People can do the right thing and when they do, it can be contagious to the people around them.
Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta by Richard Grant British writer moves from New York City to a couple century old plantation in Pluto, Mississippi. Loved this book. It’s an experience I’ve had in my own life, moving first to New Orleans from California and then New Orleans to a farm in central Texas. Grant’s observations are hilarious but also insightful. I’d say he probably gets a bit more obsessed with race than is necessary (I get the sense he’s thinking more about race than any of the citizens in Pluto, black or white—racists included). But he perfectly captures the joy and benefits of leaving the big city and experiencing life in the so-called real America, where you have actual neighbors, the news is always insane, and it feels like nature is out to get you.
The Reading List Email for September 13th, 2020
There was one book I read last month that I didn’t put in the newsletter. Even more unusual, I read the book out loud… to myself. The good news is that this month you can read it (or hear it), because my new book Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius comes out Sept 29th in all forms, including audiobook. Barnes and Noble even has a limited run of 3,000 signed editions (10% of which I added special inscriptions to). As you know, my life’s study has been dedicated to Stoicism, and I have long been fascinated by the flesh and blood Stoics of 2,000 years ago. What were they like? What did they do? How did they manage to live up to (or fall short) of their philosophical ideas? That’s what this new book is—the first time that the lives of the Stoics have ever been examined all in one volume. I think you’ll love it: 26 biographies from Zeno to Cato, Seneca to Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius and Rusticus (a merchant, a senator, a playwright, a slave, an emperor, and a judge, respectively). It’d mean so much if you could support the book, and I’ve got a bunch of preorder bonuses for you as well (any format, any country is eligible—instructions here).
The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made by Walter Issacson and Evan Thomas That this book is remotely readable is a testament to Issacson and Thomas’s consummate skill (I love Thomas’s biography of Nixon). More than just readable, it’s riveting. This book is really a biography of Averell Harriman, Dean Acheson, George Kennan, Robert Lovett, John McCloy, and Charles Bohlen—the six most influential unelected officials of the last 100 years. Together, they shaped the strategy of World War II, the Marshall Plan, the Cold War and (less successfully) Vietnam and gasp they were rich elites who did a good job. Their reach and influence spanned nearly three quarters of a century—from World War I through Nixon. I took an incredible amount of notes from this book and learned a ton about FDR, Truman, and the Cold War.
The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates Jr. There are a bunch of trendy/controversial books about race out right now. My inclination is to turn towards the classics—or things that have stood at least some test of time. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a treasure and I particularly enjoyed his essay on Phillis Wheatley, who I knew only a little about. As Gates explains, she was not only one of the great poets of the Revolution, but as a freed slave, she challenged everything that the Founders thought they knew about race. How could slavery be justified if the race wasn’t actually inferior? Unfortunately, this moment of reckoning was short-lived, as Gates writes in Stony the Road, his book about the aftermath of the Civil War. The more I read about Reconstruction, the more convinced I am that it is one of the least understood and more heinous eras in American history, perhaps even worse than slavery in some ways. My study of this period has been ongoing, but I feel I have learned far more from it—and it’s changed me for the better as a person—than a book like Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor (which I also read but was not super impressed with).
The Bear, a novel by Andrew Krivak I read The Road earlier in the pandemic and someone suggested this one as a follow up. It’s a beautiful, haunting novel about a man and his daughter at the end of the world… and her surreal journey to survive. I read this in a day or so and absolutely loved it. If you’re a parent, you’ll be touched. If not, you’ll still like it.
To Hell and Back: The Classic Memoir of World War II by America’s Most Decorated Soldier by Audie Murphy Wow. The memoir of a true American hero (and a famous actor and songwriter) whose short life was filled with heroism and quiet stoicism (the lowercase kind). As good as the other World War I and World War II classics I’ve recommended before: Helmet for My Pillow, With the Old Breed, Company K, Goodbye to All That. Here’s a crazy idea: Change the name of Fort Hood (named after a traitor not from Texas) to Fort Murphy (a hero from Texas).
My First Coach: Inspiring Stories of NFL Quarterbacks and Their Dads by Gary Myers You’ll see I’ve recently been including a section in this email of kids/parenting books, but this one was good enough to be mentioned on its own. It’s a great concept for a book: The story of the Harbaugh, Manning, Brady, Carr, Montana, and Winston families and how they helped form some of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. It’s a book about sports, sure, but really about parenting, leadership and love. There were a bunch of great anecdotes in here that will definitely appear in the DailyDad.com emails I do each morning (which if you haven’t signed up for yet, you should!).
The Reading List Email for October 18th, 2020
One of the hardest parts of putting out a book for me is how much it blows up my routine. The months and years of writing. All the time it takes putting the project together—I love that part, and I can build my life around it. The trickiest part is the release. Because it’s just so different. Doing interviews. Waiting. Pitching. Obviously, it was a little different this go-around with Lives of the Stoics because of the pandemic—mercifully, no travel!—but still it can take a while to recover from. But the good news was the results: #1 debut! I really appreciate all the support on the book. I’ve loved hearing from everyone. If you haven’t checked out the book, I hope you do. If you’re looking for somewhere easier to start, some of the YouTube videos I’ve created (subscribe here) might be interesting. Here’s The Life of Seneca, The Life of Stockdale, and How I’ve Survived the Pandemic By Using Stoicism. Meanwhile, I am back to my normal life, writing and most of all, reading.
Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy by Edward Ball and A Fool’s Errand by Albion W. Tourgee I read these two back to back and they were incredibly eye-opening. Most of my reading over the years has been up to and through the Civil War (many recommended here), but I tended to stop at Reconstruction. These two books—the novel by Albion Tourgee being a bit tougher to read—helped me understand what exactly happened after. It’s almost as if we have a historical black hole where we know that the South fought to preserve slavery and then we know that Jim Crow segregation eventually set in, but what happened in between? Well, those same soldiers (and politicians) waged a horrifying, violent campaign to destroy any hope or ability of freed blacks to control their own destiny in America. Terrorism is not an exaggeration—the KKK was a terrorist group that in fact the Department of Justice was formed in an attempt to stop. I learned so much from Ball’s book (forthcoming guest on the podcast, coming soon) and just as much from A Fool’s Errand (Albion was one of the legal advisors in the Plessy v. Ferguson case). Strongly recommend one or both of these books to anyone who wants a better sense of how we got to where we are today. Also if you’re interested, here’s a step I have taken in regards to Confederate monuments (that is: literal white supremacy monuments, as you’ll learn in these books) in my town. I also highly recommend the Chernow biography of Ulysses S. Grant which has a wonderful and equally eye-opening section on Reconstruction.
American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work by Susan Cheever A surprise recommendation that I’d never even heard of, but felt almost like it was written for me. Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts and several other great writers of the 19th century all lived in Concord, Massachusetts together… at the same time. They borrowed money from each other, competed with each other, fell in love with each other, changed the world together. Fascinating book which I am glad to have read. It also manages to weave in the lives of John Brown, Melville and Frederick Douglass. What a scene. What a time to have been alive!
Why Not the Best?: The First Fifty Years by Jimmy Carter Whatever you think of his presidency, it’s hard to argue that he wasn’t/isn’t an incredible man (Naval Academy, nuclear subs, entrepreneur, early opponent of segregation, his work for Habitat for Humanity, etc). I believe this book is his 1975 campaign biography, but it holds up surprisingly well. The first page raises two questions, timely ones he says, because it’s the 200th anniversary of America. They were: “Can our government be honest, decent, open, fair and compassionate? Can our government be competent?” How timeless these questions turned out to be. Last month, I took a bunch of heat for recommending a book that was not favorable to the current American president, Donald Trump. I said I thought he was one of the worst people to hold the office. Days later, he plunged the country and its national security into danger by holding a totally unsafe event at the White House, and caught the very virus he’d spent months downplaying and mismanaging. He was lucky to escape with his life, and we’re fortunate—thus far—that none of our leaders have died because of it. Which brings us back to Carter’s question. As the Stoics said, character is fate. More on that here—and here’s another article I recently wrote about it. (Also, if it pisses you off that I said this, save it. Reading is not about confirming what you know. It’s about being challenged. You don’t have to agree with me, but you don’t get to be a snowflake about it.)
Fortunate Son: The Healing of a Vietnam Vet by Lewis B. Puller, Jr. and Chesty: The Story of Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, USMC by Jon T. Hoffman When I had Jocko Willink on the podcast, he recommended Fortunate Son, the memoir of Chesty Puller’s son. Lewis Jr. was the son of the most decorated Marine in American history… and tragically lost both his legs and part of his hand on a mine in Vietnam. His memoir won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, but the happy note ended when he relapsed into alcoholism and committed suicide two years later. It’s a beautiful, haunting memoir that taught me a lot about Vietnam (I also recommend the Ken Burns doc). The biography of his father, Chesty—who fought in the Banana Wars, WWII, and Korea—is equally compelling. It would have been quite difficult to be his son though, as loving a father as he tried to be. Both books were windows into worlds I did not know much about.
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey I got to read an early copy of this a few months back. Here’s my blurb: “It shouldn’t surprise you that this book is good, but it will surprise you just how good it is. Wise and entertaining, this is an inspiring memoir and how-to from one of the great outlaw philosophers and artists of our time.”
The Reading List Email for November 29th, 2020
I feel like this is the time where the reading year is won. The days are shorter and colder. Which means more time indoors, which should mean more time with books. The best books of the year are usually published in the fall. It’s when we start thinking of making changes in our lives, or resolutions for the future. I’ve been on a bit of a reading tear myself and am excited to share some favorites with you. Also excited to announce two things: We have signed copies of my books in the Daily Stoic Store, available for personalization and gifts; and the leatherbound edition of The Daily Stoic is arriving now as well. We’ve also been doing a fundraiser for Feeding America over the last week. I put in the first $10,000 and am so proud that together we’ve provided more than 1 million meals. If you have a dollar or two to spare, it really does help people, and people need this help right now.
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 by Taylor Branch I’ve raved about some of my favorite epic series before: Robert Caro/LBJ. William Manchester’s Churchill. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. Well, add another to the list. Taylor Branch’s definitive series on Martin Luther King Jr. and the American civil rights movement has not only been riveting, eye-opening and humbling, it’s been the perfect vehicle to help me understand what’s happening in the world right now. One of the best ways to become an informed citizen in the present is not to watch the news. You’re far better off reading biography and history—to get perspective. I took notes on almost every page of this book and cannot recommend it highly enough. I’m already reading Volume II. Also if you want to listen to a conversation related to this with one of my favorite people, George Raveling (who was given the original copy of the “I Have a Dream” speech by MLK), I recommend it.
In the Country of Women: A Memoir by Susan Straight Susan Straight was the first author I ever met. She taught an incoming freshman seminar at UC Riverside and they gave each of us a copy of her book Highwire Moon to read over the summer. I remember reading it and dropping it in the pool. But the idea—having her sign my copy as I started college—that authors were actual people and that writing was a job someone you could do, changed my life. I thought this new memoir was a great one and a fascinating look at the Inland Empire. People think California is all San Francisco and Malibu and Disneyland… well, you’ve never been to Riverside in July. But I love it out there and my own books would not be possible without its strange landscape.
The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History by Andy Greene This was the perfect book to read during the craziness of the last few weeks of the election and the aftermath. We’ve been re-watching the show during quarantine and this book tells the oral history of how it was made. It’s fascinating from a creative standpoint, from a behind-the-scenes standpoint and all of that. Most of all, it just reminds you of just how good the show was. Also… IMO, the best episode is Dinner Party. Hands down.
Monsters of River & Rock: My Life As Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler by Adrian Smith Iron Maiden is my favorite band. Adrian Smith is my favorite guitarist. Fishing is my favorite hobby. This is a fun and unexpected book that combines all of the above. I recommended Bruce Dickinson’s memoir a couple years ago and this makes a great companion. Adrian happens to be an expert fisherman and the book tells the story of his time in the band and all the moments he sneaked away—around the world, on tour, while recording—to chase fish. Even if you know almost nothing about fishing (like me), it’s perfectly enjoyable. Also recommend (again) Herbert Hoover’s Fishing for Fun: And to Wash Your Soul.
Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox by James MacGregor Burns Robert Greene recommended this biography of FDR as a politician in one of our recent video chats. It’s really an incredible book. Not quite as lyrical as one of my other favorite books in this style, Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography, but probably more important. We make the mistake of thinking that some of the greats of history were somehow above politics. In fact, the opposite is true: they were really good at politics. Our problem today is not that things are too political, it’s that our politicians are really bad at politics. They’re good at performing for the media and for making themselves famous, but they do a poor job at the thing that matters—you know, passing legislation and wielding the levers of government and power. Lots to learn here and a reminder: as bad as things look, change is possible and we occasionally get the leader we need at the moments we need them.
The Reading List Email for April 25th, 2021
People sometimes ask why I link to Amazon in these emails instead of indie bookstores. For a long time, I’ve told them to hang on…because my dream was always to open my own shop. Well, that day is here. You can read this Texas Monthly piece I wrote about the insane journey it’s been to start a small town bookstore during the middle of a pandemic. Our store The Painted Porch is now open on Main St in Bastrop, Texas and doing great. The obstacle was more than the way—it’s been an incredibly rewarding (although deeply challenging) experience. All are welcome (masked and preferably vaxxed!) and you can also support the store here with the recommendations at the top. Just remember, we’re small and just getting going…be kind.
Our Most Popular Books Through this list, I’ve been able to see which books people love and not surprisingly they are the most popular books in the store. You’ll love: Empire of the Summer Moon (I believe we have some signed copies) by SC Gwynne. The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival is far and away the best narrative nonfiction book ever. I love Susan Orlean and The Library Book is incredible. Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey is legit one of our ten best sellers (I love that a 3000-year-old poem is still selling in print form…). The Scarecrow is one of the sweetest children’s books ever, and most people have never heard of it, so it sells well. Our window display is for The Boy Who Would Be King—yes, I can cheat and merchandise my own stuff in the best spots. There’re a bunch more of course, but I know you’ll like those and if you want to support the store, buy from the links above. Or get them anywhere you like to get books!
Meditations: The Annotated Edition by Marcus Aurelius (translation by Robin Waterfield) I first read Meditations more than fifteen years ago. I’m a champion of the Gregory Hays translation but it was a treat (and an eye-opening experience) to read this new annotated edition by Robin Waterfield. Marcus, like Heraclitus, believed we never step in the same river twice. Reading a new translation of a book you’ve read (or love) is a great way to see the same ideas from a new angle…or find new ideas you missed on the previous go-arounds. The annotations (presented as footnotes) here also provide great context. If you haven’t read Marcus Aurelius or if you have…you should read this book and then read it again (here are some lessons from me having read Meditations more than 100 times).
A Man At Arms: A Novel by Steven Pressfield I’m not sure I’d be a writer without Steven Pressfield. His new book A Man At Arms is up there with his best book Gates of Fire and as it happens, The War of Art is one of our most popular books in our bookstore. I actually interviewed Steven at The Painted Porch a few weeks before the pandemic, so you can see what the ‘before’ of the space looked like. Anyway, this new book is great and a must read. Here’s my blurb of the book: “An incredible book that I devoured in one sitting. The master behind Gates of Fire does it again!”
Days of Grace: A Memoir by Arthur Ashe and Arnold Rampersad I wrotze about Arthur Ashe in The Obstacle is the Way (Levels of the Game is an amazing book). I picked up Days of Grace on the recommendation of Arthur Brooks (our interview here) and I was very moved by it. Also surprised at how relevant it turned out to be: An athlete struggling with his desire to just play sports and the pull of social justice. The tricky politics of race. And then, most tragically, a merciless epidemic that took Ashe’s life—but that he faced with courage and selflessness. Even Dr. Fauci makes a brief appearance. The more things change…the more they stay the same. The letter Ashe writes to his daughter as he lay dying is a must, must read for parents.
How to Be Content: An Ancient Poet’s Guide for an Age of Excess by Horace I have raved about the Princeton University Press’s Ancient Wisdom series before and I’ll do it again (particularly How to Be a Leader and How to Die). We’ve run some free audio excerpts of their books over the last several months, such as Cicero on How To Tell a Joke and Plutarch on How To Be A Leader (here and here) and Sextus Empiricus on How To Keep an Open Mind. But this one—a collection of Horace’s poems—is a favorite. The themes of contentment, living a good life, stillness and seizing the day remain relevant and timeless.
Misc. Bonnie’s Tsui’s book Why We Swim is great (my interview with her here). I have been spending way too much time on my phone lately (this video might help, I need to remember my own advice). My Jimmy Carter study continues with his book An Hour Before Daylight (beautiful book). Greg Bishop’s piece in Sports Illustrated about the comeback of Alex Smith is incredible. I also loved this piece about the quiet, determined woman whose behind-the-scenes research made the mRNA vaccines possible.
The Reading List Email for June 27th, 2021
When I find myself getting stressed or burned out, I usually notice a common trend. I’m spending too much time on my phone, not enough time reading…in the evenings most of all. I heard a good rule recently related to this: At the end of the day, when you’re fried and feel like you can’t do anything but sit there and watch TV (or scroll on social), you know what you should do? You should go to bed. You’re tired! Go to sleep! I would just add to that that a few minutes of reading before you shut off the lights can be the perfect part of the transition.
Anyway, here we go with this month’s recommendations, including some favorites we are carrying at my book store The Painted Porch (which you’re all invited to anytime you’re in Texas and of course, online). Thanks for your patience as we fulfill these early orders by the way. Your support means a lot.
Must Reads I first read Omar El Akkad’s American War: A Novel back in 2016 and its haunting, prescient imagination of a future American Civil War will sober you right up. Same goes for It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis in 1935. Stop messing around people. This stuff is serious. On a relatedly serious note, I had the incredible honor of interviewing Dr. Edith Eger, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor who later studied under Dr. Viktor Frankl. Dr. Eger’s book The Choice: Embrace The Possible is a MUST read (as is Man’s Search for Meaning). We all have a choice about how we respond to what happens to us in life—we can choose to be heroic. On a more entertaining note, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss is an amazing narrative about the incredible life of Alexandre Dumas’ father, a black general in Napoleon’s army. And of course, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is always popular in the store because, seriously, it is possibly the funniest book ever written. We also have some awesome shirts inspired by kids books in the store. My son wears this Everyone Poops one a lot—which of course is also a classic kids book. And this one features the cover image from another classic, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?—the book that began the great Eric Carle’s career in kids books.
The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis The blurb on the back of this book is “I would read an 800 page history of the stapler if it was by Michael Lewis.” That about sums it up. As always, Michael Lewis finds the story behind the story, the unusual characters driving the history of the moment—in this case, of the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Great book. A must read alongside The Great Influenza. Seriously people, get vaccinated! Especially now with the delta variant. Also, my condolences to the tragedy that befell Michael Lewis’ family recently. It is always terribly sad when someone who has created so much happiness for others is dealt a cruel blow by fate.
Letters to a Young Athlete by Chris Bosh I was lucky enough to help Chris bring this book into existence. Obviously, I am biased but I think this is a book that very much needs to exist and Chris is a wonderful thinker and philosopher about sports, craft, the drive to win and responding to adversity. You can listen to my interview with him (recorded at the front table at the bookstore) here, but do read the book. He’s great. I think this is a future classic.
Freedom by Sebastian Junger I’ve never read a Sebastian Junger book that I felt could be any shorter. He gets right down to the essence of things and adds not one word more. This is a book about his long walks across the eastern United States and the musings it brought up about freedom, society, obligation and community. I also highly recommend his book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. You can listen to my episode with Sebastian here as well.
The Aeneid by Shadi Bartsch Many years ago I read the Robert Fagles translation, but as I did with The Odyssey and the new Emily Wilson translation, I was always on the lookout for a new one. Shadi delivers here, as well as in my conversation with her about Stoicism (she is also a translator of Seneca). I also enjoyed her conversation with Tyler Cowen. Anyway, if you haven’t read Virgil, you should try. Struggle with the great works of history. It’s worth it!
Victory Over Myself by Floyd Patterson In my recent readings about Muhammed Ali, Floyd Patterson came up repeatedly. Some of the books didn’t treat him kindly, but I found him a much more impressive figure in his own way. His autobiography is perfectly titled as well. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do? Isn’t that real greatness? Anyway, it was fun reading this forgotten biography, and he is now a hero of mine. First heavyweight champion to regain the title after losing it.
The Reading List Email for July 25th, 2021:
I was talking to some friends last month and I asked what regrets they had over the last eighteen months. To a rule, they all said they wished they’d used the quieter time, the work from home time, to get more reading in. I’m proud of the stack of books I’ve read during the pandemic, but I know it could have been higher had I spent less time doom scrolling and less time on Zoom calls. But whatever your habits were, remember: You still have a choice about what you make your ’new normal’ look like going forward. So what will it be?
Two recommendations from last month turned out to be rather appropriate. I raved about Michael Lewis’s The Premonition: A Pandemic Story and John Barry’s The Great Influenza, which have both been very popular at my bookstore, The Painted Porch. Days later, we found ourselves in the middle of a national media story, after a very angry letter from a lady who was upset about our mask policy at the store (which we have because our kids are not of age and our county is only 40% vaccinated.) Other nice people followed up by bombing our Google Reviews and letting us know they are looking forward to the day we go out of business. What a time to be alive! Certainly ties into a lovely book I read several years ago and like recommending in the shop: The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols.
And then there was another controversy in Texas, in which a wonderful book by three friends of mine, Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, was banned by the direct intervention of Texas’ Lt. Governor (lol cancel culture?!). We’re quite happy to carry this book and I am proud to recommend it. History is not supposed to tell you what you want to hear. It’s supposed to be challenging. We get better by wrestling with difficult topics.
Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther This was a book I read several years ago and after my conversation with Kate Fagan on the podcast about her book All the Colors Came Out, I decided to re-read it. Needless to say, the memoir of a father whose precocious 17 year old is dying of a brain tumor hits you differently after you’ve had kids. Johnny Gunther was not alive very long but happens to have left quite a legacy, and I learned more from him the second read than the first. This is a tragic, moving book that I think many more people need to know about.
Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough Funny enough, McCollough’s grandson came into The Painted Porch earlier this month. I’d read his great biography of Truman, but assumed I did not need to read another TR book. Of course, I was wrong, as this wonderful look at the early life of Teddy (another precocious kid for sure) and his special family was exactly what I needed. It’s a great parenting book—it was said of TR that as a child he was taught about the great men of history and decided to be just like that. Isn’t that what we want for our kids? If you haven’t been to the Theodore Roosevelt birthplace house in New York City, I highly recommend it. I also love The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris.
Alex Haley: The Playboy Interviews by Alex Haley I love buying old out of print books because you’re always surprised. This one I got from Amazon happens to be a review copy sent to the Canadian journalist Jules Elder in 1993. In any case, Alex was a brilliant interviewer and if you haven’t read his interviews with MLK, Johnny Carson, Malcolm X, and Ali, you absolutely must. I’ve tried to link here to some of the ones available online, but holding them in hand made the experience even better. Always surprising how timeless interesting people turn out to be.
Indian Givers: How Native Americans Transformed the World by Jack Weatherford I have raved before about Weatherord’s book on Genghis Khan (which I used in Ego is the Enemy), but I didn’t know this book existed until I saw it mentioned in Sebastian Junger’s Freedom. Then at the ranger station in Big Bend State Park last month, I saw the book in the gift store. INCREDIBLE! Seriously, that’s all I can say. A decade and a half of school and maybe 1% of these contributions of Native Americans were taught to us. Weatherford is a master of making poorly understood (or misunderstood) cultures inspiring and relatable. Read this book for sure.
The Reading List Email for August 15, 2021
One of my favorite reading pleasures is when you find a book on your shelf that you totally forgot about and pick up and fall in love with. It could be that you bought it, tried it, and it didn’t work for you the first time. Or you bought it and got distracted. Or you have read it and it just hits you differently now. There’s a great line the Stoics loved—that we never step in the same river twice. Nothing has proven this to me better than books over the years. The books stay the same but we change, the world changes, and something new opens up because of it.
One book that did this for me this week was Mason Curry’s Daily Rituals: Women at Work. I’ve written about and recommended the first book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (Tim Ferriss has a great audio edition) and obviously I knew that a sequel existed…because it was on the shelf of my own bookstore (one perk is that I can ‘steal’ from myself now). But for some reason, I hadn’t really read it. Quite enjoyed it this time, especially as a parent. Both books are worth reading and lots to follow up from in the bibliography. I just wish Mason could be more prolific like some of the artists he profiles!
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith I loved the excerpt I read of this book in the Atlantic a few months ago and then read the book and had a great conversation with Clint for the Daily Stoic podcast. We can put aside the whole controversy about CRT (which is really just an impossible culture war trap at this point) and all agree that history has been woefully mistaught and misused with regards to slavery and racisim. This was something I talked about in my brief talk to the Texas Historical Commission late last month about a Confederate Monument down the street from my store. The history that Clint so thoughtfully visits and writes about is, in fact, not history but an attempt to hijack history–lies weaponized in stone and marble and text to disenfranchise as well as to flip the finger at the Constitution. Almost every page of this book gives you something thoughtful and heart-wrenching to think about, and I think it deserves–demands–a wide audience. Do read this book, watch my talk and listen to our interview…and pass on a better word, a better story, to the next generation.
Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith I mentioned that I’d read half of this book in May, but I picked it back up this month (as I’d like to write about the Queen in my next book). I must have just been in a bad mood the first go around or maybe it gets better in the second half. Anyway, I liked it. I do wish there was a more Robert Caro or Andrew Roberts type of bio of the Queen–someone who was less focused on events and more on the why of the person. I’ve also read The Last Queen and ordered the Robert Hardman books in hopes of learning more.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman As I’ve said before, I carry this memento mori coin in my pocket to remind me: You can leave life at any minute. Let that determine what you do and say and think. (I also have a piece of a tombstone on my bathroom counter). Oliver Burkeman’s new book illustrates the same point well–we have roughly four thousand weeks on this planet. How will we spend them? How should we think about them? And don’t be deceived by medical advancements. As I said in my monuments talk, I got to know a guy who lived to be 112. That’s still ‘only’ like 5,800 weeks. You can listen to my conversation with Oliver as well.
The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi by William Scott Wilson I was looking for my book of The Book of Five Rings and found this on the shelf…which I guess I never got around to reading. I wish I had gotten to it when I was writing Stillness is the Key, as Musashi is a wonderful encapsulation of the ideas in that book. Not only was he a brilliant swordsman, but also a poet, a writer and a painter. He was also a strategic genius. He’s a must-study for anyone in business, art, or leadership.
Churchill & Son by Josh Ireland I didn’t think I had room in my life for another biography of Churchill but I quite liked Churchill & Son about Churchill’s journey from his own neglected childhood to trying to raise his son Randolph. Lots of stuff here that I’ll turn into Daily Dad emails (which you should subscribe to!) I’m always sad to see great men (and women like Queen Elizabeth) struggle to be equally great parents. Of course, the best Churchill book is the William Manchester trilogy but I found this book fascinating too.
The Reading List Email for September 26, 2021
You may have noticed, if you follow these emails, certain themes come up through the months. This is usually because I am chasing down people or ideas for topics for a book I am writing. For the last two years, the main theme in my reading has been the idea of courage. Because I was writing my new book Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave. I read old books and new books, biographies and academic works, fiction and true stories. Well, Courage is Calling is coming out in just 2 days. I’m very excited and would love for you to check it out. We’re still honoring all the awesome pre-order bonuses (including an opportunity to have a long book-themed dinner with me or get an actual page from the manuscript drafts), but if you have already ordered, I wanted to recommend some other books about courage that have influenced me and my writing of this new book. We’ve also got this awesome behind the scenes video detailing these two years of work, so I hope you enjoy that too.
Florence Nightingale by Cecil Woodham-Smith
Robert Greene told me a long time ago to err on the side of age for biographies and it’s usually a pretty good rule. Biographers used to try to teach their readers things; they actually admired their subjects and didn’t get bogged down in endless amounts of facts. In any case, I got a lot out of this biography. When you think Florence Nightingale, you don’t think “hero’s journey,” but her life story maps pretty perfectly on it. Which is why I open part 1—“fear”—of Courage is Calling with the story of Florence ignoring her call to service for years then winning the defining battle of her existence: the battle with fear. Lytton Strachey’s Lives of Eminent Victorians provided me with some more details about Florence Nightingale’s incredible life. And in a chapter towards the end of part 1 of Courage, I reference some of the final words of her life, which, incredibly, you can listen to here. I also used and enjoyed Woodham-Smith’s amazing book on The Charge of the Light Brigade (read the poem!) which was called The Reason Why (an allusion that readers of the poem will get).
A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson
When I read this book in July of 2020, I had not read much on de Gaulle but I was endlessly fascinated by this book. It’s a big one but most great biographies are. I’ve done a lot of reading about Churchill (I recommend the Manchester series) but de Gaulle is probably a better example of the “great man of history” theory than any other person of the 20th century. One guy managed to essentially will France back into existence. But the book does a wonderful job of showing that it wasn’t just raw charisma or inspiring speeches that did this. It has been said that “one man with courage makes a majority,” and so it went with de Gaulle, which is why he is our model in part 2 of Courage is Calling. His life is the story of courage triumphing over evil, of refusing to be afraid, seizing your destiny. I’m also indebted to Paul Kix who recommended I read the de Gaulle book. I had a great conversation with Paul on the Daily Stoic podcast, and you might also like his ESPN piece about “The ancient credo that fueled the Patriot Way, inspired Nick Saban and helped Ryan Shazier heal.”
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
According to Amazon, I bought this book on Oct 7, 2006. It cost $7.99 and I paid $3.99 for shipping because Amazon Prime was not around yet. I loved this book when I read it then, but I appreciate it so much more now. All I remembered, really, was that it was the story of the 300 Spartans. Now, all these years later, I am blown away at all the other things that Steven was doing in the book. The meta-narrative of the dying Spartan telling his story to the Persian court. The story of an orphan trying to find his family and his home. The way that male and female energy come together to create some type of a whole. The triumph of courage over fear. There’s just so many different messages and plots going on in this book. It really is a masterwork. It and Plutarch’s On Sparta were pivotal sources for me in the story that opens part 3—“the heroic”—of Courage. It was also from Steven that I got the idea the give away pages from the manuscript drafts as a pre-order bonus. Steven did it with his newest book, A Man At Arms, and I was lucky enough to get the last page of the book.
Misc.
In more recent reading, I liked The Practice of Groundedness: A Transformative Path to Success That Feeds—Not Crushes—Your Soul by friend Brad Stulberg. I had a great conversation with Brad about the book on the Daily Stoic podcast. Brad was also the subject of a New Yorker piece, Why Are So Many Knowledge Workers Quitting?, by another friend Cal Newport. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman’s book, Here, Right Matters, is a riveting memoir about being the whistleblower that led directly to the impeachment of the President of the United States. I was so excited and honored to be able to talk to Lieutenant Colonel Vindman on the podcast, which you can listen to here.
The Reading List Email for October 31, 2021
The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature by Robert Greene I’ve always loved the “daily read” format, I’ve recommended some of my favorites here before, I’ve been lucky enough to publish one of my own, and now I feel even luckier to have been able to help Robert bring this book into existence. People ask me all the time, Where should I start with Robert Greene? What book should I read first? It’s been impossible to answer, so I suggested he do a book that was a kind of greatest hits album, a book that captures the totality of his brilliant, life-changing thinking. And now that book exists! Even though I’ve read and reread all of Robert’s books, this book has not left my desk since I got my copy. Here’s my hour long video with Robert, filmed in LA.
Ask The Dust by John Fante This is one of my all-time favorite novels. As I get older, I feel more and more distant from Frante’s protagonist, a young, hungry (delusional) writer. I see it more as a cautionary tale now but the poetry and the angst of it still shines through. It remains one of the best books on Los Angeles. Fante tells a side of L.A. that most people don’t know existed. It’s the west coast’s Great Gatsby but better—it’s a series (you can see my Fante stack here). You may have heard about how Charles Bukowski discovered Ask the Dust in the LA Public Library and saved Fante from obscurity. Well, there’s much more to the story, as I detailed in the longest pieces of original journalism I’d ever done about maybe the strangest saga in publishing history.
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy I mentioned one of my favorite scenes from this novel in one of my favorite chapters in Courage is Calling so when I was in my reading funk, I decided to just go back to it. It was wonderful reading this book now as someone who lives in and has lived in Texas for many years. Cormac McCarthy is the master for a reason…also I re-read The Road during the pandemic (now that I have kids). It was rough!
The Harder They Fall by Budd Schulberg My favorite Budd Schulberg novel is What Makes Sammy Run? But this was actually hits closer to home—it’s about a corrupted publicist in a dirty game…I read it when I was at American Apparel. I’d like to say it immediately made me decide to leave and write my expose Trust Me I’m Lying (as the main character struggled to do) but reviewing my Amazon receipts, even though the book hit me incredibly hard…it took me nearly four years!! Reading the book again, I was struck again by it’s most incredible line—the delusion that “we can deal in filth and not become the thing we touch.” A wonderful book that is a must ready for anyone in a profession they loathe…that they know is not good for the world.
Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford A screenwriter I know told me to read this. I am too much of a philistine to appreciate classical music but I do love masters of their craft. Lots of good stuff in this (very long) book, but I felt so deeply the tragedy of a person’s gift (his hearing) abandoning him. How brave he was to soldier on…I plan to use this in a book I am writing now.
It’s Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness by Seth Wickersham To my eternal gratitude, it is because of the Patriots that my books began worming their way around pro sports. As detailed in this Sports Illustrated piece, a Patriots exec Michael Lombardi read The Obstacle is the Way and then started recommending it around the league. But as I said above, I love reading books about those who are the best at what they do. I’ve recommended Lombardi’s Gridiron Genius and The Education of a Coach by David Halberstam, before, but I thought this book does a good job of looking at the genius of the Patriot system while also acknowledging (without overstating) its flaws. My favorite part of this book: Wickersham makes an interesting argument in the book about the real reason Tom Brady left New England and I think something every leader could learn from. Brady loved football and wanted to keep playing football but in the New England system, it stopped being fun. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not totally right but I took something from it.
The Reading List Email for November 21, 2021
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy The Moviegoer is almost truer now for the millennial (whatever this crazy world we’re in now is) experience than it was in the 60s when he published it. Any reader will relate to the rather ageless angst of the next generation trying to find its meaning and purpose in the world. In the book, Binx is sort of fighting against the Stoic philosophy he grew up with and the horrors of the war he experienced and his love of money and pleasure. I first discovered The Moviegoer in an independent bookstore in New Orleans. It must have been back in 2011. This book turned me onto a bunch of stuff from the Percy family which I have recommend over the years including the memoir Lanterns on the Levee, the biography Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy, the letters of Walker Percy and Shelby Foote, and one of my all-time favorites, the novel Lancelot, a dark story of revenge and an attempt to go to the heart of evil. I used a quote from it as the epigraph in Conspiracy. Anyway, now I want to go spend some time in NOLA.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Is this the greatest novel ever written? It’s certainly one of the finest displays of the English language I’ve ever seen. I love re-reading Gatsby because I still have my copy from high school, which means I see what struck me then versus what did now as well as the reads throughout my twenties and now my thirties. That’s what great literature is supposed to do—help us learn truths not just of the human condition but of ourselves as well. Little known fact, but actually it was an essay I wrote about Gatsby that first singled me out for some attention as a writer and was what encouraged one of my beloved English teachers to push me towards the path I am on today (apparently I posted it on my blog many many years ago if you want to read it). Some other Fitzgerald (and Fitzgerald adjacent) books I have recommended and loved are: Tales of the Jazz, The Crack-Up, and The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
First: Sandra Day O’Connor by Evan Thomas I loved Evan Thomas’ other biographies, particularlyThe Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made and Being Nixon: A Man Divided. I knew next to nothing about Sandra Day O’Connor, but found her to be a fascinating and inspiring example of a kind of political moderates we could use more of these days. Thomas, like Issacson, does a masterful job of getting to the essence of the person he is biographizing, without judgement, and always finds wonderful anecdotes and stories that I store away to use in my own writings. I actually ended up finding this book because I bought Wil Haygood’s book Showdown, about Thurgood Marshall. It was decent but I actually like Juan Williams’ fuller biography of Thurgood more.
The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific by Alistair Urquhart Recommended to me on a British podcast I did a few weeks back, this was an incredible book about perseverance and human survival. Urquhart spent three and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war and survived torture, a cholera outbreak, 18-hour days constructing the so-called Death Railway, days without food or water crammed on Japanese cargo ships, days adrift on the South China Sea, and then witnessed the explosion of the atomic bomb over Nagasaki. A reminder of the horrific things human beings are capable of. Of course, the stalwarts of this genre are Man’s Search for Meaning, The Choice (I was lucky enough to interview Dr. Eger), Unbroken, and the writings of Admiral Stockdale.
Phosphorescence: A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark by Julia Baird I LOVED Julia Baird’s biography of Queen Victoria and have raved about it many times. When I heard she was writing a follow up, I assumed it would be another biography. I did not expect this powerful, inspiring book about resilience and powering through. Through some dark times, Julia said what sustained her was “yielding a more simple phosphorescence—being luminous at temperatures below incandescence, having stored light for later use, quietly glowing without combusting. Staying alive, remaining upright, even when lashed by doubt.” She’s basically talking about Stoicism…without talking about Stoicism (though she does that too). I found myself marking dozens of pages in this one and just continually smiling throughout. It’s a great little book and, among other things, reminds me why I need to get back into swimming. I had a great conversation with Julia on the podcast, which you can listen to here.
Poe For Your Problems: Uncommon Advice from History’s Least Likely Self-Help Guru by Catherine Baab-Muguira I’ve been wanting to tell you all about this book for a while. I don’t blurb many books these days but this one was deserving. Here’s what I wrote: “Books about people’s successes are common. Books where you can learn from someone’s painful demons and failures are rarer—but far more meaningful. Cat’s writing on Poe is insightful, funny and important.” Look out for my interview with Cat on the Daily Stoic podcast in the next few days.
The (Very) Best Books I Read In 2021
I read for a lot of reasons. I read for self-improvement. I read for entertainment. I read to make sense of this crazy world we’re living in. And I read professionally—as a writer, if I’m not reading, I can’t do my job.
Every year, I try to narrow down all the books I have read and recommended in this email list down to just a handful of the best. The kind of books where if they were the only books I’d read that year, I’d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading. (You can check out the best of lists I did in 2020 (video), 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011.)
Meditations (Annotated Edition, translation Robin Waterfield) by Marcus Aurelius The fact that Marcus Aurelius was writing during the Antonine plague, that he may well have died of the Antonine plague created a different way for me to see and understand what Marcus was writing about. When he says “you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think”—he was talking about that in a time when you really could leave life right now. When he talks about how there’s two kinds of plagues: the plague that can take your life and the plague that can destroy your character—he was talking about the things that we’re seeing in the world, that we saw on a daily basis in 2021. He was writing about a fracturing Rome, a contentious Rome when people were at each other’s throats, when things looked uncertain, when an empire looked like it was in decline. So I got a lot, as always, out of reading Meditations (the Gregory Hays translation), which I keep by my bedside table (here’s what mine looks like these days). But I was VERY excited this year because a new edition has come out, a fully annotated edition by Robin Waterfield, where for almost every passage, Robin provides the necessary context, gives insight into what Marcus was referencing, draws connections to other passages, etc. If you have not read Meditations, Robin’s translation might be the one to start with. I also did a two-hour interview with Robin, which you can listen to on the Daily Stoic podcast (Part 1, Part 2). But whichever translation you go with, the amazing thing about reading Marcus is, year after year, he feels both incredibly timely and incredibly timeless. There’s a reason this book has endured now for almost twenty centuries.
How The Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith We are going through a racial reckoning across the globe. There’s a lot of people that are trying to capitalize on this. People who want us to be divided. People who don’t understand their history. There’s, of course, people who want to stick their heads in the sand about this too, choosing to ignore the history that challenges them or makes them uncomfortable. My understanding of America’s history of racism and slavery comes from a deep study and reading of great minds like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Malcolm X. Last year, I re-read Ellison’s Invisible Man and was profoundly impacted by Taylor Branch’s epic three-part series on Martin Luther King Jr.—truly life-changing for me. But if I could get everyone to read one book to understand the legacy of racial divisions in this country, How The Word Is Passed might be that book. Clint goes and visits the most controversial monuments, plantations, slave pens, markers or moments in American history—from Monticello to the Whitney plantation to Confederate battlefields and cemeteries—and he explores what they mean, how they came to exist, the lies we’ve been told (or told ourselves about them). As it happens, my book store’s building in Bastrop, Texas, dates to the Reconstruction period and is down the street from a particularly odious Confederate statue. Bastrop is actually a town that voted against secession. But then in the early 1900s, they put up a monument that was designed to celebrate, as one observer said, “the noble white-souled Southland.” And one of the things I’ve been active in is exploring why it’s there and what its actual history is— not the propaganda that it was designed to represent. And when I went down and spoke in front of the Texas historical commission about removing the statue (you can watch that clip here), Clint’s book influenced what I said. I also interviewed Clint on the Daily Stoic podcast. Put your political predispositions aside, put your fatigue with or outrage about the issue aside either way, and read this book. It hit me very hard, and it’s changed how I think about a lot of things. I think it will do the same for you.
The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eger Dr. Edith Eger is a complete hero of mine. At 16-years-old, she’s sent to Auschwitz. And how does this not break a person? How do they survive? How do they endure the unendurable? And how do they emerge from this, not just not broken, but cheerful and happy and of service to other people? The last thing Dr. Eger’s mother said to her before she was sent to the gas chambers was that very Stoic idea: even when we find ourselves in horrendous situations, we can always choose how we respond to them, who we’re going to be inside of them, what we’re going to hold onto inside of them. Dr. Eger quotes the one and only Dr. Viktor Frankl, who she later studied under, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” It was this idea that allowed Dr. Eger to not only endure unimaginable suffering, but to find meaning in it. She went on to become a psychologist and survives to this day, still seeing patients and helping people overcome trauma. I had the incredible honor of interviewing Dr. Eger and the joy and energy of this woman, this 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, was incredible (you can watch our interview here). Of course, another incredible must-read in this category is Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning. It’s one of my favorite books—one of the greatest works of philosophy ever produced. I wrote an article this year for The Economist about an idea in this book. The idea that while the Statue of Liberty is wonderful and beautiful and inspiring, there needs to be a corresponding statue on the west coast: the Statue of Responsibility. You can read that piece here. And then, mind-blowingly, a delightful gift from the heavens: there was a new book from Frankl this year. How? A set of never-before-published lectures and essays was discovered and published with the incredible title, Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything (with a nice introduction from Daniel Goleman). And really, I think that’s what Dr. Eger did, that’s what Victor Frankl did, that’s what Marcus Aurelius did in the depths of the Antonine Plague and throughout what was an incredibly difficult and painful life—they said yes to life, in spite of everything. The world is hard, the world is unfair, the world can be horrendous—and certainly 2021 illustrated that in so many ways—but we say yes. We make the best of it. We choose our response to those conditions. It’s the last of human freedoms.
Indian Givers: How Native Americans Transformed the World by Jack Weatherford I have raved before about Weatherford’s book on Genghis Khan (which I used in Ego is the Enemy), but I didn’t know this book existed until I saw it mentioned in Sebastian Junger’s Freedom. Then at the ranger station in Big Bend State Park in June, I saw the book in the gift store. It’s not the most politically correct title, I will grant you that, but this book is INCREDIBLE! It’s about the First Peoples, Native Americans, the people who were here first (in North and South America) and how our civilization has been shaped by their insights, by their ideas, by their innovations—all of which most of us completely take for granted. It’s very rare that I read a book where there is nothing in it that I at least hadn’t heard about before, but that’s what I felt was happening on page after page of this book. Weatherford talks about their breakthroughs in agriculture, their breakthroughs in building, their breakthroughs in hunting, animal husbandry, all these things that you didn’t know about. For instance, Benjamin Franklin gets the idea of a joining of all of the different colonies together from the Iroquois Confederacy at that time. How crazy is that? The idea behind the innovation that we in America take credit for actually belongs to the people who were here first. I sure didn’t hear about that in school…Anyway, Weatherford is a master of making poorly understood (or misunderstood) cultures inspiring and relatable. Read this book for sure.
The Reading List Email for January 30, 2022
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur Throughout the pandemic, I’ve been rewatching The Office and Parks and Rec. A book about moral from philosopher written by someone who wrote for both shows and created a bunch of other classic series? I’m in! In interviews, Schur has been talking about how he wanted to make the writings of philosophers like Aristotle, Kant, Mill, and Bentham more digestible and engaging. I think he succeeded and will be getting moral philosophy in front of a huge audience of readers. If you’re new to the genre, check out my practical philosophy reading list and you might enjoy my conversation with Michael on the Daily Stoic podcast. Also I liked this oral history of The Office a few years ago.
Buddha by Karen Armstrong When Robert Greene was in town to film some videos and record some podcasts (and he also signed copies of all his books for The Painted Porch, which you can pick up), he recommended I read this for the book I am researching now. As it happens, I read it when I was writing Stillness is the Key, but re-reading books has served me well lately, so I took another crack. I forgot what a great biographer Armstrong was. She’s scholarly without being pedantic, inspiring without being mystical. Armstrong is actually a former Catholic nun (who teaches at a college of Judaism), so I love the diverse and unique perspective of the author. And Armstrong never misses the point of a good biography: to teach the reader how to live through the life of an interesting, complicated but important person.
The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America by Joshua D. Rothman My neighbor recommended this book to me. I was expecting something dense and academic or simply a catalog of crimes. Instead, it was a very human and story-driven look not into slavery but into the slavetrade, and the very specific type of business person that was not only attracted to that life, but thrived in. I found the book both moving and heart-wrenching. It’s an eye opening companion to Clint Smith’s How The Word is Passed (one of my best books I read in 2021) and again, I argue, a much more effective way to get people to understand the dark secrets of American history.
The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel by Kati Marton Since I don’t live in Germany, I don’t get triggered (or even have much of an opinion about) by German politics. But I am very interested in Merkel as a person. I find it impossible not to appreciate that Merkel is the antithesis of nearly every assumption we make about people in power. She disdains charisma and image. She doesn’t give soaring speeches. She lives in a small apartment. She effectively maintained her office for 16 years without scandal, understanding and using the power it held to accomplish her aims. Leaders of all types could learn from her type of leadership. It’s not as sexy…but perhaps that’s the point. I wish this book existed when I was working on the Merkel chapter in part 2 of Ego is the Enemy. Back then, there wasn’t a great biography of her (fortunately, there was this great New Yorker profile of her). Great book.
The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III by Andrew Roberts I’ve recommended biographies of Churchill and Napoleon by Roberts, who I find to be funny, insightful, and quite good at capturing the essence of unique historical figures. Roberts mentioned he was working on this book when I had him on the podcast back in May 2020, so I’ve been looking forward to it for some time now. (Also Tyler Cowen raved about it and when he raves about a book, I read it). It’s always good to learn about a vital figure in our country’s history from the perspective of someone from another country.In American history we learn about ‘Mad King George,’ the guy who lost the Colonies…in fact, he greatly expanded the British Empire, and lost the war because he refused to do the things a tyrant would do at home or in war. Roberts’ breakdown of the untruths of Jefferson’s accusations in the Declaration of Independence was particularly eye opening to me (of 27, only 2 have any real merit). Fascinating book…but definitely an ambition read. It’s helpful to have an American understanding of history to bounce this take off.
Misc. I read and enjoyed How to Be a Farmer: An Ancient Guide to Life on the Land from the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers collection. Some other favorites from that series: How to Be a Leader, How to Die, and How to be Free. I enjoyed General Stanley McChrystal’s new book, Risk: A User’s Guide. It could not be more timely or timeless—there’s never been a world free of the need to be able to navigate complexity and danger and unknowns and uncertainties.
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir by Marina Abramović I wish I had read this when I was working on the Abramović chapter in part 1 of Stillness is the Key. I can’t figure out why I didn’t–to be honest. A big miss. Abramovic is one of the great artists of all time–and an exemplar of physical and mental discipline. There is a sadness to this book though, her childhood sounds terrible and both parents were abusers in their own way. But I found this book to be one of the best artist’s memoirs I’ve ever read. I also recommend the documentary, Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present.
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson When an author is as popular as Malcolm Gladwell or Erik Larson, there is a part of me that is sometimes a little reticent to read their newest books…but whenever I do, I’m reminded why they are so popular. Larson is a master storyteller, immersing us in London during the Blitz and giving us the famous bulldog version of Churchill: rescuing the troops at Dunkirk, surviving the German bombing campaign, defying a horde which had overrun the European continent in a matter of month. But he also finds a number of other characters who round out and humanize the book. I’ve said before that Manchester’s epic three volume set on Churchill is probably the best (highly recommend) but I also liked Josh Ireland’s Churchill & Son recently (and have written some Daily Dad emails about it). I always tell myself I’ve read all I need to read about Churchill…then I find some more.
The Children by David Halberstam In 2020, I started reading Taylor Branch’s definitive series on Martin Luther King Jr. and the American civil rights movement, which I have strongly recommended here before. Through that, I had some familiarity with the characters in The Children, but I did not expect to be so overwhelmed with emotion in reading about a group of 20-something-year-olds—John Lewis, Diane Nash, James Lawson, James Bevel, among others—who galvanized the civil rights movement. The courage of these young men and women is other worldly and I can’t recommend this book enough, especially here during Black History Month. I’m a longtime Halberstam (a master who died too young): Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, Breaks of the Game (about Portland Trail Blazers’ 1979-80 NBA season), and The Education of a Coach (about the brilliance of Bill Belichick).
The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler While I was in New Orleans, I spotted a copy of this little novel in one of those lending libraries people put in their front yards. I didn’t actually get to rereading it until I was in Manhattan Kansas, the location of the book’s protagonist. Chandler was the GOAT of the detective novel (I wrote about him a bit in Perennial Seller)…so good in fact that half the time you can barely keep up with all the twists and turns. Ranking his books in order of my favorites: The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake, The Long Goodbye, The High Window, Farewell My Lovely, and The Simple Art of Murder.
Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor Watching a friend who has been increasingly radicalized by online misinformation, I thought of this book and decided to re-read it. I first read it in 2019 (it was first published in 1938) but Ecco has put out a new edition since with an important preface—but so much has changed in the world that re-reading it made every part of the book hit harder. It’s the (short) fictional exchange of letters between two business partners (one Jewish, one not) during the rise of Hitler in Germany. One is slowly corrupted by the events happening around him, his heart closing to the people and ideas he once believed in. It’s a heartbreaking but eye-opening look at the banality of fascism (which is why it so shocked people in the 30s). People don’t just suddenly become evil or awful. It’s a process, a slide, even a response to incentives. It can happen to anyone. We should all be careful!
Misc. My friends Bryan Burrough and Jason Stanford came out and signed copies of their wonderful and important book Forget the Alamo at The Painted Porch. Bryan also signed my two favorite books of his: Public Enemies and The Big Rich. I had Matthew Crawford on the podcast to talk about Shop Class as Soulcraft which remains a must read.
The Reading List Email for March 20, 2022
In 1938, as Hitler rolled into Poland and armies were mobilizing and people were freaking out, Winston Churchill, who was not yet in power, was in the middle of researching a book. “It has been a comfort to me,” he wrote, “in these anxious days to put a thousand years between my thoughts and the twentieth century.” As I’ve watched the horrifying events coming out of Ukraine, I’ve turned not the news or to Twitter but to books, like I always do when I want to become an informed citizen in the present (for instance, in March 2020 I read The Great Influenza which I have recommended many times since). Last month, I recommended Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, which became timelier with Volodymyr Zelensky’s Churchillian refusal to be rescued from Kyiv (my Daily Stoic and Daily Dad emails about him here and here). Some others that have helped me understand what’s going on in Ukraine: The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin by Steven Lee Myers (recommended by the great Robert Greene several years ago) and Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs and the Greatest Wealth in History by Ben Mezrich.
After a touching email from a friend in Ukraine, I decided to think about how I might contribute. I ended up asking my literary agent for an estimate of the royalties I’ve earned from the Ukraine and Russian translations of my books over the years and put up a post announcing that I was donated ~$15,000 to a charity in Ukraine called The Come Back Alive Foundation, which funds body armor, supplies, training, and more for the soldiers defending Ukraine. Sometimes things can snowball and in the days after, Tim Ferriss, Robert Greene, Neil Strauss and several authors have all done the same thing. If you’re an author reading this, maybe you will be inspired too. Whoever you are, you can support the people of Ukraine by donating, speaking out, reading up, and by reaching out to representatives in your country.
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella
My son has become enamored with Steven Rinella’s YouTube channel. He’s a little young to go hunting, but as I’ve written about, there’s still a lot one can learn from this deeply human experience. Watching Steven’s videos prompted me to reread his book, which has long been a favorite. It’s ostensibly about Steven’s hunting trip for a wild buffalo in Alaska, but in reality, it’s a history of this great animal at the intersection of America, of the West, of modern life, of outcasts and outlaws. And along with being a fascinating and exciting story, it is well-researched and beautifully written. Related and good: Cattle Kingdom: The Hidden History of the Cowboy West by Christopher Knowlton, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman & The Wilderness Hunter by Theodore Roosevelt, and Steven’s Meateater Fish and Game Cookbook: Recipes and Techniques for Every Hunter and Angler
The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman
Since I was born in 1987, my memories begin a little later in the 90s, but I’m a longtime Klosterman fan. In Part II of Perennial Seller, I quoted from his book But What if We’re Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past. That subtitle doubles as a brilliant exercise—one that helps describe what I think is Klosterman’s genius: his ability to get you to think differently. He always notices the things you weren’t thinking about or wouldn’t have picked up on. For instance, doxing is something we consider to be serious, even violent harassment today. Just some twenty years ago, as Klosterman points out in The Nineties, everyone listed their address and phone number in a phone book that was circulated to homes for free. In fact, you had to pay to NOT be included. Although there are all sorts of funny asides in the book about music and entertainment and the general absurdity of pop culture, I thought the last observation of the book was the most thought-provoking. Looking at the newspaper headlines of Sept 11, 2001, Klosterman notes the almost provincial way that each city was doing its own thing on what was, in his view, the final day of the 1990s. Every day after that was different, because we no longer lived in places that had their own things happening, but lived in a more global and immediate culture in which we were all thrown together by the internet and then social media.
A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance by William Manchester
I’ve raved about Manchester’s epic and masterfully written three volume set on Winston Churchill before. Well apparently, I’ve also read his history of the Middle Ages. When my wife started reading it earlier this month, I found my copy filled with notes I don’t remember taking. Anyways, this book is more similar to The Nineties than you’d think (Klosterman also quotes it as it was published in the 90s). It’s about all the assumptions that seem normal to people in the present then are so clearly ridiculous to people looking back. Like anytime we read about the past, it should humbly remind us that almost everything we’re certain about will probably be eventually proven wrong…and that we are never as advanced as we think we are.
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Powers
When I interviewed Anne Applebaum for the Daily Stoic podcast (whose writings on the Russia and Ukraine crisis you should read), she recommended this book. After reading it, one can’t watch what’s happening in Ukraine and not get the sense we’re not only not past atrocities like the Ottoman massacre of the Armenians or the Nazi Holocaust, but that we still have a lot of fight left in the battle to stop genocide. Powers begins the book with the fascinating story of the invention of the word genocide by a former linguistics student who was scoffed at in the 1930s when, as time would tell, he predicted Hitler’s intent to purge a race. The term was coined some ten years later out of his relentless effort to move insiders and outsiders into action. We are always much more aware of these tragedies than we’d like to remember…but we forget after and at the time because, as Applebaum pointed out, if we faced what they were, we’d be compelled to do something about them.
Happy People Are Annoying by Josh Peck
Funny story: I met Josh Peck when I was 20 years old. He was represented by the talent agency I worked at around when I was first starting this very newsletter. At the time, I was interested in how the internet was starting to intersect with the entertainment industry, and I signed the agency’s first YouTube client. Josh and I were in the same room for about thirty minutes when he came in for a surreal interview with that YouTuber to announce Josh’s YouTube channel. Years and years later, he reached out to me to be on his podcast, and we’ve become good friends. Then when he sat down to write this book, he asked me for some advice. It turned into a really funny, honest, and raw memoir about the stumbles and struggles on his zig-zagging path to who he is today.
The Reading List Email for April 24, 2022
One effect of the pandemic is it seems time has both slowed and sped up. It seems insane that it’s been a little over a year since we opened The Painted Porch. I made a YouTube video about the lessons learned running a bookstore and expanded it into a fuller explanation of the 29 lessons that The Painted Porch has taught me. The store has been a great success because of the support of so many of you—THANK YOU—but I would say my favorite part of it all has been the wonderful time my wife and I have had connecting and reconnecting our mutual love of books. Our house and lives are filled with books and we get to call it ‘work’! Another rewarding experience has been a stand we took here in Texas in regards to banned books. The high school my sons will go to has been in the news for challenging books. A recent story estimates that more than 1,500 books have been banned in public schools in recent years and a pastor in Tennessee held a literal book burning. As my wife reminded me, to sit by while the government or your fellow citizens ban and burn books is to endorse it. Each of us has an obligation to push back against the anti-intellectual bent of our time. When a book is banned or attacked—whether because it contains Critical Race Theory or because Critical Race Theorists are attempting to cancel the author—read it! Thanks to my friends at Scribd we were able to give away thousands of copies of these books that close minded people have tried to block. Isn’t that what having a bookstore is all about? Helping people read? I think so.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
One of the books we gave away is a book I was assigned in high school but did not fully understand. Re-reading it as an adult reminds us that censorship doesn’t just come from the top down but also the bottom up. As Captain Beatty explains to Montag, who had begun to doubt his terrible profession, censorship was what the people wanted. Book burnings are rare in the book, you notice, because nobody much cares to have books. To me, it’s a reminder that reading widely and even controversially is a transgressive act. Anyway, I strongly recommend this book again to all of you, whatever your age. And remember Bradbury’s reminder “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
The Johnstown Flood: The Incredible Story Behind One of the Most Devastating Disasters America Has Ever Known by David McCullough
I’ve read and recommended McCullough’s great biography of Truman and his wonderful book on the early life of Theodore Roosevelt and his special family. The Johnstown Flood—about the Great Flood of 1889 when the earthen South Fork Dam in Pennsylvania collapsed and killed over two thousand people—hit me very hard not just because it’s a captivating read, not just because we’ve lived through a slow motion natural catastrophe since 2020, but because as it happens, when I moved to my farm outside of Austin, Texas in 2015, there was a deadly 1000-year flood, and we spent the first night in our new home listening to the radio, “move to higher ground and act quickly to protect your life if necessary” because an earthen dam had burst a few miles away. McCullough’s gift is not just that he’s a beautiful writer, but he has a stunning ability to put you in his story and with his characters. I highly recommend this book and if you like it, my favorite flood book is Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America by John M. Barry. Also Wicked River is another incredible book about water.
Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain
I’m a huge fan of Susan Cain’s work. Her monster bestseller, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, was super influential to me. I not only identify as an introvert, but it answered a lot of questions for me and explained some issues from childhood as well. She sent me a copy of Bittersweet, and it was like that expression: Everyone is going through something. I had no idea how rough the last couple years had been on Susan. She lost both her brother and her father to COVID in 2020, which I can only imagine how devastating that was, particularly in those hard days when you weren’t even able to properly do funerals or visit people in the hospital. It’s always humbling and a little bit terrifying to just remember, as Seneca said, that fortune behaves as she pleases. It doesn’t matter how successful we are, it doesn’t matter how secure we are, how prepared we are—we’re never truly prepared for the twists and turns of life. And so it’s both fitting and a bit haunting that, as she told me on the Daily Stoic podcast, she had been at work on Bittersweet before she had to really get up close and personal with loss and sorrow and how to harness those difficult emotions. If Quiet was about the power of a reflective inward life, Bittersweet is about the power of a more melancholic outlook and why we should be skeptical of our culture’s relentless focus on positivity and excitement and passion and hopefulness. And speaking with her reminded me of one of my all-time favorite books, Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, which is a reminder of the power of bittersweet.
Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You about Being Creative by Austin Kleon
People often ask me for recommendations about books about creativity and writing. I like The War of Art and Bird by Bird but one of my all time favorites is Steal Like An Artist, which came out right around the same time as my first book. It’s now out in a hardcover 10th anniversary edition with a new introduction. It was a wonderful re-read now that I am at a very different point in my career. For instance, my first book Trust Me I’m Lying was very much modeled on Upton Sinclair’s The Brass Check. The style of The Obstacle is the Way was based on Robert Greene’s storytelling approach. I’m not ashamed to say I stole from these models, nor do I think it’s too proud to say I created my own style out of these influences. Which is what artists do–they find inspiration and insight from the people that came before and then they add their own unique DNA and experiences to them. I absolutely LOVE Austin’s other books too, especially Keep Going, which is also getting a re-read from me at the bottom. When the world feels like it’s falling apart, focus on being a brightspot of creativity and earnestness. Anyway, he signed a bunch of copies at the store last week and we spent a long lunch talking about books and ideas. If you haven’t read him, you should. If you have, read him again!
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne
The Autobiography of Malcolm X is perhaps the greatest coming of age memoirs ever written. If you haven’t read it, you’re missing out. What I found fascinating about this new biography is the sheer amount of creative license Malcolm and Alex Haley apparently took with his story. I seem to find that the more I read about Malcolm X—in this book, the Taylor Branch series, the Alex Haley interview—the more I admire him as a communicator, an intellectually, as a flawed person seeking spiritual growth. Yet somehow my respect for him as an activist and actual change maker decreases. The irony is that Malcolm criticized other black leaders for being all talk, for being ineffectual and yet what actions did he take? His philosophy of armed self-defense, of striking back against the violent terror of the white power structures in America at the time, can’t even be criticized as an ‘ineffective’ strategy because it was never even tried as a strategy. It was Martin Luther King Jr and the non-violent protestors that Malcolm X so glibly mocked and criticized who were actually out testing their theories in the streets, in terrible danger. He was the one just talking, just hoping. The tragedy of Malcolm X, of course, is that he seemed to make a number of critical breakthroughs in his journey right at the end of his life and we will never know where he would have ended up had his life not been cut short. All this being said, I did not find this biography particularly well written. Muhammad Ali does not even appear in it? WTF?
Gandhi Before India by Ramachandra Guha
Continuing my look at activists who changed the world, I picked up this interesting and very well written biography of Gandhi. It occurred to me that many, if not all, of the biographies I’ve read and recommended in the past have been written from the same perspective. The space is dominated by well-educated Western men, and occasionally, women. It was interesting to read a biography by a non-westerner—there was a line in the preface about how Gandhi is living another life right now (which you wouldn’t expect to hear from Ron Chernow or Doris Kearns Goodwin). I did not realize that the seeds of Gandhi’s campaigns in Britain were so rooted in his struggles to protect Indian immigrants in South Africa. And just how long and arduous these struggles were. And paralleling Malcolm X and MLK, what was remarkable to me is when Gandhi was doing all this (I would not have guessed his birth year as 1869) and how almost all the terrible racial tyrannies were at play in those clashes in late 1800s and early 1900s across the globe and on another continent. I am excited to read the sequel.
Misc.
If you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, I think you’d like Zero to IPO: Over $1 Trillion of Actionable Advice from the World’s Most Successful Entrepreneurs by Frederic Kerrest. I’ve been thinking a lot about the situation in Ukraine and so was happy that my friend Paul Kix came out to The Painted Porch to sign copies of a very relevant (and fascinating story) book, The Saboteur: The Aristocrat Who Became France’s Most Daring Anti-Nazi Commando about Robert de La Rochefoucald and the French Resistance during World War II. If you liked the recommendation from a few months back, The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, I had a great conversation with the author Kati Marton on the Daily Stoic podcast. With the events in the city of Bucha in Ukraine’s Kyiv and the accusations of genocide, I couldn’t not think of last month’s recommendation A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power, which I’ll repeat has much to teach us about the fight left in the battle to stop genocide
The Reading List Email for May 15, 2022
I read…a lot. I’m proud of that. But I also try to remind myself that reading is not a race and there’s no prize for having read the most. Quality is better than quantity. Speed reading is a scam. Not all reading is created equal. The point is, I have a very specific and intentional reading practice that I have built over the years, much of it inspired by the Stoics. Epictetus said it wasn’t that we read but how, and Seneca reminded himself how many people are “afflicted with the pointless enthusiasm for useless knowledge.” Anyway, that line of thinking has informed this month’s newsletter, as well as Read to Lead: A Daily Stoic Reading Challenge, which we are re-launching. Since it first opened in 2019, Read to Lead has been one of the most popular things I’ve done, taken on by almost ten thousand participants. We recently announced that, for the first time ever, registration to join the 2022 live cohort is officially open. The 2022 live course will take place across 5 weeks at a pace of 2 emails a week (~30,000 words of exclusive content). Additionally, there will be weekly live video sessions with me! It’s one of my favorite things to get the chance to interact with everyone in the course—I would love to have you join us. You can learn more here! Now, on to this month’s recommendations!
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder
A few years ago, Hillbilly Elegy was the book for understanding our broken and partisan political system in America, specifically for understanding white and rural backlash. But I actually think this book is more important, better written, and ultimately, much more tragic (also the author hasn’t debased herself as Vance has…which is why I did not link to his book and no longer carry it at The Painted Porch). This is a book about people who have been cut out from not just home ownership, but from life itself. Now, often in their late fifties and sixties, they travel the US, looking for seasonal work–often in backbreaking Amazon warehouses–trying to make ends meet and enjoy what is supposed to be the best years of their lives. I found myself having to suppress a bad habit as I read the book–picked up from the politics of my parents as a kid–which was trying to find reasons this was their fault, so I didn’t have to care. In truth, Society has failed these people (not that they always made great decisions) but a better and more accessible American dream would be more forgiving, studier and rewarding. I will say, I bought a small camper trailer for our family at the beginning of the Pandemic and have absolutely loved the parts of the country we have been able to see from it. This book also reminded me of a happier book, Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, which is about a guy traveling around to Alabama football games and is also very good.
Tools: The Ultimate Guide by Jeff Waldman
When I left college to become a writer, I lived on a mattress on a living room floor in a house in Los Angeles. One of my roommates was this guy Jeff Waldman. We ended up going our separate ways, but I’ve been amazed to watch him become an incredible builder, maker, and creator. You might remember Jeff from the swings story in the Trading Up the Chain chapter of Trust Me I’m Lying. Or if you follow me on Instagram, you might remember the tree fort he helped me build. Or if you’ve been to The Painted Porch recently, you are definitely familiar with Jeff’s handy work because a couple months back, Jeff came out and helped me bring into reality an idea I had: to make it look like a tree was growing out of the floor of the bookstore all the way up and through the ceiling. We made a video of the whole process, which you can watch here. All of which is to say that he is one of the most creative and handy people that I know, so it makes sense that he wrote this amazing book about the 5000 year history of tools. It’s his first book, and it’s spectacular—a really fun book that makes for a great dad gift, a great grad gift, a great coffee table book.
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
I mentioned this last month—that my favorite part of opening and running The Painted Porch has been the wonderful time my wife and I have had connecting and reconnecting our mutual love of books. Well, she recommended this book. I don’t always enjoy the novels she reads, but this one is very good. It’s a haunting but funny book about trying to cope with mental illness and trying to make life work in a world that makes it hard to make life work.
Outdoor Kids in an Inside World: Getting Your Family Out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature by Steven Rinella
I first met Steve Rinella at a coffee shop in New York City many, many years ago. I’ve recently gotten reacquainted with him because my 5-year-old son is obsessed with Steven Rinella (you can listen to him at the beginning of my podcast with Steven). YouTube suggested one of Steven’s videos and we now watch one every night. As I said a couple months ago, I am huge fan of Steven’s book American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon. His new book—which was perfectly timed for our recent family trip to Big Bend—is about how to cultivate a love for outdoors in a time where cultivating a love for outdoors is both more important and harder to do than ever. So please ignore any presuppositions you have about hunting, because that’s what this book is about—getting your kids outdoors.
Clarence Darrow For The Defense by Irving Stone
I’ve been watching The Gilded Age series on HBO, so it’s been fascinating to read about the early 20th century lawyer Clarence Darrow, most famous for defending the underdog. The book is overwritten and long out of print but reading of Darrow’s battles against the railroads and the mining trusts made me think of Nomadland, and his battle against William Jennings Bryant and the preposterous of the Scopes Monkey Trial made me think of recent political news (as well as the book banning I spoke about last month)
The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Shilts
Reading a fascinating New Yorker piece on Larry Kramer, it occurred to me how little I actually know about the gay rights movement. I mean in the sense of how it happened, politically and strategically. Having learned so much from the Gandhi Before India book I recommended last month, I decided to dig in. Again, it’s easy to take some of the progress we’ve made toward LGBT equality for granted. It’s also easy to overlook the only reason society has been able to progress: the bravery and persistence and creativity of people like Harvey Milk. I quite enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.
The Reading List Email for June 19th, 2022
For readers, it’s been invisible. But for writers and people in publishing, the last couple of years have been a slow moving crisis. Even before COVID, book printers were struggling to keep up with demand…which is a good thing and a bad thing. Obviously it’s great that people are reading! But then the pandemic and now international events have created a terrible log jam for publishers and printers that could take years to work through. Which is why I’ve had to wait to tell you about a project I finished this past January…The Girl Who Would Be Free, a fable about the life of Epictetus. It’s actually perfect to be able to announce it today though, because here in the U.S., we are celebrating Juneteenth, a day which marks the final emancipation of slavery in America. As it happens, two thousand years earlier, Epictetus was also a slave, as well as a remarkable testement to the way that human beings can find freedom in the darkest of circumstances. Like my other book, The Boy Who Would Be King, The Girl Who Would Be Free is a timeless tale filled with timeless lessons for all ages. While I wish this were already out in the world, there’s worse problems to have than demand for books outpacing supply. I hope you enjoy it—and there are some cool pre-order bonuses at this link!
To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision by Admiral James Stavridis
The ancient Greeks had a word chreia, or “an exemplary story about a famous person, often culminating in a memorable utterance,” as my favorite translator of Marcus Aurelius, Gregory Hays has defined it. That’s obviously what I try to build my books around, but I also love reading books like that. Admiral Stavridis is one of those great storytellers. I loved and raved about Admiral Stavridis’ other book in this style, Sailing True North. If you like biographies, if you like reading and learning through stories, you will love To Risk It All. My favorite story in the book is about Rear Admiral Michelle Howard, who, despite reading about Captain Phillips and seeing the movie Captain Phillips, I’d never heard of. Admiral Stavridis does a great job in all his books of finding these unknown figures who we have so much to learn from. I’ve also learned a lot from Admiral Stavridis in my two interviews with him for the Daily Stoic podcast, which you can listen to here and here.
Sicker in the Head: More Conversations About Life and Comedy by Judd Apatow
I enjoyed the first book, Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy, a collection gathered from Apatow’s lifelong habit of interviewing the funniest people he could get to agree to be interviewed. This sequel, which he largely completed during the pandemic, is more diverse in every sense of the word. My favorites were Bowen Yang, Whitney Cummings, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Apatow probably doesn’t see himself as a philosopher, but his insights on creativity, mental health, and the human condition are actually brilliant—I get better as an artist and person when I read his stuff.
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell
I absolutely loved Sonia Purnell’s biography of Clementine Churchill, an under-appreciated but not so hidden figure (seriously, highly recommend!). In this book, Purnell brings us someone no one has heard of but was of enormous consequence. Virginia Hall was an American behind enemy lines in France for the entirety of the occupation, spying for the British and the Americans—at grave and daily risk to herself. Not only was this an incredibly courageous thing for a woman to do at that time…but she happened to have lost her leg in an accident before the war and did it all without even telling anyone about her disability. The same flight over the Pyrenees Mountains that Chuck Yeager made during the war after being shot down? Virginia Hall did it too! Without her intelligence and recruiting, D-Day might not have succeeded. It’s an incredible story that deserves to be well known. Another great book in this regard is Paul Kix’s The Saboteur.
Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir by Kwame Onwuachi
Someone sent me an article a couple months ago that mentioned Kwame was reading Courage is Calling. Then a mutual friend connected us, and he sent me a copy of his book. It’s a great memoir about someone who struggled early in life then found their purpose and were off to the races. I don’t know much about the world of chefs, but like with comedians, I respect the craft and the patience required to become great at something.
The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird by Jack Davis
I read and enjoyed Jack Davis’ The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea a couple of years ago, so I was very excited about this book. He does a good job of explaining America’s love of the bald eagle as a symbol, how the bald eagle became the symbol of America, and how for almost all of American history, actually did a terrible job treating bald eagles as actual animals. For instance, most states not only didn’t protect bald eagles, but many even had bounties to encourage people to kill them! I think the meta lesson of this book is actually similar to the lesson of Juneteenth—the brilliant and inspiring ideas of the Founding Fathers were just that…ideas. What mattered is that hundreds of years later we started to make them real. That’s the journey and duty of each of us as citizens and human beings.
Misc.
I had a great time recording the first live Daily Stoic podcast with Jack Carr at The Painted Porch. We discussed his new book In the Blood (Which you can grab signed copies of in person or online). For this piece on 20 things you didn’t know about Marcus Aurelius, I reread Brand Blanshard’s essay about Marcus, which is an all-time piece of writing. Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off is a fascinating examination of the commitment, the mindset, and the sacrifices it takes to become the best at what you do. Speaking of comedians, my wife and I enjoyed the first two seasons of Hacks. And lastly, related to Juneteenth, Eric Holder’s book Our Unfinished March about the (ongoing) fight for voting rights is an important, timely, and powerful book that I enjoyed and was inspired by.
The Reading List Email for July 17th, 2022
People always seem to want to know how to read faster. But with few exceptions, all the techniques and tricks of speed reading are a scam. And listening to audiobooks on 2-3X speed? I guess you could learn how to scarf your food down faster, but doesn’t that sort of miss the point of what is supposed to be a pleasurable experience? In all my years as a reader and writer, I’ve only found one way to read faster (and better). And it’s to read a lot. Read a lot on the same topic. I’ve talked before about the swarm strategy and Tyler Cowen has written about it well too. When you have read a lot on one topic, you are able to read quickly and efficiently.
For a project I’m working on now, I’m reading biographies on people I’ve already read a lot about. Because I’m already familiar with many of the stories and details, I can breeze through those and then when I come to stuff I’m unfamiliar with, I slow down and hone in. Though it’s not exactly reflected in this month’s recommendations, the point I want to make here is you shouldn’t stop reading about a figure or a topic just because you’ve already read a book or two on that figure or topic. Swarm! Not just because you’ll read faster, but also because you’ll be surprised by what more you’ll learn. Also…if you haven’t yet, I hope you check out the new Stoicism fable I just published, The Girl Who Would Be Free. I’m signing copies all month at The Painted Porch.
Range by David Epstein I loved this book when it came out, and have often told people I think it’s a parenting book in disguise. It opens with the contrasting careers of Roger Federer and Tiger Woods, one a specialist from an early age, the other a generalist (who seemed to have a much more pleasant childhood and life), but both became great. I have always seen myself as a multi-hyphenate and believe my books have benefited from the experiences, interests, and occupations I’ve had. I re-read chunks of Range this month because David stopped by my bookstore, The Painted Porch, to do an interview and sign some copies (available here). I should note, David was one of my few author friends who did not discourage me from opening a bookstore. He was consistent and encouraged me to extend my range! I recommend pairing this book with Robert Greene’s Mastery…both are classics in my eyes.
The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel It took me a while to get to this one, but it’s quite good and popular for deserved reasons. As I’ve said before, stories are the best way to learn (which is why I write primarily through telling stories). This is one of the best finance books I’ve ever read, primarily because of the stories, many of which come from far outside the world of finance. If you like this book and are trying to get your financial life in order, my friend Ramit Sethi’s podcast about couples and their financial issues is riveting and super educational.
The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion by Ford Madox Ford I have a weird habit that could probably get me in some trouble: whenever I stay in a hotel, if it has books I like, I take them. Do they charge me for them when I leave? An obscene amount? Probably! But I’ve gotten the better end of the deal most of the time. Anyway, I found The Good Soldier in a hotel in New York City. I had only heard the name Ford Madox Ford before (badass name), but this is a beautiful and heartbreaking novel. It’s strange, humans are remarkably good at not seeing what they don’t want to see.
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway Because I read Ford Madox Ford, I picked up A Moveable Feast when I saw it in the Charlotte airport, knowing it was about the literary scene in Paris during the 1920s. Hemingway, as always, is a master of observation and stringing sentences together. As I get older, however, his cruel callousness gets harder and harder to bear. There were some beautiful passages about Fitzgerald in here, who I remain fascinated by. On that note, I recommend The Crack Up (about Fitzgerald’s decline) as well as Careless People by Sarah Churchwell (about the real life events leading up to Gatsby).
A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter to My Son by Michael Ian Black I read a great piece by Michael in The Atlantic about how becoming a father forced him to change emotionally, which I think you’ll find interesting whether you’re a parent or not. And his new book, A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter to My Son, is a powerful, introspective, and delightful little book that I really enjoyed. The book opens with him waiting for his son to come home from the elementary school next to Sandy Hook, takes inventory of the alarming number of mass shootings since, and observes one thing they all have in common: the shooter is always a boy, always someone’s son. Obviously we have enormously divisive cultural issues in this country and around the world, but if we want to have more in common than we have that separates us, we can all start by raising a better generation of children (which starts by dealing with our own issues). You can also sign up at DailyDad.com for a free daily parenting email I do each morning.
Baby on the Fire Escape by Julie Phillips Speaking of parenting and creatives, I was quite riveted by Phillips’ book about the unique struggle of women fighting to fulfill themselves both as artists and women (related book: Daily Rituals: Women At Work). Great (and eye-opening) stories here about the lives of Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, Frida Kahlo, Patti Smith and Lillian Hellman. I’ve always hated Cyril Connolly’s line, “the enemy of great art is the pram in the hall.” It doesn’t have to be true! These weren’t perfect mothers (tragically some were as monstrous as their male writer peers) but they were pioneers we can learn from. I fear we still have not made enough progress as a society with supporting parents in pursuing their dreams (to be writers or otherwise) and I shudder to think of what this has cost us as a society…both in terms of great art and happier families.
The Reading List Email for August 21, 2022
Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be by Steven Pressfield
Before I start any book project, I take a few hours and re-read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, maybe the greatest book ever written on the creative process. Well, on this book I just started, I changed it up a little because I got an early copy of Pressfield’s new book, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be. I love the title so much because it’s the perfect advice for nearly every difficult thing. If you want to get in shape, put your ass in the gym. If you want to have a great relationship with your kids, get your ass down on the floor where they’re playing. If you want to write a book, put your ass in the chair. Even when you’re tired. Even when you don’t want to. Even when you don’t see the point. That’s what it’s about. You don’t have to be perfect, but you do have to show up. (In a word, he’s also talking about discipline). I was very glad to have him out to interview about the book too, (which you can listen to here). And he was nice enough to sign copies of pretty much all his books (Gates of Fire, A Man at Arms, Virtues of War, Turning Pro, The Artist’s Journey, and The Authentic Swing, which we have at the Painted Porch Bookshop).
Truman by David McCullough
I also talked last month about the swarm strategy, and I’ve been swarming Truman. I first read this biography in 2020, I reread it at the beginning of August, and then I was sad to learn about the passing of McCullough on the 7th. If you haven’t read his work, you must. (If you’ve ever been to The Painted Porch, you know I only carry my favorite books and among that selective inventory are McCullough’s Truman, The Johnstown Flood, and Mornings on Horseback). McCullough is a world-class biographer and an amazing storyteller, and Truman was a singular American president. I think he is the most unique and interesting President ever. He didn’t go to college, failed as a clothing store owner, somehow ended up succeeding FDR and ushered in the Nuclear Age, and was generally a stand-up guy. He was also a big reader. We built the Daily Stoic reading course around his famous quote: “Not all readers are leaders but all leaders are readers.” Truman was a reader after my own heart—he devoured books on all topics, lived and breathed history and almost certainly drank deeply from thinkers like Plutarch. Don’t be put off by this big book (1,120 pages)—the pages turn like that. I also read Citizen Soldier: A Life of Harry S. Truman by Aida D. Donald, a much shorter but also fascinating volume biography of Truman. I enjoyed The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of an Ordinary Man, 1945-1953 by Jeffry Frank. I absolutely LOVED Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman by Merle Miller, which I found trying to track down a passage about how Truman read and marked up Meditations. Oral histories are an underrated form of book and this one, mostly from a collection of interviews for an unrealized TV project, is one of the best I have ever read. Just a masterclass of lessons on leadership and life—I folded over just about every page.
Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign 1941-1945 by Evan Thomas
If you’ve been to the Painted Porch or seen pictures, you’ve seen our book tower. It’s 20 feet tall and made of some 2,000 books, 4,000 nails, and 40 gallons of glue. A good chunk of the books in the tower came from Books by the Foot, which will send you boxes and boxes of random books. When the tower was finished, among those 2,000 books, I spotted Sea of Thunder. I’ve long been an Evan Thomas fan (his book Being Nixon: A Man Divided is one of the best books I’ve ever read about a politician and I got a lot out of his book First, about Sandra Day O’Conner), so when I saw Sea of Thunder, I immediately ordered my own copy. It’s a fascinating book about the naval battles of the Pacific War, which I did know know much about. Thomas does a remarkable job portraying the Japanese side (shocker: their racism was at the root of many of their strategic mistakes in the war). I complemented this book with a visit to the National Museum of the Pacific War which happens to be located… in the middle of a small town in the Texas Hill Country. All these books tie in with two books I’ve recommended recently: Sailing True North and To Risk it All by Admiral Stavridis. You can also see my talk to the US Naval Academy from earlier this year on YouTube.
Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar by Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni
I first read a galley of this book in 2011, before I published any books about Stoicism. To reread it more than a decade later, I continue to be impressed by Cato’s ability to live on principle, his bravery, his self-sufficiency, the standards he held himself to. But I now better appreciate the criticism from his opponents about his inability to compromise, to be flexible, to assume formlessness, as Robert Greene puts the final law of power. For Cato, to compromise—to play politics—would have been moral capitulation. But playing politics is the very job of a politician. No one captured this tension better than Plutarch did in his profile of Cato in The Parallel Lives. Related, I highly recommend Plutarch’s How to Be a Leader. We were able to feature excerpts from the book on the Daily Stoic podcast, which you can listen to here and here.
Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty by John M. Barry
I’ve said that Rising Tide is one of the greatest narrative non fiction books I’ve ever read. And I absolutely raved my head off about The Great Influenza many times during COVID (if you haven’t read it, you must!). When I was interviewing Barry for the podcast, I mentioned the phrase church and state to which he replied, “you know I’ve written a book on that?” I didn’t know! But once again, writing about the past, Barry nails exactly what’s happening in this moment—when people are trying to insert religious beliefs into politics, betraying the genius of our founders, who intended not just to respect differences of opinion on these impossible questions, but fundamentally enshrine that in the law. Roger Williams, fleeing not just the religious persecution of Europe at that time, but impossible, intractable conflicts that come from trying to answer inherently personal questions with the levers of state, built Rhode Island on a fundamentally different premise…and we are lucky he did so…and fail to follow his example at our peril. As you’d anticipate, this one is a little drier than a book about the 1927 Flood or the Spanish flu, but it is equally timeless.
The Reading List Email for September 18, 2022
I wanted to recommend some other books about discipline that have influenced me and my writing of this new book.
The Essays of C.S. Lewis
To millions, courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom are known as the cardinal virtues. Four near-universal ideas adopted by Christianity and most of Western philosophy, but equally valued in Stoicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and just about every other philosophy you can imagine. C.S. Lewis points out that they’re called “cardinal” not because they come down from church authorities, but because they originate from the Latin cardo, or hinge. It’s pivotal stuff. It’s the stuff that the door to the good life hangs on. That’s why I set out to write a four book series on the Four Virtues. The first book in the series was Courage is Calling, a decision influenced by Lewis, who said that courage wasn’t just a virtue but all the virtues at their testing point. You can’t do the right thing without courage. You can’t acquire wisdom without courage. You can’t be self-disciplined in a world of excess and temptation without courage. The second book, Discipline is Destiny, aims to help readers master the virtue of temperance which, as Lewis wrote, is about, “going to the right length and no further.” Along with his essays, you have to read Mere Christianity. I’m agnostic, but I loved this book. It’s definitely about faith and God and Christianity—which don’t always appeal to me—but it’s really about the meaning of life and why we should be good people. Also on the four virtues and also very good, I recommend Four Cardinal Virtues: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge by Josef Pieper.
Lou Gehrig: Pride of the Yankees by Paul Gallico, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig by Jonathan Eig and Iron Horse by Ray Robinson
Lou Gehrig’s streak of 2,130 straight games at first base for the New York Yankees was a feat of human endurance so long immortalized that it’s easy to miss how incredible it actually was. I didn’t fully appreciate it until picking up these books. I open part 1—The Exterior (The Body)—of Discipline is Destiny with Gehrig and details how this Iron Horse of a man pulled off such a streak of discipline and dedication. I love biographies by people who actually admired their subjects, and Gallico, who grew up in the same neighborhoods only a few years ahead of Gehrig, is clearly writing about his hero. And Gehrig has become one of mine. I also recommend reading his obituary in the New York Times.
Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith and Queen of the World by Robert Hardman
Like so many people around the world, I was sad to hear of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. I first mentioned the Sally Bedell Smith biography a couple times in early 2021. After that, I read thousands and thousands of pages on the Queen. (You can watch in this video—almost exactly a year ago, I was making my notecards from those thousands of pages I’d read on the Queen). I came to really admire her for so many reasons, all of which I detail in Discipline is Destiny, as the Queen is our model in part 2—The Inner Domain (The Temperament). If Lou Gehrig is rightly a hero for his streak of 2,130 games for the Yankees, what does that make Queen Elizabeth? She did not miss a day of work for nearly seven decades! For her, every day was game day, some 25,000 of them in a row! To me, the Queen perfectly illustrates the path of temperance. It’s the journey of a lifetime, but it gets more impressive the longer you stay at it.
The Reign of Antoninus Pius by Ernest Edward Bryant and Marcus Aurelius: A Life by Frank McLynn
It’s said that if he didn’t do such a good job mentoring Marcus Aurelius, instead of Marcus, “Antoninus would have had the reputation of being the best of sovereign.” At the root of the word discipline is the Latin discipulus, or pupil. It implies both the existence of a student but also a teacher. This is the beauty of the relationship between Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, which sets the stage for part 3—The Magisterial (The Soul)—of Discipline is Destiny. As you probably know, there’s no one I’ve read more books on than Marcus Aurelius. My favorite translations of his Meditations, the Gregory Hays translation and Robin Waterfield’s Annotated Edition, are always close by me. Some other favorites on him and his Meditations: Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius by Pierre Hadot, Marcus Aurelius by Ernest Renan, How to Think Like A Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson, and Marcus Aurelius: A Life by Frank McLynn. The Reign of Antoninus Pius by Ernest Edward Bryant—which Frank McLynn cited in the notes section for the chapter where he does a brief portrait of Antoninus—is the closest thing to a definitive biography on Antoninus there is. I also drew from the “Life of Antoninus” in the Historia Augusta, the biography on his adoptive father Hadrian: The Restless Emperor by Anthony Birley, and the books mentioned above on his adoptive son Marcus.
The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel by Kati Marton
I find it impossible not to appreciate that Merkel was the antithesis of nearly every assumption we make about people in power. She disdained charisma and image. She didn’t give soaring speeches. She still lives in a small apartment. She effectively maintained her office for 16 years without scandal, understanding and using the power it held to accomplish her aims. Leaders of all types could learn from her type of leadership. It’s not as sexy…but perhaps that’s the point. I wish this book would have existed when I was working on the Merkel chapter in part 2 of Ego is the Enemy. Back then, there wasn’t a great biography of her (fortunately, there was this great New Yorker profile of her). But it’s a great book, and after reading it, I had a great conversation with Marton on the Daily Stoic podcast.
Victory Over Myself by Floyd Patterson
I’m not a huge boxing fan, but I loved Victory Over Myself, the autobiography of Floyd Patterson. He was the first heavyweight champion to lose the belt and then win it back again, a civil rights activist, and someone who comes across as a real stand-up human being. It was in reading about Muhammed Ali that Patterson came up repeatedly. I found him to be such an impressive figure in his own way. This book is perfectly titled as well. That’s really what we’re all trying to do. That’s really what real greatness is about. And that’s really what discipline is all about.
The Reading List Email for October 16, 2022
Gift From The Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
I always associated Charles Lindbergh with Hawaii because when I was a kid, I visited his grave at the end of the road to Hana in Maui. I was totally surprised to find this book at one of my favorite bookstores, Sundog Books, in one of my favorite places in the world, 30A in Florida. It’s a beautiful philosophical book about rest and relaxation. For each chapter, Lindbergh takes a shell from the beach as the starting point for a meditation on topics like solitude, love, happiness, contentment, and so on. For a 67-year-old book, it feels surprisingly modern–especially, I would think, for women. The only thing I didn’t like about this book is that I didn’t read it when I was writing Stillness is the Key as I almost certainly would have quoted it many times.
De Profundis and Other Prison Writings by Oscar Wilde
This is a beautiful but haunting examination of a man who has both wrecked his life and been a victim of a terrible injustice. Wilde is writing from prison to his romantic partner “Bosie” (Lord Alfred Douglas), who comes off as just awful. I was struck by Wilde’s vacillation between taking responsibility for his circumstances and placing blame–as I understand it he had to turn in the pages each day after writing them, so you can almost feel him going through the different stages of the grieving process. It was like he started each day angry and by the end of the writing had tried to convince himself that love was better. (The strangest part of it is that his anger seems to be entirely directed at Bosie and Bosie’s father and himself…but not of course the terrible laws under which he was persecuted). In any case, there are some profound reflections throughout on loyalty, friendship, tragedy, and self-discipline here. While I was reading, the song that kept running through my head was Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden. I followed the book up by reading Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I cannot remember when I first read.
Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder
With the heinous events in Ukraine, I picked this up to learn more about modern Russia. And it was an immediate addition to my favorite section at The Painted Porch: the narrative nonfiction section. It’s filled with eye-opening insights into the corruption of the Russian mafia state. The big sobering lesson for me was why it’s so important to respect the Rule of Law and not just punish but drive out any lawmakers and leaders who think they are above the law. It’s also a reminder that one person can make a difference and that we all must fight for decency, transparency, accountability and fair dealing in our own way…lest we want to end up in our own kleptostate.
Go Up For Glory by Bill Russell
It’s sort of morbid, but I tend to find a lot of great books from obituaries. After reading Bill Russell’s in the New York Times, I learned about his 1965 memoir and rushed out to get it. In addition to being one of the greatest basketball players of all time (11 NBA titles, two NCAA championships, and an Olympic gold medal), he was equally a legend off the court. A strong-willed independent man who, at the height of his NBA career, was crucial in helping the Civil Rights movement gain momentum. Even though it’s a sports memoir, I thought the book was incredibly introspective and holds up quite well over 56 years. There are several WOW passages.
River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard
Candice Millard is one of my absolute favorite writers. As I mentioned above, my favorite section at The Painted Porch is the narrative nonfiction section. Candice is one of the greatest narrative nonfiction writers of all time and her book The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey is one I recommend ALL the time. When I had Candice on the podcast a little while back, she told me that she writes “slice of life biographies.” She writes about the most riveting events in a person’s life—incredible stories that give you a real sense of who a person was, what they represent, and the time they lived in. In the case of River of the Gods, Sir Richard Francis Burton comes off as such a badass renaissance man. I can’t rave about this book or her others enough: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, and Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, are all must-reads.
Where I Was From by Joan Didion
One of the weirdest parts about growing up in Sacramento was how it seemed to have no history. Yes, there was the gold rush and Old Sac but other than that, it was like nothing had ever happened or was happening there. It wasn’t until I was in my 20s, after I had left the place, that I learned that Sacramento has not just a rich history, but a rich literary tradition too. Joan Didion is of course one of its towering greats (Sacramento, she famously said, is the only town in the midwest located in California). I loved Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The Year of Magical Thinking. I don’t know why I only just came to this book–about Sacramento and the state of California so late. So I feel like I was criminally late to this book. I remember feeling the same when I discovered the work of John Fante (Ask the Dust is my favorite novel), who not only set novels in the random Northern California town I grew up in, but also in Downtown Los Angeles, which I also lived in and came to think of as home.
Misc.
The people I bought my house from moved to Natchez, Mississippi, which sent me down a little rabbit hole about one of the strangest cities I have ever been to. The Deepest South of All: True Stories from Natchez, Mississippi by Richard Grant came out last year (I read and loved Grant’s Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta several years ago). Another weird book on the city is The Barber of Natchez by Edwin Adams Davis. Timothy Keller’s Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? is a beautiful book on an underrated topic.is Destiny.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Wilkerson’s other book Warmth of Other Suns is one of my absolute favorite books about American history—a beautiful, painful and eye-opening look at the Great Migration through biographical sketches of individuals who left the South. Her newer book, Caste, is less a historical analysis and more of a philosophical and sociological book, but equally powerful. My study of the Civil War, the American founding, and the Civil Rights movements, gets me to a similar place Wilkerson gets to in the book: While ‘all men are created equal’ was the stated promise in the Declaration of Independence, the reality has been a much different racial hierarchy. Challenges and attempts to get us to that stated promise have tragically been met with backlash, violence, and political repercussions we are still dealing with nearly 250 years after the Founding Fathers made that promise. Given our political divide on the subject, it may be uncomfortable to pick up a book like this. But as Wilkerson writes, a doctor must be given an unvarnished and honest medical history if they have any hope of helping a patient. To deny the problem exists—or worse simply ignore it—helps no one. It was important that I read Caste after reading the Gandhi books I recommended in recent months because America is not unique in this regard. Caste is a human folly, a human evil and understanding the legacy is the first step in doing something about it.
Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 by Thomas Ricks
If Caste is the shadowy lower part of American history, the higher and more transcendent part is revealed in Ricks’ book First Principles, which is about the deep influence the Greek and Roman philosophers had on the American founders (here are his first two appearances on the Daily Stoic podcast about it). His new book Waging a Good War (which he talked about in his most recent appearance on the podcast) is about what he calls the greatest war in American history led by what he describes as the greatest generation in American history—the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. It was Martin Luther King who came to Washington in 1963 to ‘cash a check,’ to redeem that promise first made in the Declaration of Independence. We’re still trying to do that nearly 60 years later today. I will say, this book does not have a good subtitle but please don’t let it deter you. This is a brilliantly written book about how those leaders of the Civil Rights Movement effectuated so much change and what we can learn—strategically, tactically, philosophically, culturally—from them.
Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son by Adam Hochschild
One of the best and most haunting memoirs I’ve read in a long time. Hochschild has this idyllic and privileged childhood, but there’s this perpetual and seemingly unclosing distance between him and his father, a wildly successful businessman. I have not read anything so touching or so close to my personal experience since Kafka’s Letter To His Father. I also enjoyed Adam’s book Bury The Chains.
Ain’t I A Woman by Sojourner Truth and Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol by Nell Painter
These are two other books I read for the Justice book I’m working on—book three in the Four Virtues Series. The first, Ain’t I A Woman is a nice little edition of Sojourner’s best speeches and stories from Penguin (the same series as On The Shortness of Life and a few other popular titles we carry at The Painted Porch). Funny note: Sojourner would never have said something like ‘Ain’t I A Woman’ because she was not from the South…she was a slave in New York City and in fact, spoke Dutch! The slave dialect attributed to her was a journalistic invention. As for the biography, I loved Nell Painter’s other book, Old in Art School (which I wrote about here for Daily Dad). But this is a fascinating scholarly biography about an incredible woman. In her time, Sojourner Truth was triply discriminated against. A woman. Black. A former slave. She would fight tirelessly for the post-war amendment, even though it effectively only gave Black men their rights. But once the ice was cracked, she said, she kept stirring and stirring.
The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer
Another one I read for the Justice book. Many people miss this about the philosophy, but Stoicism isn’t just an individualistic philosophy. It’s a collective philosophy. The Stoics tells us to think not just about how our actions impact other people, but what we owe other people and how we can orient our actions and our lives around that. Peter Singer is pioneer of the “effective altruism” movement and just a wonderful example of someone who has oriented everything he does around other people. In 2021, for example, Singer won the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture, “for major achievements in advancing ideas that shape the world.” The Prize gives $1,000,000 to the winner—Singer donated all of it to various charities designed to save and help as many people as possible. Anyways, Singer and this book have influenced not only the ideas in the next book, but how I am thinking about doing more for the collective good.
Misc
After reading Where I Was From by Joan Didion, which I raved of last month, I read another book by Didion, Let Me Tell You What I Mean. I read Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine by Robert Coram, whose book Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War is one of my all-time favorite biographies. Brute struck me as another story of a great man who was not a great parent—something you frequently learn in reading biographies. I also re-read The Adjuster which is my absolute favorite F. Scott Fitzgerald story. I thought this breakdown of what happened at the crypto fund FTX was fascinating…and the fact that Sam Bankman Friedman wasn’t a reader is pretty fitting. What a quote: “I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.” Yikes! Both he and Elon Musk could have benefited from reading this unbelievable biography of Howard Hughes that I like to recommend.
The Reading List Email for December 11, 2022
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
There’s a great analogy at the center of this book that I think works as both an approach to life and to learning. In order for a doctor to cure you of your ills, Wilkerson writes, you have to give them a medical history. If because you’re ashamed of something or in denial of something, and you hold back, you’re not helping anyone. In fact, you’re hurting yourself. Our own history–in America or anywhere in the world–is not a list of the things we’re proud of. It is a list of the things that happened. In order to get better, to improve, to get closer to ‘a more perfect union,’ we have to gather and put up for review an unflinching history. It’s not always fun…but it’s the only way. A few years ago, I read and loved Wilkerson’s other book Warmth of Other Suns—a beautiful, painful and eye-opening look at the Great Migration through biographical sketches of Blacks who left the Jim Crow South for a chance at a better life in California, in Chicago, in New York City. Her newer book, Caste, is less a historical analysis and more of a philosophical and sociological book, but equally powerful. “All men are created equal” might be the goal of the American experiment, but no medical history is complete without an honest look at the racial hierarchy that not only existed for hundreds of years but was enforced with violence and cruelty at first and then more passively and systemically after that. Caste is a human folly, a human evil–but one we can address by facing it. A few related books I read that I can’t recommend highly enough: Last year I raved about Tom Ricks’ book First Principles, which is about the deep influence the Greek and Roman philosophers had on the American founders (here are his first two appearances on the Daily Stoic podcast about it). His new book Waging a Good War (which he talked about in his most recent appearance on the podcast) is about what he calls the greatest war in American history led by what he describes as the greatest generation in American history—the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. It was Martin Luther King Jr. who came to Washington in 1963 to ‘cash a check,’ to redeem that promise first made in the Declaration of Independence. Influenced by Gandhi’s work with the untouchables, King came to understand the role that caste played in American society, and his I Have a Dream Speech was a direct attack on it. I was also deeply moved, in some cases to tears, by David Halberstam’s book, The Children. You can listen to my interviews this year with Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine, and Eric Holder, who wrote an important book on voting rights.
Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman by Merle Miller
When he was a young man, Charles Bukowski came across an all but forgotten novel in the Los Angeles Public Library called Ask the Dust (my favorite novel. Please read it!!!). It was like finding gold in the city dump, he said. Well, nothing gets me more excited than discovering long-forgotten or out of print classics. I think I found one in this biography of Harry S. Truman. Of course, the David McCullough bio of Truman is a classic (and we carry it at The Painted Porch for a reason), but this one…this one is one of the best leadership books I have ever read. I actually bumped into it when I was trying to track down a passage about how Truman read and marked up a copy of Meditations (check out the leatherbound edition of my favorite translation). Originally conceived as a television project, what emerged is just an absolute masterclass in self-education, decency, loyalty, patriotism, making tough decisions and leading a good life. Read it–it’s worth every penny of however much Amazon charges for used copies. Or pay homage to Truman’s love of libraries (he read every book in his local library as a kid) and check out a copy. We built the Daily Stoic reading course around his famous quote: “Not all readers are leaders but all leaders are readers.”
The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel
This year began with a booming economy, and is ending in recession. Crypto has crashed. The real estate market is not so hot. If you’re looking to navigate the whipsawing, unpredictable nature of the global economy as an individual who hopes to plan (and be secure) for the future, I think this book is a great one. It’s filled with great stories–like the kind I try to tell in my books–that teach big lessons. There’s no better way to learn in my eyes…I had a great conversation with Morgan on the podcast, which you might also like. But speaking of podcasts and financial advice, I have LOVED–like LOVED–Ramit Sethi’s podcast this year which focuses on couples and their financial issues. It’s riveting and super educational. I’ve learned a ton. Here’s my interview with Ramit in that regard.
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder
Over the last couple years, my family and I took many road trips in a small camper trailer we bought in the early days of the pandemic. We drove across Texas and New Mexico and Arizona and up the middle of California. We drove across Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and Florida. As we spent time at campgrounds and RV parks, I often wondered who the other people staying there were–people who did not seem to be just passing through like us. So I grabbed this book, which is about a whole hidden segment of the working population. People often in their late fifties and sixties, who live in vans and RVs, traveling not unlike the nomads of the past, looking for seasonal work–often in backbreaking Amazon warehouses–trying to make ends meet and enjoy what is supposed to be the best years of their lives. I don’t mean to make the book sound like some sociological study. It is also just great narrative journalism (good enough that it was also made into an award-winning movie). It was strange though, as I read the book, there was this part of me that tried to take issue with each of the character’s stories. Like where their own decisions had held them back, where their mistakes had caused all this misfortune and struggle. What I was doing, I came to see, was trying to find reasons that I didn’t have to care. In truth, society has failed these people (not that they always made great decisions), but a better and more accessible American dream would be more forgiving, sturdier and rewarding. Anyway, if you want to understand some of our broken and angry political system, this is a good book to read. If you are in tech or in the modern economy, in a nice house in a nice city…read this book. Discover how another part of the country lives. Try to care. Try to understand it.
Outdoor Kids in an Inside World: Getting Your Family Out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature by Steven Rinella
I first met Steve Rinella at a coffee shop in New York City many, many years ago. I’ve recently gotten reacquainted with him because my 5-year-old son is obsessed with his videos on YouTube (you can listen to him at the beginning of my podcast with Steven). His new book—which was perfectly timed for our recent family trip to Big Bend—is about how to cultivate a love for outdoors in a time where cultivating a love for outdoors is both more important and harder to do than ever. It’s funny that a YouTube video would kick this all off, but the book is not some anti-screen screed. It’s about encouraging curiosity and interest, and cultivating resiliency and self-sufficiency. We try to learn about places we’re going, discover new hobbies, find cool stuff to check out. I loved this book and we wrote a number of Daily Dad emails about it which I think you might like (try here and here and here and if you’re not signed up for it, please do!)
The Reading List Email for January 29, 2023
The Son by Philipp Meyer
I picked this up by chance at a bookstore in Florida. How I hadn’t heard about it before, I don’t know because it’s partly set in Bastrop where I live and where my bookstore, The Painted Porch, is. It’s one of the greatest epic Westerns I’ve ever read. It predates and is better than Yellowstone, with similar Shakespearen family drama. It also has shades of East of Eden (a must read) and a good dash of one of my absolute favorite narrative nonfiction titles, Empire of the Summer Moon. If you’re looking for a novel to start the year off, I loved this book.
Molly’s Game: The True Story of the 26-Year-Old Woman Behind the Most Exclusive, High-Stakes Underground Poker Game in the World by Molly Bloom
I was supposed to have Molly at the bookstore to do an in-person interview for the podcast back in early 2022. We bought a bunch of books that she was going to sign, they sold out, and then it turned out she needed to reschedule. We ended up doing the interview over Zoom a couple weeks ago (which you can listen to here), so I just recently got around to reading the book and watching the movie. What I found inspiring about Molly’s story is what Aaron Sorkin did as well: her unique code of ethics inside an unethical world. She ran a high-stakes poker game with some of the richest and most famous people in the world. Even when she was in dire financial straits, even when she was offered millions of dollars to reveal the identities and the gossip of these poker games, even when the wrong thing would have been easier, she didn’t. It’s fascinating. I also related to Molly’s story because I too was sucked into a strange world in my twenties. A great related book is The Harder The Fall by Budd Schulberg, one of my all time favorite books (I talk about it more in this video).
The Expanding Circle by Peter Singer
Even though Stoicism is a ruggedly individual philosophy, at the core of it is this idea of “the circles of concern.” Our first concern, the Stoics said, is ourselves. Then our family, our community, our country, our world, all living things. The work of philosophy is to draw these concerns inward—to learn to care about as many people as possible, to do as much good as possible. When I had Peter Singer on the podcast, he mentioned this book. He chanced on a similar metaphor, not knowing its Stoic origins. I ended up getting The Expanding Circle, about expanding our focus on the welfare of family and friends to include, ultimately, all of humanity—animals, the environment, all of it.
Government Cheese by Steven Pressfield
Another Steven Pressfield book for me to rave about. Steven is a mentor, someone whose work has changed my life in so many ways, and just one of my all time favorite people. He was in Austin not too long ago and while he was in town, we recorded an awesome podcast while on an impromptu walk along Town Lake in downtown Austin. If you like The War of Art—which, as I’ve said before, is a book I read before starting any creative project—Government Cheese is the stories in between the lessons that make that book so good. He’s lived a hell of a life—he had twenty-one jobs in eleven states, and it took him almost thirty years to publish his first book. Steven signed a bunch of copies of Turning Pro and Gates of Fire while he was in town which are absolutely worth having.
The Club by Leo Damrosch
The idea of masterminds—groups of people who get together and help each other along their creative pursuits—are popular now. I’m in a couple of these types of groups myself. But one could say that the original mastermind goes back to the early 1760s when the painter Joshua Reynolds assembled a group—Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell—at the Turk’s Head Tavern in London. Some of the smartest people in the world, getting together to talk philosophy, art, life. I loved this book and took tons of notes. It’s basically a set of miniature biographies of a bunch of people worth knowing.
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
There is perhaps no one better qualified than Rick Rubin to help people tap into their creativity. I think it will quickly become one of those The War of Art type of books—one that artists keep close by and return to routinely. I wrote quite a bit about Rubin in Perennial Seller and no doubt would have sourced from this book if it had existed back then. But my basic summary of this book is: Instead of trying to be creative, try to get an environment/a mindset/a practice that is conducive to creativity and let things happen. It’s like Zen in the Art of Archery. You let the arrow fall like ripe fruit.
Misc. I read Joan Didion: The Last Interview, a collection of interviews with Joan that I really enjoyed. I went back through and did my notes on The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter and was struck again by what a fascinating figure Carter was. He is one of the great American presidents to read about, and if you want to read more I also recommend His Very Best. My wife really enjoyed Tunnel 29 about a tunnel being built under the Berlin Wall during the Cold War. I forgot my book at the office and picked up my old copy of Bright Lights, Big City—one of the only good books written in second person—and re-read it. It was cool to see my notes from 15 years ago!
The Reading List Email for February 19, 2023
American Rust by Phillip Meyer
Last month I raved about The Son (incredible Western) and this month I loved Meyer’s first novel, American Rust. To me, it fits well with one of my absolute favorite books last year, Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland. It also fits quite well with some of the themes in the most recent State of the Union–the dignity of work, the despair of not being able to get ahead, the terrible cost of so many shortsighted economic decisions by American industry. But all of that is subsumed here in a great novel with great characters. It’s not quite as epic as The Son, but I loved it. Meyer is coming in to do the Daily Stoic podcast next week, and I will link to it in the next email.
Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas
This is my fifth biography by Evan Thomas. I loved the others: First: Sandra Day O’Connor, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, and Being Nixon: A Man Divided, and Sea of Thunder Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign. I found this one to be quite beautiful. Thomas—here, as in all his biographies—does a masterful job of getting to the essence of the person he is biographizing, without judgment, and always finds wonderful anecdotes and stories that I store away to use in my own writings.
The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton
It was actually in the Evan Thomas book that I discovered this little book which apparently changed Kennedy’s life. It’s a wonderful little discussion of what made the Greeks so special, what they can teach us and how they thought about life. Anyone who has a gift for communicating ancient ideas in a modern context is a hero in my eyes–and in this case, Edith Hamilton proved why. By writing about the Greeks in such an accessible and inspiring way she ended up changing the political trajectory of the entire Kennedy family. The first thing I did after reading this book was buy a bunch of copies to carry in the philosophy section of The Painted Porch!
Never Call Retreat by Bruce Catton
I told myself I didn’t need to read another book by Bruce Catton about the Civil War, but I just can’t help myself. He is one of the most beautiful writers to ever tackle American history. Seriously. If you haven’t read This Hallowed Ground, you MUST. There is no better way to understand the good and the bad of America’s past, or to understand the most momentous and tragic event in its history than this book. So like I said, I couldn’t stop myself and I have no regrets. He is worthy of G.O.A.T status.
John Adams by David McCullough
John Adams has never been my favorite Founding Father. I thought of him like I did Cicero–very smart, very well-read, very wise…and very annoying. I started McCullough’s biography of Adams many years ago and quit. But after I read First Principles (highly recommend), I decided I would give it another chance…besides McCullough is such an incredible biographer (Truman and Mornings on Horseback and The Johnstown Flood are favorites). Anyway, I’m glad I gave it a go. It’s fantastic…and I’m now an Adams convert!
Misc
This month I started with the Joan Didion book in The Last Interview series. I bought all 41 books and look forward to going through all of them. I tracked down a hard to find (but really good) edition of the memoir Bill Russell did with one of my favorite biographers, Taylor Branch, called Second Wind. It cost over $100, but my rule is I never question paying for a book. For those of you who appreciated her recommendation of Tunnel 29 last month, my wife loved All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell this month (stories from the book kept coming up in our conversations). It’s a fascinating look at professionals who work in close contact with the dead and face Memento Mori every day. I had John Hendrickson on for a great episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast this month to discuss his book Life on Delay. It was a great conversation and probably one of the best episodes I have recorded.
The Reading List Email for March 19, 2023
Blue Nights by Joan Didion My Joan Didion obsession continues…if you’ve read A Year of Magical Thinking (an incredible book and reminder of memento mori) then Blue Nights is an equally heartbreaking but moving sequel. In 2003, Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, dropped dead of a heart attack in their living room. Her daughter Quintana Roo (whose name fully hit me while reading this book in Cancun) grew sick at the same time, rallied, and then suddenly passed in 2005. There is that line from Jorge Luis Borges about how an artist uses their suffering to create art and meaning. The terrible tragedies of the last years of Didion’s life intersected with the peak of her talents, and the result is these two beautiful and poignant books. I loved Blue Nights even more than Magical Thinking as it is much more about parenting and one’s own mortality.
Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome by Anthony Everitt People often ask me for good books to read when they’re taking a trip to Rome or want to understand Roman history. Anthony Everitt’s biographies on Cicero and Augustus have been my go-tos for many years. Somehow, it was only in interviewing Anthony about his new biography of Nero (my favorite book about Nero is James Romm’s Dying Every Day, about Seneca’s time in Nero’s court) that I discovered he had also written a biography of Hadrian. Hadrian, as any Daily Stoic listener/reader can tell you, is the man who selected Marcus Aurelius for greatness…and also attended the lectures of Epictetus. Other than Marguerite Yourcenar’s spectacular (MUST READ!) novel, Memoirs of Hadrian, I’ve not been able to do a deep dive into this complicated man. Everitt’s biography is a masterwork as always and incidentally serves as a great explainer of Roman history and Roman life in the process.
The Monster of Florence: A True Story by Mario Spezi and Douglas Preston My favorite genre is narrative nonfiction–true stories that are too good, too riveting to make up. The Tiger has long been one of my top picks here. Same with The River of Doubt and Rising Tide. I came across this one somehow and could barely believe it. How had I not even heard of this story? (though you’ll come to see why the author nearly wishes they hadn’t either). If you like true crime, this book is for you. The writing is a little awkward at times, but I suspect that has more to do with the unwieldy nature of the multi-decade long story and its endless twists and turns.
The Dawn’s Early Light by Walter Lord One of the greatest narrative nonfiction books ever written is Walter Lord’s page-turner about the sinking of the Titanic, A Night To Remember. Just an incredible book. Anyway, I did not know that he wrote a book about The War of 1812…in fact, I didn’t really know much about the war at all. I picked this up and burned through it. Not only is it brilliantly written, as expected, it’s also a nice reminder: History is bumbling and accidental. There are many dark nights before dawn’s early light breaks through, and the enduring success of America was in no way preordained but in fact the result of countless lucky breaks and moments of harrowing courage.
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach This has been by my bedside for the last few months, to be picked up whenever I was between books or when I left what I was reading in my office (or more lazily, just the other room). Mary Roach is one of the best writers in the world in finding a way to make seemingly boring stuff very interesting (corpses, sex, space, and the stomach). Who thinks of writing a book about animals intersecting with the law? She did and it’s great! Bears that break into houses, wolves that kill livestock, protected monkeys that breed too much–it’s all fascinating and very funny. My collection of weird books about animals grows again…
Misc. If you haven’t picked up the Philipp Meyer books we recommended earlier this year, The Son or American Rust, he signed some copies when he stopped by The Painted Porch. Molly Bloom also stopped by and signed some copies of her book, Molly’s Game. My wife Samantha grabbed me a copy of The Body Keeps the Score which was somehow one of the bestselling books of 2022 despite being originally published in 2014 and serving essentially as a medical textbook. But it’s a very good and helpful reminder that the vestiges of trauma and pain and loss are always with us (and sadly, no amount of Stoicism can stuff it down). We’ve also been watching Breakpoint on Netflix and loving it. In Didion’s book she mentioned the mob lawyer Sydney Korshak whom I had not heard of so I ended up reading this amazing Vanity Fair profile of him. I was also captivated by Marc Summer’s episode on Marc Maron’s podcast–you never know who is going to end up having a riveting life story. Samantha has been raving about High School: A Memoir, and as a fan of their music, I have next on my list to read.
The Reading List Email for April 23, 2023
Hero of Two Worlds:The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution by Mike Duncan Sometimes a book seems to be following you…I was in San Francisco last month and had dinner with the great Guy Raz (read his book How I Built This), and at dinner we were talking about Mike Duncan and his amazing book, The Storm Before The Storm, which I have raved about many times. The same day I was at City Light Bookstore and found out that Mike had a new book about the Revolutionary War hero Marquis Lafayette. I bought it and LOVED it, having known next to nothing about the man besides a few mentions in the various biographies I had read of Washington (a favorite here). Mike is a great writer (and former podcast guest) and I was particularly enthralled by Lafayette’s later years in the French Revolution. Then, just as I finished the book, I was in Annapolis for a talk at the U.S. Naval Academy. As I went for a run before my talk, just a few blocks from where Washington famously resigned his commission, I discovered a sign commemorating one of Lafayette’s battles at that very spot. I was meant to read this book at this moment apparently…and so are you!
High School by Tegan and Sara One of the reasons we read is to learn, to see inside the lives of others. As the poet Margarita Engle said, books are door-shaped portals. They open up new worlds to us. Obviously fiction does that, but memoir also does it particularly well. Personally, I don’t have much sense of what it’s like to be a lesbian teenager, but I am a big fan of Tegan and Sara (and have written many, many pages while listening to their music). I also like memoirs that start and stop early (Shoe Dog, for instance, is a classic memoir about the founding of Nike…that stops in 1980). This book is not a full memoir of Tegan and Sara, in fact, it stops before they even put out their first album. But there is plenty here to learn. I will say that none of their parents come off particularly well (except maybe the stepfather) and all of them could have done well to read one of my favorite books, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. In any case, I quite liked this book and as always, I recommend reading and learning from people who have very different experiences than you. This is particularly important now in this fraught moment where much hardwon progress for gay rights and acceptance is being turned back by people who seem to lack either the exposure to or the empathy for people different than them.
South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion Another month, another book by Joan Didion? Yup! This is a great road trip book through the American South (Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama) that, despite being from an experience over 40 years ago, holds up extremely well. My favorite observation of hers is how in the South, the Civil War feels very recent…but 1960 is made to seem like it was an eternity ago. Anyway, I have two other Southern road trip books I must recommend. The first is related to the Monster of Florence which came up in last month’s list. Douglas Preston wrote a book called Cities of Gold, which is about his retracing of Coronado’s journey across the Southwest. Just an incredible read with so much history. The other is even older but undeservedly obscure. In 1856, Frederick Law Olmstead (the designer of Central Park) took a horseback journey across the state of Texas and wrote a beautiful, fascinating travel memoir about it called A Journey Through Texas. Weirdly, it helps you understand present day Texas and America more than many other newer books. I just LOVED this book.
Robert E Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by General Ty Seidule My fascination with the Civil War began when I was a kid, when my family took a road trip through the South–not unlike the one Joan Didion took. Then I moved to New Orleans while writing Trust Me I’m Lying and have read everything I can on the topic (as always the best single, accessible volume remains This Hallowed Ground by Bruce Catton). My understanding of the war as well as my understanding of the story of that war has changed quite a bit over time, just as America’s has. A recent chapter in that story has been the discussion about the removal of the Lost Cause Monuments that went up in the 20th century. I was on a run in New Orleans in 2017 when I happened to catch the removal of the Robert E. Lee monument from Lee Circle (a city Lee never once stepped foot in) and I have also worked for the last several years for the relocation of a Confederate monument from the county courthouse down the street from my bookstore in Bastrop (here’s a video of a short talk I gave on this to the Texas Historical Commission). Gen. Seidule’s book is one of the most accessible, personal and important books I have read on the myth of the Lost Cause, particularly the way it has infected military culture. As I have said before, the best way to understand current events–whether it’s the debate about CRT or political polarization–is rarely to read the news or opinion pieces. It’s to tackle smart, earnest books that look at the history of the issue or the world. This book, along with Clint Smith’s FANTASTIC book How The Word is Passed are must reads for any veteran, any parent of young kids, and any American citizen.
The Night Lives On:The Untold Stories and Secrets Behind the Sinking of the “Unsinkable” Ship by Walter Lord Last month I recommended Walter Lord’s book on the War of 1812, another one that followed me to Annapolis. I mentioned his favorite book of mine, A Night To Remember, about the sinking of the Titanic. Turns out, he wrote another book about the Titanic called The Night Lives On. It’s less narrative nonfiction than a series of essays on lesser known facts and myths about the Titanic, but still quite good. Lord was a master of his craft, and I will have another book from him in next month’s email, so stay tuned.
Misc I finished what I suspect will be my last book by Ms. Didion for a while, a series of essays called After Henry. When we were building out the new Daily Stoic podcast studio (see it-and the Joan Didion connection-here), we bought a huge load of books from Books by the Foot, to populate the walls. One book I found while sorting through them was The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis, which was a great primer on a 20th century moment we appear to be re-entering now. Like I said, you understand the present by studying the past. I very much enjoyed Zach Braff’s new movie A Good Person. It has a beautiful theme of Amor Fati running through it (which we talked about on the Daily Stoic podcast). My friend Ramit Sethi (whose podcast I listen to each week) has a great new Netflix show about money and personal finance. I’ve learned a lot from him over the years and the show is great.
The Reading List Email for May 21, 2023
Pontius Pilate by Ann Wroe
This book was so overwhelmingly good that I could only read a couple pages at a time. How on earth did Wroe manage to produce such a rich and fascinating, 432-page book about a guy for which the historical record is not more than a couple artifacts and inscriptions? I don’t know–but that’s what makes it a masterwork. What so captivated me about this book is that although it is of course about the most seminal moment of the Christian world, it is happening inside the Roman world–the world of Seneca, literally. Seneca’s brother is in this book (he adjudicates a case involving St. Paul). Luciliius, who Seneca is writing his famous letters to, has the same job in a different province as Pontius. And by the way, that’s the most radical thing about this book: That you get to look at Pontius Pilate, the man who sentenced Christ to death, as a guy with a job. Did he do it well? How did it go so sideways? He said several times that he did not think Christ was guilty…he tried several times to get out of sentencing him to be crucified…yet in the end, he relented and did what he knew was wrong. What can that teach us? This was one of the most interesting and creative books I’ve read in a very long time. Wow.
The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man by David Von Drehle
I’ve got some very old friends. There’s Judge Frederic Block, 88, who I met in the greenroom for a radio show ten years ago. There’s George Raveling, 85, who just last week texted me, “I am absolutely unequivocally the luckiest human being on planet Earth.” There’s Dolores, 94, my bonus grandmother. And I got to know Richard Overton in Austin before he died back in 2018, the oldest man in the world at the time (an article I wrote about here). So when I saw David’s book was coming out–based on his friendship with Charlie White, then over 100 years old–I could not have been more excited. The book is full of the kind of wisdom that comes from a life that has seen so much come and go, that has made many mistakes and learned many things by trial and error. I had a great conversation with David about Charlie for the Daily Stoic podcast that will be out in June, but this short book is a great read (I sent one to Dolores). I think you’ll really like it.
The Past That Would Not Die by Walter Lord
I’ve been raving about A Night To Remember and somehow totally missed that Lord had written a narrative nonfiction thriller about James Meredith’s brave and bold campaign to integrate Ole Miss in 1962. What a book! You know Faulker’s line about how the past isn’t dead–it’s not even past? His nephew led the National Guard unit that was called to quell the mob that was attempting to block Meredith’s enrollment. This was not that long ago. James Meredith is still alive! He’s younger than my grandfather. Anyway, this is a riveting, must read book (alongside Robert E. Lee and Me, which I recommended last month and have a great podcast with General Ty Seidule on, and How The Word Is Passed, and the Taylor Branch series on MLK, and David Halberstam’s The Children). Reactionary, populist governors? Mobs whipped up by demagogues? Fear of change? Fear of the other? The past is not past…it’s the present. Speaking of which, my friend Paul Kix has a new book You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingham That Changed America that belongs in this category. Read everything you can about activists who bent the moral arc of the universe…it makes you a better person.
Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly is someone I’ve been reading for 15+ years. I’ve also been jealous of his incredible two story library for just as long (check it out). So it was a real treat to get to interview him in person in the new Daily Stoic podcast studio (here’s a clip of him and I talking about why reading is so important). I have his big photography book Vanishing Asia on my coffee table (my kids love flipping through it), but this new book of advice is a great one for any professional, parent, or person. He always thinks about things in a unique way and manages to distill a lot of experience down into a memorable, actionable bit of wisdom. I enjoyed this…and I wish more smart people wrote books like this. As I explained in the clip, why learn from experiences when you can learn from the experiences of others?
Fire Weather by John Valliant
When I was in New York doing my event for the launch of The Daily Dad, someone came up to me and said something I had never heard before: They didn’t like John Valliant’s The Tiger. I’ve been recommending that book for ten years. I’ve heard from literally thousands of people who were blown away by it–it’s one of the most popular books we sell at The Painted Porch. To each their own (but the guy was wrong!) All of which is to say I was quite excited to get an advanced copy of John’s new book about the unprecedented and freak fire in Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry, in 2016. The scale and scope of this disaster is almost incomprehensible, but you get a sense of how it unfolded terrible acre by terrible acre in this book. I love John’s other book The Golden Spruce (which we also carry), and this new one is very much fit for our times, unfortunately, where climate change means that these freak events will no longer be freaks but familiar, even expected tragedies.
Misc
I’m almost done with the Neftlix golf documentary “Full Swing,” which is just spectacular. Most commencement speeches are terrible, but this little one, Against Despair, struck a chord with me. I quite enjoyed this piece from one of the best ghostwriters in the world (a job I am familiar with myself). If you read my books Trust Me, I’m Lying or Conspiracy, this interview with Nick Denton, Ben Smith and Jonah Peretti will be of interest–I enjoyed it…and shook my head quite a bit throughout. And then these two articles from Stephen Marche on modern literary culture and on the impact of AI on writing were really, really good.
Ryan’s Reading List Email: June 2023 The first half of this year has been a long one for me. I wrote about this a little in my annual birthday post, but my intention for 2023 has been to do and have less…less drama, less commitments, less distraction, less stuff. One hard decision I made as a part of that was to push the third book in my Stoic Virtues series out a year (from fall of ‘23 to ‘24). You’d think that clearing my plate of the obligation of writing a book would free up so much time…but that’s not how it works. We always find a way to fill up the space. In my cases, speaking, podcasts, business opportunities, the launch of The Daily Dad book, etc etc. So like I said, it’s been busy–too busy.
The last month I have been doing better and am taking my time to slowly go through and do my notecard system on books that I’ve been reading (video about that process here). It’s painstaking as always, my hands ache after, but I love it. It’s the kind of torture that I love, that’s good for me…far more than the other kind of work I can get sucked into. Anyway, I’m excited for a summer filled mostly with family time as well as lots and lots of reading. I hope some of these recommendations below can provide you with some quiet, peaceful (and educational/entertaining) stillness.
Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life by Leonard Mlodinow Sometimes people are such good writers themselves, it’s hard for anyone else to write about them well. Feynman, one of the greatest physicists to ever live, is certainly in that category. His collection Surely, You’re Joking Mr. Feynman is truly incredible–even if, as I do, your brain glazes over when science or math is being taught. So after futzing around with a number of books about Feynman, I was pretty skeptical about this little book, Feyman’s Rainbow, which was written by Leonard Mlodinow as a postdoc…long before his screenwriting and authorial career. But WOW, it’s just a lovely, fascinating little book. What’s it about exactly? Knowledge, I guess? Finding yourself as you seek your career/path in life? The cost of greatness and genius? The truths of the universe? The pettiness of academic life? A little of all of this. I really enjoyed it, I wish I’d read it in my early twenties but I am glad I read it now.
Comanches: The History of a People by T.R. Fehrenbach
If you liked Empire of the Summer Moon (more on that below), then this book is effectively the prequel and the sequel–the whole show from which Empire was effectively just one compelling episode. I’ve recommended Fehrenbech’s Lone Star (history of Texas) and This Kind of War (his history of the Korean War) before. This book is even bigger in scope, a history of one of the most fascinating people/culture/empires to ever walk the earth. If you liked Genghis Khan and The Making of the Modern World (amazing book), there’s a vibe of that here–though much longer. Fehrenbech is an old school, mid-20th century epic biographer, which means he is riveting and exciting…it also means he makes large sweeping judgments that don’t always hold up (his Reconstruction chapters in Lonestar are laughable). But I learned a ton in this book–stuff that they wouldn’t teach you in school as well as stuff that isn’t politically correct (plenty in here to upend any of your previous narratives about American history). Another great recommendation in this vein: Indian Givers by Jack Weatherford (check out my podcast with him too).
His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine by S. C. Gwynne
Any time Sam Gwynne has a new book, I read it, so I was really excited for this new one, about the race (and the crashes) of the British rigid airships (think: the Hindenburg). We talked about it on the Daily Stoic podcast, but every facet of this story is insane: To think in the early days of the 20th century, they were building seven hundred foot long balloons filled with highly flammable gas, strapping huge engines on them, and then flying them thousands of feet into the sky. WHAT?! And even though they crashed over and over again, even though they basically never worked, countries kept at it, racing each other to build bigger and bigger ones! His Majesty’s Airship is about the attempt to fly one from London to India against an impossible deadline…and you can guess how it ended up. My favorite part? People were allowed to smoke inside the ship! Inside a hydrogen balloon! Anyway, Sam signed some copies of this one for The Painted Porch, as well as signed copies of Perfect Pass, and Empire of the Summer Moon.
Above Ground by Clint Smith
When I did CBS This Morning to promote The Daily Dad, my producer told me about this book. I loved Clint’s How The Word is Passed (one of my favorite books of 2021), so I ran out and got this book of meditations/poems on parenting and life. He’s a great writer and the best kind of poet (one that writes poems regular people can understand…and use). My wife liked this one quite a bit as well.
Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky
At the beginning of the pandemic, I read The Great Influenza by John M. Barry, and as I’ve said before, that probably could have served as the sum-total of all the information I consumed about what was happening in the present and been reasonably informed despite all the twist and turns and unprecedented events of the last three plus years. I still very much recommend that book to people as a way to understand what we went through, how governments and scientists and doctors work, and how populations respond (here’s my podcast with John M. Barry, he’s great). This book on the polio epidemic–and more directly the incredible efforts that went into defeating it–was similarly revealing, heartbreaking, and fascinating. The infighting between the researchers; the brilliant marketing/logistical leadership of Basil O’Connor, who was handpicked by FDR and created the March of Dimes; the mistakes that the media made; the terrible risks and ethical decisions required in the fight against such a deadly enemy; the misinformation and the fear…again, the best way to understand the present is to study the past. I really got a lot out of this book.
Misc
You’ve heard me rave about the Walter Lord book A Night to Remember about the sinking of the titanic. Well…recent events have made that 68 year old book quite relevant again. You’ll love it. Pick it up. Speaking of my notecard system (video here/article here), a bunch of people sent me this cool article about the comedian Joan Rivers and her method of using notecards for her jokes. I’ve been listening to the Fly on the Wall podcast with Dana Carvey and David Spade quite a bit. I’m always fascinated with how creative people do what they do…and the pros and cons of different creative environments. Wright Thompson came out to Bastrop to do the Daily Stoic podcast, which was an excuse to flip back through his AMAZING book Pappyland. Must read.
The Reading List Email for July 23, 2023
Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska by Warren Zanes The story of Springsteen’s Nebraska is almost unbelievable. In 1981, one of the hottest acts in music, fresh off a world tour, set down and recorded a series of very dark, very strange demos on a four track recorder in a rented house in New Jersey. These songs were supposed to be just first drafts, the bones of songs to which the E. Street Band would add a lot of flesh. Yet somehow that didn’t happen and instead, this raw album came out more or less as it was–and people loved it. It has some of my all-time favorite songs ever on it (Highway Patrolman and Atlantic City). There is a demo of Born in the USA you can listen to that shows what it would have been like had Springsteen not saved it for the next album (definitely the right call). I thought Zanes’ book was fantastic–a great insight into not just the creative process but also the business and branding and career process. It was an incredibly punk thing for Springsteen to do–more punk than destroying hotel rooms or getting tattoos. He bet all the momentum of his career on some vague feeling that this was the artistically correct thing to do…and he was right! At some point in the book Zane argues that Nebraska was the pulling back of the bow and then Born in the USA was the release, and I think that’s a beautiful metaphor. Also if you haven’t read Springsteen’s autobiography you must. It’s great, we carry it at The Painted Porch and it’s an all time favorite of mine also.
Day of Infamy: The Classic Account of the Bombing of Pearl Harbor by Walter Lord I thought I was done recommending Walter Lord’s incredible books because I thought I’d read them all (A Night To Remember and The Past That Would Not Die were in May’s Reading List). But then I took my kids to the Pacific War Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas and stumbled across this one he’d written on the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Considering we had just visited Pearl Harbor in Honolulu in January, I eagerly grabbed this one. No surprise, it’s riveting and tragic and heroic, all at the same time. Walter Lord may well be the G.O.A.T of the genre of narrative nonfiction. Read this one or any of his books really…you cannot go wrong. And if you’re ever in landlocked Fredericksburg, treat yourself to the wonderful naval museum they have there!
Conundrum by Jan Morris When I interviewed S.C. Gwynne on the Daily Stoic podcast, he raved about Morris’ epic history of the British Empire, which I have slowly been going through (a story in the third book inspired Gwynne’s excellent His Majesty’s Airship). I became quite interested in Morris, an Oxford grad, a WWII vet, the journalist who accompanied Edmund Hillary on the first climb to the top of Everest who was also…born James Morris in 1926. She wrote this beautiful memoir of transition long before such a word had much medical meaning, let alone political controversy attached to it. Which is precisely why I wanted to read it and why I am recommending it here. One of the best things you can do in life, when something is a hot button issue in your time, is ignore all that and go back to the past. Want to understand the conflict between the U.S. and China? Read Thucydides. Want to understand COVID-19? Go read The Great Influenza by John M. Barry. Want to understand what it means to be trans, what their life, their experience is like? Read Conundrum, which was published in 1974 about someone who is older than your grandparents, someone whose heroism and sanity is unquestionable, and whose ability to articulate their unique umwelt is unparalleled. I found this book to be honest, eye-opening, and just very human. There is no agenda, no politics, nothing contemporary about it–just timeless and interesting, as all great memoirs are. The world would be a better place if more people turned off Twitter for a minute and just read this book.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang This book has been making waves in publishing for the last few months. Publishing, like most of the media industry, has talked a lot about diversity and inclusion…and while the books it publishes often exposes the flaws in other industries, it has huge blindspots of its own. For instance, publishing is largely white, but instead of being male-dominated it’s actually female dominated. And then because it’s in New York City and largely corporatized, it has an absurdly out-of-touch culture (add to this the self-importance and resentments of many frustrated writers turned editors or executives). This book manages to skewer all that–it’s the story of a white novelist who is friends with a much more famous Asian author who suddenly dies. Then she steals her friend’s unpublished manuscript and becomes an immediate literary sensation, exposing in the process both the hollowness and the hypocrisies of the industry, and our current culture war issues. I thought the premise was good, and think it’s funny that the publisher is having to promote a book that skewers their industry most of all. I did think back to the Stephen Marche essay I linked to in May’s Reading List. The writing was a bit dry, nothing about the book itself sang to me, but it was a good send up of the awkward beast that every author–whatever their ethnicity–ends up having to deal with. And by the way, another good piece (with a very different point of view than R.F. Kuang, I imagine) is this interview with Alex Perez in Hobart about the obnoxiousness and close-mindedness of literary culture.
Misc. I mentioned both John Fante and publishing industry politics earlier–one of the best pieces I ever wrote (actually I researched at the UCLA library which has Fante’s papers) is about the intersection of those things…and the copyright for Mein Kempf. I’m really proud of it if you want to read it. Tom Segura’s new comedy special Sledgehammer is quite good–plus his opening joke calls to mind a book I recommended recently, Robert E. Lee and Me by General Ty Seduile. My interview with Casey Neistat at Barnes and Noble in New York just went live on YouTube, which you can check out. And then speaking of Robert Greene (get tickets to see us!), here is a video I put together of lessons I have learned from his books and his ideas over the years.
The Reading List Email for August 20, 2023
Ryan’s Reading List Email: August 2023 I had a crazy experience this week. Normally, the talks I do are in windowless conference rooms at convention centers or in unremarkable hotel event spaces. Every once in a while I’ll get to talk to a sports team that might have its own small film room, but usually it’s all pretty boring. I showed up on Monday to talk for Keller Williams…in the Austin City Limits Theater. It was nuts–maybe the coolest venue I’ve ever given a talk in…and to be able to talk about ancient philosophy, it was just a dream. What does that have to do with books? Well, Gary Keller has an awesome book I often recommend: The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results.
Afterwards, my wife and I had dinner with Molly Bloom at La Condesa next door. If you haven’t read Molly’s book Molly’s Game: The True Story of the 26-Year-Old Woman Behind the Most Exclusive, High-Stakes Underground Poker Game in the World or watched her episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, you must. Both are great.
I actually have two more theater gigs coming up next month that I’m pretty excited about. Robert Greene and I are sharing a stage at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles on September 19, and the Moore Theater in Seattle on September 21. The shows are close to selling out, so if you’ve always wanted to come see us, grab your tickets before they are gone. Like I said last month, I swung by Robert’s house and talked about The 48 Laws of Power and Stoicism while I was in LA–here’s the video of that, but it’d be way better for you to watch us live–there’s a meet and greet available too.
Get all the books listed in this email direct from The Painted Porch! Emerson: The Mind on Fire by Robert D. Richardson Jr. In May’s reading list I raved about Ann Wroe’s Pontius Pilot which I said was so good that I could only read a few pages before I’d have to stop and just digest. This book, which was recommended to me by Paul Kix, is that good too. It’s ostensibly a biography, but it’s not a 900 page biography in the way Robert Caro or Doris Kearns Goodwin would write one. It’s a creativity book, an exploration of ideas. It’s more philosophy than biography, and it’s just amazing. It took me some time to go through it but wow, I am so glad I did. Emerson was of course a modern Stoic and his essays in Nature are filled with Stoic ideas. His book Representative Men is a modern take on Plutarch, and his book of poems is simply beautiful (everyone should read both). I’m reading Richardson’s bio on Thoreau next.
Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson’s Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism by Timothy Denevi Back in 2016, the most eye opening book I read was It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis–it’s an incredible and haunting 88-year-old book that explained more about what was happening in the news than any journalist could. This book on the political journalism of Hunter S. Thompson during the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon administrations somehow perfectly illuminates the world today. I’ve always thought Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was way more than a book about drugs and Hells Angels way more than a book about motorcycle gangs. But it wasn’t until I read this book that I understood what Thompson was getting at–both the dream and the darkness of America, the ugly undercurrents and the perennial battle against humdrum fascism, political corruption and hopelessness. I’m not doing a good job describing why everyone should read this book, but I really do think everyone should read this book.
West of Eden: An American Place by Jean Stein Last month, I talked about all my favorite Los Angeles books (Ask the Dust and What Makes Sammy Run? are the top two), but I ended up grabbing one new one at Book Soup before I left. Oral histories are an underrated medium, and this book is a fascinating oral history of a handful of LA’s most intriguing families or events. It opens with the story of the Doheny’s (if you’ve seen There Will Be Blood…) and the murder that happened at the Greystone Mansion (which I recently visited). It also tells the stories of the Warner family, Jane Garland, and Jennifer Jones, all true stories that are just as good as a Raymond Chandler novel. Of course, the title is a play on East of Eden by John Steinbeck, one of the great novels of all time. If you haven’t read that, you must, and I also highly recommend Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel which is one of the best books on writing I have ever read.
Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure by Rinker Buck I said last month that LA was one of my favorite cities/regions to read about. My other favorite, as you’ve noticed, is New Orleans. Wicked River by Lee Sandlin is an incredible book that I constantly recommend. John M. Barry’s Rising Tide is epic and amazing. I passed Ricker Buck’s book at many, many airports over the last few months, always telling myself, “I’ll get to that eventually.” This month I finally did on a flight home from Annapolis, and I found myself asking the same question after I found and read The Empire of the Summer Moon at an airport: Why did I wait so long to read this? In this book, Bucker doesn’t just tell the story of the Mississippi, he builds his own flatboat (the kind Lincoln used on his own journey), and traveled the entire river! Insane. So fascinating.
Lincoln’s Mentors: The Education of a Leader by Michael J. Gerhardt Speaking of Lincoln and traveling the Mississippi (he did the journey twice in 1828 and 1831. At the end of the journey’s people would sell the wood from the boat, and it would be used to build houses. Who knows, there could still be a house in New Orleans built from Lincoln’s boat!), it’s interesting how we tend to think of Lincoln or Washington or FDR as fully formed. But obviously they weren’t born that way. Who taught them? What shaped them? This book is a great look at the men (and women) who taught, advised, inspired one of the greatest leaders in history. I’ve read a lot about Lincoln (two favorites are Lincoln’s Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk and Leadership by Doris Kearns Goodwin), but this was a unique–and I think important–angle. Lincoln was above all, a savvy and able politician. We could use more leaders like him…so let’s learn from the people who shaped him.
Misc. I mentioned being in Annapolis this month–I was there to speak to the Naval Academy as part of a series put on by the Stockdale Center (talk about an amazing place to talk…I got to speak to 1,000+ plebes in an arena the night before the ACL gig). As it happens, this month, I also read a memoir published by Stockdale’s son, Sid Stockdale. If you haven’t read Stockdale’s Courage Under Fire, you must. My wife read and has been raving about this book Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus about this comedian who left LA with her boyfriend, cat and dog to drive across the country, and she’s eating every hot dog she can find along the way. I know that sounds crazy but the book is actually really good. There’s social commentary, pandemic, politics, animal welfare, mildly touches on her social life and family…layers and layers. Of course the best book about hot dogs and New Orleans is A Confederacy of Dunces, which I love so much and was excited to gift to the guy who runs a hot dog stand down the street from The Painted Porch a couple months ago. I binged through Succession, which was both wonderful and horrible. It reminded me a lot of Philip Meyer’s The Son…you think you want to have an empire that you’ll pass to your kids…in practice it never seems to go well for anybody.
The Reading List Email for September 17, 2023
Ryan’s Reading List Email: September 2023 You’ve probably noticed a theme in the books that I’ve recommended here over the years. A lot of biographies. A lot of history. A lot of non-fiction studies of leadership. “Not all readers are leaders,” was Truman’s line, “but all leaders are readers.” I’ve raved about the McCullough biography of Truman before (he’s a character in the book that I am currently writing), as well as the amazing oral history by Merle Miller. I read biographies and I read history not just because it’s fascinating, but because it’s made me better.
That’s why leaders read. In General Mattis’ book Call Sign Chaos he talks about how a leader who hasn’t read many, many books on their field is “functionally illiterate.” I love that too. You don’t want to be functionally illiterate–not when people and things are counting on you. Anyway, that’s one of the ideas in the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge which is kicking off on Sept 25. In addition to more than a book’s worth of leadership lessons and strategies from the ancients over the next nine weeks, we have a bunch of awesome video deep dives with generals, leaders of professional sports franchises, elected leaders of big cities, entrepreneurs, and more. I got so much out of leading the course last time (as Seneca said, we learn as we teach), we’re doing it again. Don’t procrastinate–sign up! See you in there…after these book recommendations.
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh My family and I spent the last two weeks of August down on the Gulf Coast of Florida, and every time I stopped by Sundog Books (one of my favorite indie bookstores), I saw a stack of copies on the front counter. A copy caught my eye there last year, and I bought it and read it and have been raving about it since. Lindbergh builds each chapter around a shell she finds, using it as a jumping off point for beautiful reflections on stillness, happiness, work-life balance, and philosophy. It’s just a lovely book that I have written about many times now for the Daily Dad and Daily Stoic newsletters (here are some favorites). I’m not a big shell collector myself, but as I posted, I get quite a bit of pleasure walking the beach, listening to music, and picking up trash from the surf and sand (my kids love the toys we find). Most of all though, I love discovering books that change my life in bookstores, and this one did that.
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe Another book I discovered at Sundog was this incredible story about one of the worst crises of our time–one that can be traced almost entirely to the avarice and indifference of a single family. The first generation of the Sackler Family was brilliant and ambitious, but also bent the rules when it benefited their empire. The second generation took this tradition to its extreme, rolling out the ‘miracle’ drug OxyContin, which they then marketed with such unscrupulous and deceptive methods that people never stood a chance. The third generation has tried to wash their hands of their guilt…but they are stained from head to toe. If this sounds like the plot of Succession, it basically is–I’d say the book is even better than the show! One thing I kept thinking of when I read the book was an analogy that Isabel Wilkerson makes in Caste (a great book): When the crack epidemic struck the inner-cities in the 1980s, America could have built out the infrastructure and the systems needed to respond to a massive health crisis like that. Instead, racism, indifference, and our media culture blamed the victims, and tried to ignore what was happening. When the opioid crisis happened, we were much less prepared than we could have been. It’s an ironic and tragic reminder of why we have to care about vulnerable populations–why you can’t just dismiss suffering simply because it doesn’t touch where you live.
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann I’ve eaten crow on this enough times that I should be better…but I’m not. Of course, I have seen Killers of the Flower Moon on a million front tables of book stores. I know it’s sold millions of copies. But like I did with Empire of the Summer Moon (which we also have signed copies of at The Painted Porch!) and so many other books, I never went for it. Finally, I did grab it, and of course, it’s deserving of all the hype and more. I read Grann’s The Wager earlier in the summer, but this book is even better. Just narrative non-fiction at its absolute finest…and a reminder again how the tolerance of injustice spreads like a cancer. There’s a reason the rule of law has to be respected, and why corruption and indifference are so dangerous.
Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Dr. Becky Kennedy WOW this book is good. Like so good I could only make it a couple pages at a time before I had to just stop and think. I’ve followed Dr. Becky on Instagram for a long time but this is maybe the best parenting book I’ve ever read. It’s also just classic Stoic principles applied toward being a person–because what is parenting but stress, situations you don’t control, worry, anxiety, fear, fatigue and frustration? I took so much out of this book. Much more to come from me about her strategies, for sure.
Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything is Changing by Brad Stulberg My friend Brad Stulberg came by the Daily Stoic studio to talk about his new book on one of the most Stoic and timeless of topics: change. You can check out that episode here. I’m a big fan of his earlier books, Peak Performance and The Practice of Groundedness, both of which we carry at The Painted Porch. I’ve been talking about change a lot on stage recently–how we have to embrace it, come to see it not as good or bad, but as a reality and how the ultimate form of strength is flexibility (the final law of 48 Laws of Power, and one of the last chapters in Discipline is Destiny for a reason). We should have signed copies of a few of Brad’s books left from his visit.
The Reading List Email for October 22, 2023
It never feels like the right time to talk about death. In The Daily Stoic, we themed the month of December around memento mori because it was the end of the year–but that did feel a little morbid. In October, which is actually the 7th anniversary of the book, we’ve been focusing a lot on memento mori and death in the Daily Stoic email (it is, after all, Halloween). But just the idea that seven years–as Seneca would say–are now dead and gone is kind of mind-blowing to me.
It also happens that we lost the great Paul Woodruff at the end of September (my little obituary here). There’s never a good time to talk about death…but the reality is that it is ever present and unavoidable. To deny it, to pretend like it’s not going to happen? It only sets you up to be crushed…or to waste the precious time you do have.
Before I get into this month’s recommendations, I did have two ‘death’ related recommendations: How to Die by Seneca is a collection of some of his best writings on the topic. And then for parents, Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther is a moving and important book about a father reckoning with the mortality of his son and the incredible lessons the boy’s short time on Earth can teach us.
Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger You would not expect a book by Arnold Schwarzenegger to conclude with an extended note about Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, but it does (it’s a riff about how there is no such thing as a self-made man, and how Marcus opening Meditations with ‘Debts and Lessons’ is an acknowledgement of this). But anyway, you never know what to expect with Arnold. I really enjoyed this book and was lucky enough to interview him twice for it, once in Los Angeles in his Bavarian-themed office (which is up on YouTube), and then again on stage at the 92nd Street Y in New York City (will post this soon). He’s had an incredible life. I remember going to the Capitol in Sacramento as a kid and watching one of his campaign events. It was surreal for me, many years later, when he had a friend show me around Graz, his hometown. Arnold’s life is the American dream, and this book, to me, is an important corollary to that dream–you have to pay back the gift by being of service, being useful to others. Seriously, it’s a great book.
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson Elon happens to be the largest landowner in the little town I live in, Bastrop, TX. The Tesla gigafactory is down the road. SpaceX and Boring Company both have facilities here. And of course, I love Walter Isaacson (especially his Ben Franklin book). It would have been wonderful if this was a heroic book about a guy making the world a better place. Instead, I read it as a much more tragic story–a brilliant but profoundly flawed person, a miserable person, who has achieved incredible things, but is verging on becoming a liability to those achievements and a danger to the world himself. Many years ago, I read an interview where Elon recommended a book called Howard Hughes: His Life & Madness as a cautionary tale. It’s a great book, one we carry at The Painted Porch. But clearly Elon did not learn most of its lessons. I feel like Isaacson got way too much heat for his bio (people say he got too close to his source). I think he did a rather good job threading the needle of access and objectivity, of showing what the person has done and who they are). Perhaps it would have been better had he waited a year or two–as the story only grows more interesting and surreal–but what he put down here is worth reading…and studying…and learning from. It remains an interesting question: Can someone be great/powerful/brilliant/rich at that level and not become a monster?
Grant’s Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant’s Heroic Last Year by Charles Bracelen Flood A friend recommended this book…how did I not know about it before? It combines so many of my favorite things: Grant (our greatest general). The story behind the publishing of his memoirs (one of the greatest pieces of American literature/memoir). There’s even the memento mori of Grant struggling to beat the clock of his impending death. Mark Twain is in there. Ferdinand Ward, the Bernie Madoff of his day, is there (great book on him here btw). This is just a heroic, inspiring and moving book about a great man, sitting in terrible pain each day, recounting the triumphs of his life on the page, so that he could leave his family something to live on. If you haven’t read Grant’s Memoirs, you must, and if you want to read a great book about Grant and the Civil War, I strongly recommend Bruce Catton’s This Hallowed Ground.
Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles by Kate Flannery Almost 15 years ago, I started this email list while I worked at a fashion company called American Apparel. It was a strange and messed up place, but also a company that did incredible things. It was also, as Kate points out, a sort of cult–definitely a cult of personality–around one man, Dov Charney. How did she and I (at different eras and times in our lives) get sucked into it? How did we not see more clearly what it was? What made the whole thing work? How did it not fail sooner? I really enjoyed this book, though it did give me very painful flashbacks. Her book is more fun than my American Apparel book, Trust Me I’m Lying.
Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind by Robert D. Richardson Jr. Last month, I recommended Richardson’s Emerson: Mind on Fire (which is amazing and you must read). I followed it with his biography of Thoreau. I always thought of Emerson as being the Stoic, but this book makes a convincing case that Thoreau might be more of one. (Funny aside, I talked about Thoreau quite a bit in my interview with Steven Rinella on his most recent episode on The Daily Stoic Podcast. Rinella was half-convinced that Thoreau was a bit of a “candy ass,” but from this book I got a very different sense). Both these books are probably a bit longer than they needed to be, but I wish there were more biographies in this style–not about facts and places and dates but about the essence, the driving force and worldview of fascinating and important people. I can only imagine how much Richardson had to read and how deeply he had to understand either man in order to be able to produce books this epic and thorough. We do have a little collection of Thoreau’s writings you might like called Where I Lived and What I Lived For.
Misc. I re-read Raymond Chandler’s The High Window (it was mentioned in West of Eden). I’ll take any excuse to read Chandler, as his detective novels are so easy to read, so engrossing and soothing as an escape. This piece of Eileen Canney and ‘the yips’ was fascinating to me (interview with her coming soon). Back in February 2022, I wrote a piece on book bannings, which has become a real thing here in the U.S again. October is Banned Books Month, but it’s never a bad time to recommend Fahrenheit 451 or Anne Frank Diary of a Young Girl or Animal Farm. Remember “It Can Happen Here.” In fact, it already is. Oh, and you may have noticed from the photo above that Steven Pressfield was at The Painted Porch and signed a bunch of copies of The War of Art, Turning Pro, Gates of Fire, A Man at Arms, and his memoir Government Cheese. If you haven’t read any of those yet, what are you even doing with your life?
The Reading List Email for November 19, 2023
Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments Into Extraordinary Results by Shane Parrish
Shane was one of the first online writers to write anything about my work—you can see this little article he wrote about Trust Me I’m Lying back in 2012. I’ve been a fan ever since. His newsletter Brain Food is great and so is his podcast The Knowledge Project. This new book—which came out of this New York Times profile about his impact on Wall Street—was a long time coming, but it’s great. People think decision making is about simply being ‘more rational,’ but that’s just not realistic. Instead, as Shane shows, we need better habits, better practices, and better rules to prevent us from being less rational. Also, his 3-volume series The Great Mental Models on thinking are great too and he signed them (Vol.1, Vol.2, Vol.3) when he was at the bookstore last week.
Three Lives for Mississippi by William Bradford Huie
My civil rights reading continues, both heartbreakingly and movingly so. This is an incredible book about the solving of the murders of three civil rights activists in 1964. If you like true crime, you’ll like this book. If you want to understand America, you’ll like this book. If you want to look deeply into the dark souls of people corrupted and controlled by bad ideas—you’ll like this book. As I’ve said many times now, the way to best understand current debates and hot-button issues is to go backwards. Read about the past, read about the issues that dominated the headlines a generation ago and you’ll understand this moment even better. Related recommendation, given the grim sacrifice required of Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman—effectively war heroes—I also recommend Thomas Ricks’ fascinating book Waging a Good War which looks at the civil rights movement through the lens of a military historian. It has changed how I understand these events and given me many ideas about how to create change here today.
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises by Lesley M. M. Blume
After the singer Morgan Wade was on the Daily Stoic podcast earlier this month, we walked through the bookstore and she noticed we carried A Moveable Feast—Ernest Hemingway’s collection of essays on his time in France. She recommended this book about the writing of The Sun Also Rises, which I promptly picked up. I loved it! There’s a fascinating passage in here where Hemingway is showing a journalist how he would cable back to New York the details of the events he was witnessing on a battlefield. “KEMAL INSWARDS UNBURNED SMYRNA GUILTY GREEKS,” would get turned into a whole paragraph by his editors. “Isn’t it a great language?” Hemingway asked. That’s where he developed his sparse style, having to distill things down to their essence to fit into the constraints of an international wire. So cool!
The Daily Pressfield by Steven Pressfield
The only thing cooler than Robert Greene inscribing the 25th-anniversary edition of 48 Laws to me was opening up this new collection by one of my writing heroes, Steven Pressfield, and reading the dedication: “For Ryan Holiday, who gave me the idea…and the title.” I had forgotten that I had even suggested the idea to him! Anyway, this now sits on my desk for my daily read (which adds to my regular practice of re-reading The War of Art before every project I start).
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis
I read a lot of articles complaining that the great Michael Lewis was ‘too soft’ on the now-convicted criminal, Sam Bankman Fried. Then I read the book. What are you people talking about? He flays the dude. There is an exchange where SBF admits to literally not having a soul! Michael Lewis is a storyteller. He tells amazing stories and he does that here. It’s just in this case—unlike most of his other books—the main character is not a hero. It seemed like he was at first, and then he turned into the villain. Anyway, my favorite part of SBF’s story is the part where he talks about how he hates books and that everything can be reduced down to a 500-word blog post. Lol…maybe if he’d read a little more history, he wouldn’t be in this mess. This book connected me to the story of Ferdinand Ward (who defrauded Ulysses S Grant). You can check out Grant’s Final Victory and A Disposition to Be Rich for more on that. And Michael Lewis’ pandemic book is also underrated in my view.
Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do by Eve Rodsky
My wife and I read this book. I can’t say I loved the author’s tone (and in fact, a lot of her examples seemed pretty tone-deaf), but the real test of a book is not any of that. The real test of a book is whether it changes your life. I have made a bunch of adjustments in how labor is split up in our house and so has my wife. Actually, that’s an important idea in the book—sometimes “splitting” tasks is the problem. If both spouses are partly responsible for something (school lunches, laundry, whatever) that can mean you’re both stressed about it…and stressing each other. Total Responsibility Transfers can be really helpful. So anyway, I didn’t love the book exactly, but I am pleased with the changes we’re making.
Misc.
Funny enough when Steven Pressfield was at the Painted Porch last month, he told me that General Mattis had recommended he read Grant’s Memoirs and what did he notice towards the beginning of the book? Grant mentioned Bastrop! (You can see that here). Small world. I also love General Mattis’ book Call Sign Chaos. Speaking of the Civil War, I also loved this long read about General Longstreet, a Confederate general who was longtime friends with Grant but then allied with the Republicans after the war and never played into the Lost Cause nonsense. It’s written by Eric Froner who is one of the great Civil War historians as part of The Atlantic’s great series on Reconstruction. My favorite Reconstruction books are Stony the Road by Henry Louis Gates and A Fool’s Errand by Albion W. Tourgee (the latter is something I sometimes suspect myself of…living here in Texas, as I wrote here)
The (Very) Best Books I Read In 2023
The Son by Philipp Meyer You never know why a book is going to jump out at you or why it will speak to you. I found this one at a Barnes and Noble on the Gulf Coast of Florida on vacation with my family. How could I have known that this epic Western–one of the greatest I’ve ever read–was largely based in Bastrop, where I live and where my bookstore, The Painted Porch, is? How cool is that? As it happens, Philipp came out and was the first in-person episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast–recorded in a building that dates roughly to the period of the book. And then just a few weeks ago, I was at a small rural grocery store in Red Rock, Texas and in a bin of used books, I found a pristine 1st edition hardcover of The Son (which I am going to have him sign for me when we go deer hunting later this month). Again, the magic of books! Anyway, on the little sign I put next to the book in the bookstore, I say that The Son is on par with the show Yellowstone, but better. If you’re looking to read more fiction this year, start here. It’s an epic book that spans multiple generations, from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the border raids of the early 1900s and the oil booms of the 20th century. I also recommend Philipp’s other novel, American Rust,which reminded me of one of my absolute favorite books last year, Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland. Meyer is so in tune with the themes that we see ruminating in our country every day–the dignity of work, the despair of not being able to get ahead, the terrible cost of so many shortsighted economic decisions by American industry. But all of that is subsumed here in a great novel with great characters. It pairs nicely with Cormac McCarthy’s border trilogy as well (All The Pretty Horses is an all-time favor for me). But back to the topic of Texas, two amazing Texas books are Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne and Comanches: The History of a People by T.R. Fehrenbach.
Pontius Pilate by Ann Wroe How did I find this book? No recollection–but I feel so much gratitude for having found it. Ann Wroe’s biography of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judaea–the man who sentenced Jesus to his gruesome death–was so overwhelmingly good that I could only read a couple pages at a time. How on earth did Wroe manage to produce such a rich and fascinating, 432-page book about a guy for which the historical record is not more than a couple artifacts and inscriptions? I don’t know… but it makes it a masterwork. Fitzgerald said genius was the ability to hit a target no one else could see…that’s what happened here. What so captivated me about this book is that although it is of course about the most seminal moment of the Christian world, it is happening inside the Roman world–the world of Seneca, literally. Seneca’s brother is in this book (he adjudicates a case involving St. Paul). Lucilius, who Seneca is writing his famous letters to, has the same job in a different province as Pontius. And by the way, that’s the most radical thing about this book: That you get to look at Pontius Pilate, the man who sentenced Christ to death, as a guy with a job. Did he do it well? How did it go so sideways? He said several times that he did not think Christ was guilty…he tried several times to get out of sentencing him to be crucified…yet in the end, he relented and did what he knew was wrong. What can that teach us? This was one of the most interesting and creative books I’ve read in a very long time. I also had Ann Wroe on The Daily Stoic Podcast earlier this year (listen here).
Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Dr. Becky Kennedy I know how I found Dr. Becky’s work–my wife recommended it. I should know by now to put such books at the very top of my to-read pile, but this one took a while to get to. I regret that because WOW this book is good! It’s another that I could make it a couple pages at a time before I had to just stop and think. And then to go back through it for my notecard system took equally long, there was just so much stuff I had to get down. I’ve already written close to a dozen Daily Dad emails about lessons from the book–from parenting anxieties and frustrations to being present and asking tough questions. But as much as this is a parenting book, it’s also just classic Stoic principles applied toward being a person–because what is parenting but stress, situations you don’t control, worry, anxiety, fear, fatigue and frustration? I took so much out of this book. I just interviewed Dr. Becky too but I don’t think it will come out until January. Stay tuned and in the meantime, you just HAVE to read this book.
More… As much as I tried, I really can’t leave it at just three books. As you’ve seen in the list this year, I published a book myself in May, The Daily Dad. I quite enjoyed The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man by David Von Drehle. It’s a short, great read. I even got to talk to David about Charlie on The Daily Stoic Podcast (listen here). The Past That Would Not Die by Walter Lord is a riveting, must read narrative nonfiction thriller about James Meredith’s brave and bold campaign to integrate Ole Miss in 1962. An equally moving and related book was Three Lives for Mississippi by William Bradford Huie. I’m not sure you can fully understand America or the darkness that humanity is capable of without reading these books. I found Jan Morris’ Conundrum to be an honest, eye-opening, and just very human memoir from someone who is trans (and also an amazing historian, veteran and fascinating person). The world would be a better place if more people read this book. I loved Joan Didion’s Blue Nights even more than I loved The Year of Magical Thinking as it is much more about parenting and one’s own mortality. If you’re a Joan Didion fan, check out The Daily Stoic Podcast on Youtube, the table we sit at is hers. Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska by Warren Zanes is a great insight into not just the creative process but also the business and branding and career process. It’s fantastic and almost unbelievable. Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way is a wonderful discussion of what made the Greeks so special, what they can teach us and how they thought about life. I was lucky enough to interview Arnold Schwarzenegger twice for his new book, Be Useful. We met once in Los Angeles in his Bavarian-themed office (listen here) and then again on stage in NYC. And finally, Robert Greene released a 25th anniversary edition of The 48 Laws of Power. It’s one of the coolest designed books I’ve ever seen. If you flip the gold pages in one direction, you see Machiavelli’s hidden face…and if you flip them in the other direction, Robert’s face appears. It’s an amazing version of an amazing book which I continue to think everyone needs to read. And if you don’t want to read it because you think it’s ‘immoral,’ well then you definitely need to read it.
The Reading List Email for January 21, 2024
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep (Audiobook)
I recommended Killers of The Flower Moon a couple months ago (which is great). The movie is also great, but I’ve been telling folks how different they are because the book gets to operate first as a mystery (who is killing the Osage millionaires?), while the movie cannot because you see the murders. The fundamental mystery and ultimate question of the movie is “Why is Leonardo Dicaprio’s character doing it?” (which is ultimately not super satisfying). Anyway, I LOVED Furious Hours, which I had never heard of and intersects so many fascinating things. The first half is a true crime story about a black preacher who is murdering his extended family for insurance money…and somehow in the second half, Harper Lee comes in to write about it? We get To Kill a Mockingbird. We get In Cold Blood (one of the greatest true crime books ever). We get what is a quintessential battle against the Resistance and writer’s block (The War of Art!). It’s just a spectacularly written book. I loved it and wish more people knew about it.
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson (Audiobook)
The first Erik Larson book I read was Isaac’s Storm about the terrible Galveston Hurricane (a must read for any Texan/Southerner). More recently, I read his fantastic book The Splendid and The Vile. I picked this book up at an indie bookstore and tore through it in two days. As you know, one of my all-time favorites is A Night To Remember, about the sinking of the Titanic. Walter Lord is pretty untouchable when it comes to narrative nonfiction about boats, but this makes a good run at it. Another boat/submarine favorite is, of course, Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. I won’t spoil this book, but I will say the more I read about Woodrow Wilson, the more I hate him.
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (Audiobook)
I would have read this book for the first time in 2011, I’m guessing? I remember watching the movie shortly thereafter as well. I read it after I moved to Louisiana as I was wrestling with my role as a marketer and PR fixer (all themes in the book and themes in Trust Me, I’m Lying which I was then writing). I’m not sure why I re-read it now, but I tend to trust my gut as a reader. It’s a wonderful, complicated, important novel about politics, family, the things we do for money and the way we can be corrupted by access, power, and our desire to react against our times and our roots. It was fascinating to see the notes I took a decade ago and which of those passages still hit me. It was equally revealing to me—now that I am older, have kids, have grown and changed—which passages I missed the first time and why I might have had blind spots. In 2016, I was telling people they needed to read It Can’t Happen Here for its political and cultural prescience. Well, going into 2024, reading All The King’s Men might be a good idea, too. But even if you don’t read this book, I hope you take this suggestion to re-read a novel that was important to you a long time ago. You’ll be amazed at how different it reads.
The Odyssey by Homer (Translated by Emily Wilson) (Audiobook)
My oldest son remains obsessed with The Odyssey, so after reading Mythology (Ologies) and listening many times to Jorge Rivera-Herrans’ concept album/opera on Odysseus, I started reading a few pages to him each night from Emily Wilson’s fantastic translation of The Odyssey. I remember reading a kid’s version and watching a made-for-TV version in elementary school. I know we read another version in high school, and then I read the Robert Fagles translation in college. I first read Emily Wilson’s translation in 2019 (she also has two great books on Seneca here and here). The Odyssey is the great myth and story of Western Civilization. I don’t know, I just love, love, love the idea that my son is riveted by a story so many thousands of years old. And then when I think of my own relationship to it, the different ways I’ve read it, and what I’ve taken from it, I get very happy. (If you haven’t read Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way, you should). The only downside is now my kids like to sneak up and attack me and scream: “Nobody did it. Nobody hurt you!” which is a pretty literary joke if you ask me.
The Patton Mind by Roger H. Nye
LTC Joe Byerly recommended this book during The Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge a few months back, but it could have just as easily fit in the Daily Stoic Read to Lead Challenge. I had mentioned this fascinating piece about a scholar going through the marginalia on Nixon’s books in the Nixon library to understand how Nixon both consumed information and what he thought about it (you can read about how I read and take notes here). That’s when Joe recommended this book about Patton from the same lens. It’s from a small military imprint, but it’s an amazing book for any student of military history, leadership or lover of books. I found a ton of other books I am going to read next and found some great quotes in here. Patton was more than just a charismatic, courageous guy; he was deeply steeped in the history of his profession and the world (although one cautionary element here is the way his father directed him as a young man towards a bunch of Lost Cause mythology that led his son astray about America and race).
Misc
My wife Samantha told me her favorite books she read last year were The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel, anything written by Sarah J. Maas, and Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs by Jamie Loftus. I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ documentary on the American Buffalo (which features Steve Rinella who wrote an amazing book on the topic). I also enjoyed Shane Parrish’s Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments Into Extraordinary Results. We had a great conversation on The Daily Stoic Podcast.
The Reading List Email for February 18, 2024
Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins
A handful of folks have recommended this book to me over the last couple of years. I wish I had read it sooner because it really made me think. His attitude is slightly more Epicurean than Stoic about money, but I think he splits the difference nicely. “Look if all you want is to have a pile of money at the end, well, I guess that’s your choice,” Perkins writes. “But bear in mind that I have never seen somebody’s total net worth posted on their tombstone.” In retrospect, I was far too worried about and tight with money as I started to make it–some of this was a function of discipline and wisely delaying gratification but honestly, too much of it was motivated by anxiety and just plain not understanding how cumulative and exponential returns work. The other one that I took from this is about not waiting to be generous with money–both to charity and to your children. Why wait? As he points out in the book, to delay or to defer this is, in many cases, to choose to have less control over who and how that money is distributed. If you have more than you need, do good stuff with it now. Anyway, this is a great book. I’d recommend pairing it with another money book I like: I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi (also if you’re interested more specifically in what the Stoics have to say about money, this course we did is awesome).
Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…and Maybe the World, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple, and Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations by Admiral Bill McRaven
I met Admiral McRaven at a friend’s pickup basketball game last year and then funny enough have since bumped into him on an airplane and at Whole Foods. I read a few of his books (and watched his viral commencement address) when they came out but I read Make Your Bed, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog and Sea Stories this month because Admiral McRaven came out to do The Daily Stoic Podcast (stay tuned for that episode in March). These are just great, tight, well-done books. I guess we shouldn’t expect anything less from a Navy SEAL. As I told McRaven in our interview, it’s so easy to sneer at mottos and credos—“Expect what you inspect”, “Who dares wins”, “No plan survives contact with the enemy”, “The only easy day was yesterday”—but then you meet high performers, be they athletes or Special Forces Operators or CEOs, and you find they take these seriously. And this earnestness is infectious and inspiring. There’s a line from Nietzsche actually, about how the Stoics were superficial out of profundity. You find that at the highest levels and with the most difficult jobs, they find ways to boil things down to their essence. Anyway, McRaven’s books are largely meditations on a series of those simple ideas and I think most people would be better off for reading them.
The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America’s First Serial Killer by Skip Hollandsworth
You know it’s weird, Austin is not a new city. It’s a pretty historical, even significant one. Yet there are not really many great books about it. Austin has great music history, political history and even movie history (Linklater); but what’s the great Austin book? Skip Hollingsworth is one of Texas’ great writers–one of the greatest living longform journalists to boot too. Anyway, this is a great Austin book. One of the first (known) serial killers murdered eight people in Austin (by axe!) in 1884 and 1885… It was so gruesome and terrible that when Jack the Ripper began claiming victims in London three years later, some people wondered if it was the same psycho. It was so bad in Austin that people were afraid to leave their homes and it’s part of the reason that the famous Moontowers were installed (the only ones left in the world). The story is well-told, even funny at times. The only mark against the book is the ending, but that’s not Skip’s fault…
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Picked this book up at Sundog Books in Florida. David McCullough was more than just a great biographer, he was fun! He is sweet! And he manages in this book–written when he was 82 years old–to tell the incredible story of the Wright Brothers while capturing their earnestness and joy and ingenuity. And he does it in only 336 pages too! Just a master at work. I actually thought there were a lot of great parenting lessons in the book too. My only question in the book though is why three of the Wright siblings (Orville, Wilbur and sister Katherine), who had such a happy childhood, never had children of their own. Perhaps another biographer has the answer. I’ll look…
Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes and The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel
Jeff Bezos’ philosophy at Amazon was “Focus on the things that don’t change.” This is a great business strategy but it’s also good life advice because way too often we give way too much attention to what is shiny and new or urgent and timely instead of what is timeless and important. When I think about why Stoicism has lasted for all these thousands of years–and what I was lucky enough to tap into with my own books–is that it goes to the core of what it means to be a human in a world largely out of our control. Morgan (who has a great episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast coming out very soon) put together a great book of anecdotes and musings about what doesn’t change about human beings and history. It’s easy to read and quite a lot to take note of here. His previous book The Psychology of Money is also great (and a great companion to Die With Zero and I Will Teach You To Be Rich). Books built around stories are not just more fun to read but they resonate with readers better too–because that’s something that doesn’t change about people. There’s a reason Jesus spoke in parables and Lincoln preferred humorous stories to long arguments. It’s the most perennial form of communication.
Misc.
After listening to Rob Halford (lead singer of Judas Priest) on Marc Maron’s podcast, I read both of his delightful books, Biblical: Rob Halford’s Heavy Metal Scriptures and Confess: The Autobiography. I grew up in a very conservative, homogeneous suburb in California…but I was a huge heavy metal fan. I saw Halford open for Iron Maiden in 2003 or 2004 if I remember right. Anyway, I think he was one of the first openly gay people I really knew of and the way that it was basically a non-issue in heavy metal circles was really important in the opening of my mind and heart beyond what I had been taught/seen/heard growing up. That’s what art and books are all about–expanding our horizons, allowing us to ‘meet’ people we otherwise wouldn’t. Speaking of which, this long, well-researched piece in The Atlantic on why America should apologize to gay people… My wife raved about this book Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future. I love books about weird human/animal interactions (I have multiple shelves full, including a book referenced in this one, The Bear: History of a Fallen King). Both are good. Bears are awesome! I read Tremor by Teju Cole, whose journalism I quite enjoy. It’s a little bit less of a story than I was hoping for but there are some great riffs in here. I was haunted by this longread in The Atlantic about how to stop school shootings. Or rather, just how ill-equipped the police are to do so once one begins. It begins with the trial of the school resource officer who failed to even enter the building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Florida but actually is far more empathetic to him than you might think. In any case, it was heartbreaking and terrifying and makes me want to homeschool my kids. Our inability as a society to do anything about this ongoing evil is a stain on our soul (as the Onion put it: ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens).
The Reading List Email for February 25, 2024
Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins
A handful of folks have recommended this book to me over the last couple of years. I wish I had read it sooner because it really made me think. His attitude is slightly more Epicurean than Stoic about money, but I think he splits the difference nicely. “Look if all you want is to have a pile of money at the end, well, I guess that’s your choice,” Perkins writes. “But bear in mind that I have never seen somebody’s total net worth posted on their tombstone.” In retrospect, I was far too worried about and tight with money as I started to make it–some of this was a function of discipline and wisely delaying gratification but honestly, too much of it was motivated by anxiety and just plain not understanding how cumulative and exponential returns work. The other one that I took from this is about not waiting to be generous with money–both to charity and to your children. Why wait? As he points out in the book, to delay or to defer this is, in many cases, to choose to have less control over who and how that money is distributed. If you have more than you need, do good stuff with it now. Anyway, this is a great book. I’d recommend pairing it with another money book I like: I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi (also if you’re interested more specifically in what the Stoics have to say about money, this course we did is awesome).
Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…and Maybe the World, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple, and Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations by Admiral Bill McRaven
I met Admiral McRaven at a friend’s pickup basketball game last year and then funny enough have since bumped into him on an airplane and at Whole Foods. I read a few of his books (and watched his viral commencement address) when they came out but I read Make Your Bed, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog and Sea Stories this month because Admiral McRaven came out to do The Daily Stoic Podcast (stay tuned for that episode in March). These are just great, tight, well-done books. I guess we shouldn’t expect anything less from a Navy SEAL. As I told McRaven in our interview, it’s so easy to sneer at mottos and credos—“Expect what you inspect”, “Who dares wins”, “No plan survives contact with the enemy”, “The only easy day was yesterday”—but then you meet high performers, be they athletes or Special Forces Operators or CEOs, and you find they take these seriously. And this earnestness is infectious and inspiring. There’s a line from Nietzsche actually, about how the Stoics were superficial out of profundity. You find that at the highest levels and with the most difficult jobs, they find ways to boil things down to their essence. Anyway, McRaven’s books are largely meditations on a series of those simple ideas and I think most people would be better off for reading them.
The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America’s First Serial Killer by Skip Hollandsworth
You know it’s weird, Austin is not a new city. It’s a pretty historical, even significant one. Yet there are not really many great books about it. Austin has great music history, political history and even movie history (Linklater); but what’s the great Austin book? Skip Hollingsworth is one of Texas’ great writers–one of the greatest living longform journalists to boot too. Anyway, this is a great Austin book. One of the first (known) serial killers murdered eight people in Austin (by axe!) in 1884 and 1885… It was so gruesome and terrible that when Jack the Ripper began claiming victims in London three years later, some people wondered if it was the same psycho. It was so bad in Austin that people were afraid to leave their homes and it’s part of the reason that the famous Moontowers were installed (the only ones left in the world). The story is well-told, even funny at times. The only mark against the book is the ending, but that’s not Skip’s fault…
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Picked this book up at Sundog Books in Florida. David McCullough was more than just a great biographer, he was fun! He is sweet! And he manages in this book–written when he was 82 years old–to tell the incredible story of the Wright Brothers while capturing their earnestness and joy and ingenuity. And he does it in only 336 pages too! Just a master at work. I actually thought there were a lot of great parenting lessons in the book too. My only question in the book though is why three of the Wright siblings (Orville, Wilbur and sister Katherine), who had such a happy childhood, never had children of their own. Perhaps another biographer has the answer. I’ll look…
Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes and The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel
Jeff Bezos’ philosophy at Amazon was “Focus on the things that don’t change.” This is a great business strategy but it’s also good life advice because way too often we give way too much attention to what is shiny and new or urgent and timely instead of what is timeless and important. When I think about why Stoicism has lasted for all these thousands of years–and what I was lucky enough to tap into with my own books–is that it goes to the core of what it means to be a human in a world largely out of our control. Morgan (who has a great episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast coming out very soon) put together a great book of anecdotes and musings about what doesn’t change about human beings and history. It’s easy to read and quite a lot to take note of here. His previous book The Psychology of Money is also great (and a great companion to Die With Zero and I Will Teach You To Be Rich). Books built around stories are not just more fun to read but they resonate with readers better too–because that’s something that doesn’t change about people. There’s a reason Jesus spoke in parables and Lincoln preferred humorous stories to long arguments. It’s the most perennial form of communication.
Misc.
After listening to Rob Halford (lead singer of Judas Priest) on Marc Maron’s podcast, I read both of his delightful books, Biblical: Rob Halford’s Heavy Metal Scriptures and Confess: The Autobiography. I grew up in a very conservative, homogeneous suburb in California…but I was a huge heavy metal fan. I saw Halford open for Iron Maiden in 2003 or 2004 if I remember right. Anyway, I think he was one of the first openly gay people I really knew of and the way that it was basically a non-issue in heavy metal circles was really important in the opening of my mind and heart beyond what I had been taught/seen/heard growing up. That’s what art and books are all about–expanding our horizons, allowing us to ‘meet’ people we otherwise wouldn’t. Speaking of which, this long, well-researched piece in The Atlantic on why America should apologize to gay people… My wife raved about this book Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future. I love books about weird human/animal interactions (I have multiple shelves full, including a book referenced in this one, The Bear: History of a Fallen King). Both are good. Bears are awesome! I read Tremor by Teju Cole, whose journalism I quite enjoy. It’s a little bit less of a story than I was hoping for but there are some great riffs in here. I was haunted by this longread in The Atlantic about how to stop school shootings. Or rather, just how ill-equipped the police are to do so once one begins. It begins with the trial of the school resource officer who failed to even enter the building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Florida but actually is far more empathetic to him than you might think. In any case, it was heartbreaking and terrifying and makes me want to homeschool my kids. Our inability as a society to do anything about this ongoing evil is a stain on our soul (as the Onion put it: ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens).
The Reading List Email For March 24, 2024
Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen
Am I saying this book is as good as The Tiger? No. Of course not, because The Tiger is the greatest man vs animal (or animal vs man) book ever written. What I am saying is that this book is also incredible. I saw it mentioned in Gloria Dickie’s book Eight Bears, which I mentioned last month and managed to find an expensive used copy. It’s the insane and fascinating story of the grizzly bears of Glacier National Park, which on one single night in 1967, two grizzlies in two remote areas of the park attacked campers and and killed two women. The book reminded me a lot of Dead Wake, too (and I suppose A Night To Remember) where your dread increases as the book goes on, as each warning is ignored, each chance to prevent the tragedy is missed, and each page brings you closer to what you know will be the gruesome, violent, and now unavoidable action. This book deserves to be much more well-known. It was a lot of work, but we tracked down the publisher and got a bunch of new copies for The Painted Porch. Hopefully, this mention will give the book a second life because I was riveted.
Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley by Brent Underwood
12 years ago, I was hiring interns for my company and I ended up hiring this kid named Brent. Could I have possibly guessed that he would go on to buy an abandoned mining town from the old West and turn it into a riveting YouTube channel that would do hundreds and hundreds of millions of views? I don’t think so, but it’s been one of the coolest experiences of my life not just to watch him succeed but to do it as he brings a town back to life. This book he put together telling the stories of Cerro Gordo–which has become one of my favorite places in the world–is so good. It’s got an Edward Abbey meets Shop Class as Soulcraft vibe and I suspect it will be a big hit. I have a couple of videos I’ve done of my trips up there which you might like (Stoic Lessons From An Abandoned Ghost Town, Exploring An Abandoned Ghost Town, How Stoicism Helps You Deal With Big Challenges), but if you don’t follow him on Instagram or YouTube, you’re missing out. Brent did a run of signed, numbered first editions of the book for The Painted Porch, which you can grab here.
Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (Ancient Lives) by Donald Robertson
FINALLY. There has not been a great biography of Marcus Aurelius, maybe ever. There are a few essays here and there (and a good chapter, I think, in Lives of the Stoics), but for some reason, no one has managed to get it down into a full book. Donald Robertson was the perfect guy to do it–his book on Marcus’ philosophy, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor was great. He’s not a traditional academic, but he does, in these pages, manage to thoughtfully and readably capture the essence of this great man and his great life. It’s a must read for any aspiring Stoic. We filmed a great conversation for The Daily Stoic Podcast, stay tuned for that episode.
A Curious Mind Expanded Edition: The Secret to a Bigger Life by Brian Grazer
I picked this up in Washington D.C. at Bridge Street Books (a lovely bookstore). It jumped out at me because I love Brian Grazer’s movies and now that I’ve started the wisdom book in the Stoic Virtue series, it seemed perfect. Interestingly, this edition of the book is actually two of Brian’s books put together, one on curiosity and the other on meeting with people face to face. They fit quite nicely together, of course, because one of the best ways to follow your curiosity is through and with people. Anyway, lots of great stories here which I suspect will appear in my book soon enough!
The Death of Socrates by Emily Wilson
I am a big Emily Wilson fan. Her biography of Seneca is very good (tied with James Romm’s bio) and as I said last month, I have been reading her translation of The Odyssey to my son. Her new edition of The Iliad is next. Anyway, this short book on Socrates is lovely. Socrates was a curious person but like the cat, it got him killed. Why? Well, for starters, you can’t help but see when you study the man up close that he was really annoying. And one of his students, Alciabides, was a monster! That’s not quite fair, but I loved the complex picture of Socrates that emerges in this book (Emily does the same in her Seneca book). I took a million notes on this and again, I suspect you’ll see quite a bit of Socrates in the wisdom book.
Misc.
I read two Daniel Boorstin books this month: The Discoverers (very good) and The Seekers (also very good). I loved his book The Image when I was writing Trust Me, I’m Lying. I read Johnathan Katz’s Gangsters of Capitalism about General Smedley Butler. General Butler is a fascinating figure who deserves to be more well-known. His book War is a Racket informed Trust Me, I’m Lying quite a bit, too. He defines a racket as “something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.” Pretty timeless for something written in 1935! My wife read and loved Middlemarch and asked me to pass that along.
The Reading List Email For March 31, 2024
Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen (Audiobook)
Am I saying this book is as good as The Tiger? No. Of course not, because The Tiger is the greatest man vs animal (or animal vs man) book ever written. What I am saying is that this book is also incredible. I saw it mentioned in Gloria Dickie’s book Eight Bears, which I mentioned last month and managed to find an expensive used copy. It’s the insane and fascinating story of the grizzly bears of Glacier National Park, which on one single night in 1967, two grizzlies in two remote areas of the park attacked campers and and killed two women. The book reminded me a lot of Dead Wake, too (and I suppose A Night To Remember) where your dread increases as the book goes on, as each warning is ignored, each chance to prevent the tragedy is missed, and each page brings you closer to what you know will be the gruesome, violent, and now unavoidable action. This book deserves to be much more well-known. It was a lot of work, but we tracked down the publisher and got a bunch of new copies for The Painted Porch. Hopefully, this mention will give the book a second life because I was riveted.
Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley by Brent Underwood (Audiobook)
12 years ago, I was hiring interns for my company and I ended up hiring this kid named Brent. Could I have possibly guessed that he would go on to buy an abandoned mining town from the old West and turn it into a riveting YouTube channel that would do hundreds and hundreds of millions of views? I don’t think so, but it’s been one of the coolest experiences of my life not just to watch him succeed but to do it as he brings a town back to life. This book he put together telling the stories of Cerro Gordo–which has become one of my favorite places in the world–is so good. It’s got an Edward Abbey meets Shop Class as Soulcraft vibe and I suspect it will be a big hit. I have a couple of videos I’ve done of my trips up there which you might like (Stoic Lessons From An Abandoned Ghost Town, Exploring An Abandoned Ghost Town, How Stoicism Helps You Deal With Big Challenges), but if you don’t follow him on Instagram or YouTube, you’re missing out. Brent did a run of signed, numbered first editions of the book for The Painted Porch, which you can grab here.
Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (Ancient Lives) by Donald Robertson (Audiobook)
FINALLY. There has not been a great biography of Marcus Aurelius, maybe ever. There are a few essays here and there (and a good chapter, I think, in Lives of the Stoics), but for some reason, no one has managed to get it down into a full book. Donald Robertson was the perfect guy to do it–his book on Marcus’ philosophy, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor was great. He’s not a traditional academic, but he does, in these pages, manage to thoughtfully and readably capture the essence of this great man and his great life. It’s a must read for any aspiring Stoic. We filmed a great conversation for The Daily Stoic Podcast, stay tuned for that episode.
A Curious Mind Expanded Edition: The Secret to a Bigger Life by Brian Grazer (Audiobook)
I picked this up in Washington D.C. at Bridge Street Books (a lovely bookstore). It jumped out at me because I love Brian Grazer’s movies and now that I’ve started the wisdom book in the Stoic Virtue series, it seemed perfect. Interestingly, this edition of the book is actually two of Brian’s books put together, one on curiosity and the other on meeting with people face to face. They fit quite nicely together, of course, because one of the best ways to follow your curiosity is through and with people. Anyway, lots of great stories here which I suspect will appear in my book soon enough!
The Death of Socrates by Emily Wilson
I am a big Emily Wilson fan. Her biography of Seneca is very good (tied with James Romm’s bio) and as I said last month, I have been reading her translation of The Odyssey to my son. Her new edition of The Iliad is next. Anyway, this short book on Socrates is lovely. Socrates was a curious person but like the cat, it got him killed. Why? Well, for starters, you can’t help but see when you study the man up close that he was really annoying. And one of his students, Alciabides, was a monster! That’s not quite fair, but I loved the complex picture of Socrates that emerges in this book (Emily does the same in her Seneca book). I took a million notes on this and again, I suspect you’ll see quite a bit of Socrates in the wisdom book.
Misc.
I read two Daniel Boorstin books this month: The Discoverers (very good) and The Seekers (also very good). I loved his book The Image when I was writing Trust Me, I’m Lying. I read Johnathan Katz’s Gangsters of Capitalism about General Smedley Butler. General Butler is a fascinating figure who deserves to be more well-known. His book War is a Racket informed Trust Me, I’m Lying quite a bit, too. He defines a racket as “something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.” Pretty timeless for something written in 1935! My wife read and loved Middlemarch and asked me to pass that along.
The Reading List Email for April 21, 2024
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art Of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport (Audiobook)
Cal Newport is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. We tend to be on the same wavelength about stuff–his book Deep Work and my book Stillness Is The Key have some overlap. It’s funny, people think I read a lot and work a lot, but I don’t. I’m much closer to Cal’s outline in this book. I take my kids to school every day. I get home well-before dinner every night. I take a lot of walks (here’s Cal and I talking about the power of walks for idea generation). I just do this steadily and consistently. When Cal came on The Daily Stoic Podcast last month (listen to the episode here, or watch it on YouTube), we talked about this idea of festina lente–make haste slowly–that is my philosophy for the most part. Great book. Definitely read.
The Way Of The Champion: Pain, Persistence, And The Path Forward by Paul Rabil (Audiobook)
Paul Rabil is the GOAT you’ve never heard of. He is the most dominant lacrosse player of all time. He’s a three-time MVP. He won two world championships, two professional league championships, and two NCAA championships. A few years ago, I was talking to Paul and I said I don’t think Tom Brady or Lebron James or Sue Bird (all of whom he knows…game recognizes game) would ever be able to–or have the time–to write a The War of Art style book on how to be a champion. You should do it. So he did and it’s wonderful. You should read it. If you have kids who want to be athletes, they should definitely read it. Bill Belichick–who tried to get Paul to leave lacrosse and play for the Patriots–wrote the foreword, if you need more of an endorsement.
Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan: With an Extensive Introduction and Notes by Alexander Bennett
I can’t remember which subscriber emailed me about this book, but I really liked it. Written in 1905, Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan was the first book written for a Western audience about the code of conduct that governed the lives of Japan’s ruling class. It gets to “the soul of Japan” by answering the question of why certain ideas and customs prevail. It was a huge sensation in the US when it came out. I believe Theodore Roosevelt read this book. It’s a lovely little peon to the virtues of an ancient tradition and deserves to be read up there with The Book of Five Rings and Zen in the Art of Archery (two other favorites of mine). Fictionally, there is also Rules for a Knight, which is a great read, too.
Fortune’s Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt by Arthur T. Vanderbilt (Audiobook)
When Morgan Housel came on The Daily Stoic Podcast, he noticed a copy of this book in my office and said it was one of his favorites. Guiltily, I had not read it yet but quickly remedied this fact–good thing because he is right. I read a lot about Cornelius Vanderbilt when I was researching for Robert Greene’s book, The 50th Law (one of first wins I had as a research assistant was the story of Cornelius convincing his mother to lend him money for a boat), but I had no idea how the rest of the family faired. (Spoiler: Not well!) This book is largely a cautionary tale on what a love of money does to a family. If you want to make sure you do better by your kids, read this book with Ron Lieber’s Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart about Money. Isn’t that what we’re all after as parents? Trying to raise children who are the opposite of spoiled, whatever that is?
The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency by Chris Whipple (Audiobook)
There are lots of books about powerful and famous people. This book is a fascinating look at the man behind the man–the chiefs of staff to the presidency. As it happens, I gave a talk at the US Naval Academy earlier this week and I talked about President Jimmy Carter (one of our most underrated and certainly most decent president). The big failure of Carter’s presidency (and perhaps why he didn’t get a second term) is discussed in this book. Carter, reacting to the more imperial presidencies of his predecessors, opted not to have a chief of staff for most of his presidency. He was more accessible as a result…but also hopelessly bogged down. You had to ask Carter personally to use the White House tennis court! Anyway, he could have done more good had he been a little more hierarchical. The first thing I did after reading this book was ask my assistant to read it. :)
Misc.
I enjoyed Billie Jean King’s memoir All In. In the book, she talks about not liking her first autobiography, written in 1982, but I read that many years ago and liked it quite a bit too. My wife had been raving about Charles Duhigg’s Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. She tends to enjoy fiction more than nonfiction, so when someone really lands for her, I read it. The book is great and Charles and I had a great conversation on The Daily Stoic Podcast, which you can listen to here. He signed some copies at the store, too. I really enjoyed this piece by Doris Kearns Goodwin about her and her husband, the Kennedy speechwriter, Dick Goodwin. If you haven’t read her book Leadership in Turbulent Times, it’s a must-read. And I loved this article about Caesar salads which is my go to order when I am on the road (Commander’s Palace has my long time fav) and I am tired of all these lame ‘innovations.’
The Reading List Email for April 28, 2024
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art Of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport (Audiobook)
Cal Newport is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. We tend to be on the same wavelength about stuff–his book Deep Work and my book Stillness Is The Key have some overlap. It’s funny, people think I read a lot and work a lot, but I don’t. I’m much closer to Cal’s outline in this book. I take my kids to school every day. I get home well-before dinner every night. I take a lot of walks (here’s Cal and I talking about the power of walks for idea generation). I just do this steadily and consistently. When Cal came on The Daily Stoic Podcast last month (listen to the episode here, or watch it on YouTube), we talked about this idea of festina lente–make haste slowly–that is my philosophy for the most part. Great book. Definitely read.
The Way Of The Champion: Pain, Persistence, And The Path Forward by Paul Rabil (Audiobook)
Paul Rabil is the GOAT you’ve never heard of. He is the most dominant lacrosse player of all time. He’s a three-time MVP. He won two world championships, two professional league championships, and two NCAA championships. A few years ago, I was talking to Paul and I said I don’t think Tom Brady or Lebron James or Sue Bird (all of whom he knows…game recognizes game) would ever be able to–or have the time–to write a The War of Art style book on how to be a champion. You should do it. So he did and it’s wonderful. You should read it. If you have kids who want to be athletes, they should definitely read it. Bill Belichick–who tried to get Paul to leave lacrosse and play for the Patriots–wrote the foreword, if you need more of an endorsement.
Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan: With an Extensive Introduction and Notes by Alexander Bennett by Inazō Nitobe
I can’t remember which subscriber emailed me about this book, but I really liked it. Written in 1905 by Inazō Nitobe, Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan was the first book written for a Western audience about the code of conduct that governed the lives of Japan’s ruling class. It gets to “the soul of Japan” by answering the question of why certain ideas and customs prevail. It was a huge sensation in the US when it came out. I believe Theodore Roosevelt read this book. It’s a lovely little paean to the virtues of an ancient tradition and deserves to be read up there with The Book of Five Rings and Zen in the Art of Archery (two other favorites of mine). Fictionally, there is also Rules for a Knight, which is a great read, too.
Fortune’s Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt by Arthur T. Vanderbilt (Audiobook)
When Morgan Housel came on The Daily Stoic Podcast, he noticed a copy of this book in my office and said it was one of his favorites. Guiltily, I had not read it yet but quickly remedied this fact–good thing because he is right. I read a lot about Cornelius Vanderbilt when I was researching for Robert Greene’s book, The 50th Law (one of first wins I had as a research assistant was the story of Cornelius convincing his mother to lend him money for a boat), but I had no idea how the rest of the family faired. (Spoiler: Not well!) This book is largely a cautionary tale on what a love of money does to a family. If you want to make sure you do better by your kids, read this book with Ron Lieber’s Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart about Money. Isn’t that what we’re all after as parents? Trying to raise children who are the opposite of spoiled, whatever that is?
The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency by Chris Whipple (Audiobook)
There are lots of books about powerful and famous people. This book is a fascinating look at the man behind the man–the chiefs of staff to the presidency. As it happens, I gave a talk at the US Naval Academy earlier this week and I talked about President Jimmy Carter (one of our most underrated and certainly most decent president). The big failure of Carter’s presidency (and perhaps why he didn’t get a second term) is discussed in this book. Carter, reacting to the more imperial presidencies of his predecessors, opted not to have a chief of staff for most of his presidency. He was more accessible as a result…but also hopelessly bogged down. You had to ask Carter personally to use the White House tennis court! Anyway, he could have done more good had he been a little more hierarchical. The first thing I did after reading this book was ask my assistant to read it. :)
Misc.
I enjoyed Billie Jean King’s memoir All In. In the book, she talks about not liking her first autobiography, written in 1982, but I read that many years ago and liked it quite a bit too. My wife had been raving about Charles Duhigg’s Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. She tends to enjoy fiction more than nonfiction, so when someone really lands for her, I read it. The book is great and Charles and I had a great conversation on The Daily Stoic Podcast, which you can listen to here. He signed some copies at the store, too. I really enjoyed this piece by Doris Kearns Goodwin about her and her husband, the Kennedy speechwriter, Dick Goodwin. If you haven’t read her book Leadership in Turbulent Times, it’s a must-read. And I loved this article about Caesar salads which is my go to order when I am on the road (Commander’s Palace has my long time fav) and I am tired of all these lame ‘innovations.’
The Reading List Email for May 19, 2024
Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall by Helena Merriman (Audiobook)
Ok, look, I should have read this book sooner. My wife has been raving about it for like two years. I don’t know why I was resistant, but I feel like a real idiot now, because it’s incredible. Like, so good that I sometimes had trouble reading more than a few pages at a time–I would have to get up and walk around or just snack on something to calm down. It’s the story of a German graduate student who escapes into West Berlin…and then despite having no family or loved ones on the other side, spends thousands of hours–at great risk to himself–digging a 442-foot tunnel back to East Berlin to help others escape. So much good Cold War history here but more than that, just a riveting story. I love narrative nonfiction, as you know, but this one is written by a TV journalist so it has a very unique feel to it. I don’t think I’ve read anything like it before. Just LOVED it. I’m sorry, Samantha, you were right. I should have listened.
Booth: A Novel by Karen Joy Fowler (Audiobook)
This book is another wife-credit. Samantha told me that her friend Holli Herrera, who is married to my friend Mike Herrera of the band MxPx (listed to his episode on The Daily Stoic Podcast), was reading this book. I immediately picked it up because Karen Joy Fowler wrote one of my all-time favorite novels, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, about one of my all-time favorite weird bits of trivia: a group of linguists in 1973 tried to raise a chimpanzee as a human named Nim Chimpsky (experiment went terribly awry). And to hear that this novel is about John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln? The only thing more unbelievable than the story of Nim Chimpsky is that the brother of the most famous actor in the world killed the President…after the famous actor had saved the life of the President’s son in a train station. Like her other novel, in a way, this is really a story of family dynamics, the impact that dysfunction and secrets can have on children, and how the consequences of decisions adults make ripple through future generations. I raved about the book Grant’s Final Victory a while ago but I would never have expected Adam Badeau to make an appearance in this novel (it turns out that the writer/researcher who helped Grant with his memoirs was close friends–possibly lovers–with Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes Booth. Crazy!) As always, I must recommend here one of my favorite Civil War books: This Hallowed Ground. Some other great ones are Civil War Stories and Robert E. Lee and Me. Also, did you know that the expression “sic semper tyrannis” that Booth shouted as he murdered Lincoln was recently traced way way back to Scipio Aemilianus, a famous Roman Stoic? Again, crazy.
Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda (Audiobook)
I’ve been meaning to read about Lawrence of Arabia ever since I read his quote at the beginning of Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey (about his unique qualifications for his own translation): “I have hunted wild boars and watched wild lions. Built boats and killed many men. So I have odd knowledges that qualify me to understand the Odyssey, and odd experiences that interpret it to me.” I knew the broad strokes of Lawrence’s campaigns—using guerrilla warfare to unite the Arabs against their Turkish overlords—but I decided I would read about his life. And what an incredible life it was! Especially the end—after becoming perhaps the most famous soldier in the world he just enlisted in the RAF as an ordinary mechanic and lived out most of the rest of his life in total obscurity?! Surreal.
King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild (Audiobook)
Ok, just to fully round out this month’s list with recommendations from my wife, I remember she read this book for a class in college but I never picked it up. The little small-town grocery store by our ranch (where I take my kids for ice cream cups after school sometimes) had this book in its used book rack and I bought it for a dollar. As I said, when I see books I might like, I buy them! It’s interesting, Adam Hochchild’s book Bury The Chains (about the abolition movement) had a huge influence on Right Thing, Right Now, and is basically about the good that one person can do. Thomas Clarkson is singularly responsible for ending the slave trade in the British Empire. King Leopold’s Ghost is about how much evil one person can do–his colony in the Belgian Congo was a crime against humanity akin to the Holocaust. Both men had an obsession, both men made something that shouldn’t be possible, possible. What’s so shocking to me, I guess, is how little is known about either man. I had not heard of either of them until I read these books. You can listen to my interview with Adam on The Daily Stoic podcast here and I also highly recommend his memoir Half The Way Home (which itself pairs well with Kafka’s Letter to the Father, one of my favorite books on parenting).
The Wide, Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides (Audiobook)
I remember seeing Cook’s obelisk when my wife and I hiked down to Kealakekua Bay to swim on our honeymoon. It was a beautiful spot that 245 years ago was also the place of a series of miscommunications, errors and then a violent struggle in which Cook (the first European to land in the Hawaiian Islands) was killed. I did not know much about Cook then or in years since, so when I saw this book, I thought I would grab it. I had no idea that his voyage also included Antarctica, Australia, Cape Horn, and so much more. I liked this book a lot. I don’t think it glorifies colonization, but I also thought it was fair to Cook–and exciting and fascinating all the while. Is it my favorite explorer/ship book of all time? No…more on that below.
Misc.
Ok, so Manu Ginobili read The Wager by David Grann (I recommended it here back in September) and asked for my thoughts. I told him I thought it was good but not even in my top five of shipwreck books. Naturally, he asked what those would be, to which I immediately replied: In The Heart of the Sea, Pirate Hunters, A Night To Remember, Dead Wake, Shadow Divers, Endurance, and Sea Of Thunder (admittedly that’s more than five, but they’re just all so good). I also recently enjoyed Max Joseph’s short YouTube documentary on Happiness. It’s a quick but edifying watch. Speaking of docs, if your curiosity was piqued by the insane story of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, there is also a documentary about Nim Chimpsky that I watched many years ago.
The Reading List Email for May 26, 2024
Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall by Helena Merriman (Audiobook)
Ok, look, I should have read this book sooner. My wife has been raving about it for like two years. I don’t know why I was resistant, but I feel like a real idiot now, because it’s incredible. Like, so good that I sometimes had trouble reading more than a few pages at a time–I would have to get up and walk around or just snack on something to calm down. It’s the story of a German graduate student who escapes into West Berlin…and then despite having no family or loved ones on the other side, spends thousands of hours–at great risk to himself–digging a 442-foot tunnel back to East Berlin to help others escape. So much good Cold War history here but more than that, just a riveting story. I love narrative nonfiction, as you know, but this one is written by a TV journalist so it has a very unique feel to it. I don’t think I’ve read anything like it before. Just LOVED it. I’m sorry, Samantha, you were right. I should have listened.
Booth: A Novel by Karen Joy Fowler (Audiobook)
This book is another wife-credit. Samantha told me that her friend Holli Herrera, who is married to my friend Mike Herrera of the band MxPx (listen to his episode on The Daily Stoic Podcast), was reading this book. I immediately picked it up because Karen Joy Fowler wrote one of my all-time favorite novels, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, about one of my all-time favorite weird bits of trivia: a group of linguists in 1973 tried to raise a chimpanzee as a human named Nim Chimpsky (experiment went terribly awry). And to hear that this novel is about John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln? The only thing more unbelievable than the story of Nim Chimpsky is that the brother of the most famous actor in the world killed the President…after the famous actor had saved the life of the President’s son in a train station. Like her other novel, in a way, this is really a story of family dynamics, the impact that dysfunction and secrets can have on children, and how the consequences of decisions adults make ripple through future generations. I raved about the book Grant’s Final Victory a while ago but I would never have expected Adam Badeau to make an appearance in this novel (it turns out that the writer/researcher who helped Grant with his memoirs was close friends–possibly lovers–with Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes Booth. Crazy!) As always, I must recommend here one of my favorite Civil War books: This Hallowed Ground. Some other great ones are Civil War Stories and Robert E. Lee and Me. Also, did you know that the expression “sic semper tyrannis” that Booth shouted as he murdered Lincoln was recently traced way way back to Scipio Aemilianus, a famous Roman Stoic? Again, crazy.
Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda (Audiobook)
I’ve been meaning to read about Lawrence of Arabia ever since I read his quote at the beginning of Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey (about his unique qualifications for his own translation): “I have hunted wild boars and watched wild lions. Built boats and killed many men. So I have odd knowledges that qualify me to understand the Odyssey, and odd experiences that interpret it to me.” I knew the broad strokes of Lawrence’s campaigns—using guerrilla warfare to unite the Arabs against their Turkish overlords—but I decided I would read about his life. And what an incredible life it was! Especially the end—after becoming perhaps the most famous soldier in the world he just enlisted in the RAF as an ordinary mechanic and lived out most of the rest of his life in total obscurity?! Surreal.
King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild (Audiobook)
Ok, just to fully round out this month’s list with recommendations from my wife, I remember she read this book for a class in college but I never picked it up. The little small-town grocery store by our ranch (where I take my kids for ice cream cups after school sometimes) had this book in its used book rack and I bought it for a dollar. As I said, when I see books I might like, I buy them! It’s interesting, Adam Hochchild’s book Bury The Chains (about the abolition movement) had a huge influence on Right Thing, Right Now, and is basically about the good that one person can do. Thomas Clarkson is singularly responsible for ending the slave trade in the British Empire. King Leopold’s Ghost is about how much evil one person can do–his colony in the Belgian Congo was a crime against humanity akin to the Holocaust. Both men had an obsession, both men made something that shouldn’t be possible, possible. What’s so shocking to me, I guess, is how little is known about either man. I had not heard of either of them until I read these books. You can listen to my interview with Adam on The Daily Stoic podcast here and I also highly recommend his memoir Half The Way Home (which itself pairs well with Kafka’s Letter to the Father, one of my favorite books on parenting).
The Wide, Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides (Audiobook)
I remember seeing Cook’s obelisk when my wife and I hiked down to Kealakekua Bay to swim on our honeymoon. It was a beautiful spot that 245 years ago was also the place of a series of miscommunications, errors and then a violent struggle in which Cook (the first European to land in the Hawaiian Islands) was killed. I did not know much about Cook then or in years since, so when I saw this book, I thought I would grab it. I had no idea that his voyage also included Antarctica, Australia, Cape Horn, and so much more. I liked this book a lot. I don’t think it glorifies colonization, but I also thought it was fair to Cook–and exciting and fascinating all the while. Is it my favorite explorer/ship book of all time? No…more on that below.
Misc.
Ok, so Manu Ginobili read The Wager by David Grann (I recommended it here back in September) and asked for my thoughts. I told him I thought it was good but not even in my top five of shipwreck books. Naturally, he asked what those would be, to which I immediately replied: In The Heart of the Sea, Pirate Hunters, A Night To Remember, Dead Wake, Shadow Divers, Endurance, and Sea Of Thunder (admittedly that’s more than five, but they’re just all so good). I also recently enjoyed Max Joseph’s short YouTube documentary on Happiness. It’s a quick but edifying watch. Speaking of docs, if your curiosity was piqued by the insane story of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, there is also a documentary about Nim Chimpsky that I watched many years ago.
The Reading List Email For June 23, 2024
Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson (Audiobook)
I said last month that I don’t preorder many books, but I found myself preordering this new one by Erik Larson. In fact, this broke another one of my informal rules which is “Ryan, you HAVE to stop reading books about the Civil War. Enough already!” I’m glad I made an exception because this book is fantastic. It’s a beat-by-beat in the style Larson does so wonderfully in The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In The Garden of Beasts, and The Devil in the White City–telling of those fateful days before the Fire Eaters plunged America into a devastating, terrible war they were never going to win. Larson manages, as always, to find a number of characters you wouldn’t expect to like but do. He also manages, I think, to capture Lincoln’s quick transformation from politician to leader. Look, the best way to understand the present is to study the past (thus books like The Great Influenza) and this book is a must-read to grasp the stakes of the abyss that we might stagger ourselves into. Also, much to be said here about what snowflakes slave owners were–and how a closed-loop, delusional culture (ahem, right-wing news ecosystem) can break people’s brains.
Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki (Audiobook)
Weirdly, Murakami’s novels have never really done it for me, but his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is one of my all-time favorites. He applies the same pared-down style to this book (not as good of a title) on writing. To me, writing and running are very similar disciplines. It’s a race against the self. It’s a battle between the higher and the lower self. You gotta do it even when you don’t want to. You gotta push yourself further than you think you can go. You gotta realize that the real victory is getting to do the thing, and any results on top of that are extra. Anyway, great stuff here. I liked this book a lot.
James by Percival Everett (Audiobook)
My wife grabbed this for me at First Lights Books in Austin, TX (I would say that other bookstores are our mortal enemies, but of course that’s not true. It’s the socialists over at the library that are the real enemies). I’d been meaning to read it ever since I saw the NYT review. What a wonderful idea for a novel–to tell the story of Huckleberry Finn and Jim from Jim’s perspective! That Everett is able to take this much darker and tragic perspective and still make it funny? That’s a task worthy of Mark Twain. It’s also deeply moving and I think an important look at how slavery actually was (Twelve Years a Slave is also an incredible book). I spent my birthday reading James and I consider that a great gift. Also, it reminded me of two other books I loved: Wicked River by Lee Sandlin (an absolutely incredible book about the history of the river) and Life on the Mississippi by Rinker Buck (about a guy who recently traveled it in his own raft, not too dissimilar to the one Huck and Jim were on). In Right Thing, Right Now I talk about the work of abolitionist Thomas Clarkson–again we want to study the past to figure out how to improve the present and Adam Hochschild’s book Bury the Chains is an inspiring look at how someone managed to see slavery as it was in the 18th century and do something about it.
Get Honest or Die Lying: Why Small Talk Sucks by Charlamagne tha God (Audiobook)
My career changed several years ago. I was in a hotel room in Canada when I got a DM on Instagram. It was from Charlamagne Tha God–he told me he’d just read Ego is the Enemy and was going to post about it, so I should buckle up. He was right to warn me–his show The Breakfast Club is maybe the biggest, most important morning radio show in the country. Charlamagne talking about Stoicism has been huge (here’s a crazy New Yorker story about it that middle school me would not have believed). And as it happens, I became a big fan of his, too. His first book Black Privilege is awesome. His book Shook One is much more down my alley (it’s about dealing with your anxiety) and his new one is about being honest (it’s not really about small talk, as the subtitle suggests). When I was on The Breakfast Club last week, he and I talked about something from Marcus Aurelius–how annoying it is when people say, “I’m going to be straight with you here” (because it means they usually aren’t!). To me, that’s what this new book is about. I also thought Charlamangne’s interview for The Interview in the NYT was really good. You won’t always agree with him, but he’ll make you think and you know he’s gonna say what he thinks.
Misc.
I did my annual birthday post this week, so here at 37 (Or So) Lessons From A 37 Year Old. I also binge-watched the entirety of Netflix’s A Man In Full. I liked it (weird ending), but I hate to be the guy to say: Read the book. It’s so much better! But in this case, it is true. A Man In Full is an amazing book and one of the ones I point to when people ask for novels about Stoicism. The other is, of course, The Moviegoer. Both are probably impossible to capture fully on the screen but you couldn’t ask for someone better than David E. Kelly to try. I read Susan Quinn’s biography of Marie Curie, which was pretty good. I did my notecards on The Didion Files by Sara Davidson, which was incredible.
The Reading List Email For June 30, 2024
Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson (Audiobook)
I said last month that I don’t preorder many books, but I found myself preordering this new one by Erik Larson. In fact, this broke another one of my informal rules which is “Ryan, you HAVE to stop reading books about the Civil War. Enough already!” I’m glad I made an exception because this book is fantastic. It’s a beat-by-beat in the style Larson does so wonderfully in The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In The Garden of Beasts, and The Devil in the White City–telling of those fateful days before the Fire Eaters plunged America into a devastating, terrible war they were never going to win. Larson manages, as always, to find a number of characters you wouldn’t expect to like but do. He also manages, I think, to capture Lincoln’s quick transformation from politician to leader. Look, the best way to understand the present is to study the past (thus books like The Great Influenza) and this book is a must-read to grasp the stakes of the abyss that we might stagger ourselves into. Also, much to be said here about what snowflakes slave owners were–and how a closed-loop, delusional culture (ahem, right-wing news ecosystem) can break people’s brains.
Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki (Audiobook)
Weirdly, Murakami’s novels have never really done it for me, but his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is one of my all-time favorites. He applies the same pared-down style to this book (not as good of a title) on writing. To me, writing and running are very similar disciplines. It’s a race against the self. It’s a battle between the higher and the lower self. You gotta do it even when you don’t want to. You gotta push yourself further than you think you can go. You gotta realize that the real victory is getting to do the thing, and any results on top of that are extra. Anyway, great stuff here. I liked this book a lot.
James by Percival Everett (Audiobook)
My wife grabbed this for me at First Lights Books in Austin, TX (I would say that other bookstores are our mortal enemies, but of course that’s not true. It’s the socialists over at the library that are the real enemies). I’d been meaning to read it ever since I saw the NYT review. What a wonderful idea for a novel–to tell the story of Huckleberry Finn and Jim from Jim’s perspective! That Everett is able to take this much darker and tragic perspective and still make it funny? That’s a task worthy of Mark Twain. It’s also deeply moving and I think an important look at how slavery actually was (Twelve Years a Slave is also an incredible book). I spent my birthday reading James and I consider that a great gift. Also, it reminded me of two other books I loved: Wicked River by Lee Sandlin (an absolutely incredible book about the history of the river) and Life on the Mississippi by Rinker Buck (about a guy who recently traveled it in his own raft, not too dissimilar to the one Huck and Jim were on). In Right Thing, Right Now I talk about the work of abolitionist Thomas Clarkson–again we want to study the past to figure out how to improve the present and Adam Hochschild’s book Bury the Chains is an inspiring look at how someone managed to see slavery as it was in the 18th century and do something about it.
Get Honest or Die Lying: Why Small Talk Sucks by Charlamagne tha God (Audiobook)
My career changed several years ago. I was in a hotel room in Canada when I got a DM on Instagram. It was from Charlamagne Tha God–he told me he’d just read Ego is the Enemy and was going to post about it, so I should buckle up. He was right to warn me–his show The Breakfast Club is maybe the biggest, most important morning radio show in the country. Charlamagne talking about Stoicism has been huge (here’s a crazy New Yorker story about it that middle school me would not have believed). And as it happens, I became a big fan of his, too. His first book Black Privilege is awesome. His book Shook One is much more down my alley (it’s about dealing with your anxiety) and his new one is about being honest (it’s not really about small talk, as the subtitle suggests). When I was on The Breakfast Club last week, he and I talked about something from Marcus Aurelius–how annoying it is when people say, “I’m going to be straight with you here” (because it means they usually aren’t!). To me, that’s what this new book is about. I also thought Charlamangne’s interview for The Interview in the NYT was really good. You won’t always agree with him, but he’ll make you think and you know he’s gonna say what he thinks.
Misc.
I did my annual birthday post this week, so here at 37 (Or So) Lessons From A 37 Year Old. I also binge-watched the entirety of Netflix’s A Man In Full. I liked it (weird ending), but I hate to be the guy to say: Read the book. It’s so much better! But in this case, it is true. A Man In Full is an amazing book and one of the ones I point to when people ask for novels about Stoicism. The other is, of course, The Moviegoer. Both are probably impossible to capture fully on the screen but you couldn’t ask for someone better than David E. Kelly to try. I read Susan Quinn’s biography of Marie Curie, which was pretty good. I did my notecards on The Didion Files by Sara Davidson, which was incredible.
The Reading List Email For July 14, 2024
Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller (Audiobook)
Speaking of swimming, I found myself reading this book just down the street from the Blue Hole in Georgetown. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like it. It’s a story about a fish scientist. It’s a story of the history of taxonomy. It’s a memoir of a woman who blew up her relationship. It’s a story about finding order and meaning in life. It’s somehow about all these things, even though it’s only a short 250 pages? I dunno, I just need you to trust me: It’s great. Very sweetly written. You’ll learn a bunch of stuff you didn’t know. And if you think it’s weird that I’m recommending a book about taxonomy, let me also tell you I have an all-time favorite book about taxidermy. It’s called Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals. It also should not be good, but it’s awesome.
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel (Audiobook)
Ok look, this is another book I should have listened to my wife about earlier. Was she right about Tunnel 29 being spectacular? Yes. Has she been right about most of the books she recommends? Yes. Have pretty much all the major misses in my life been things that she advised against? Also yes. But I dragged my feet on this. Maybe I would have read it sooner had I realized that Michael Finkel wrote another book I was fascinated by (The Stranger in the Woods). But really, I have no excuse. In any case, people, please, learn from my painful mistakes. Read this book! How is this a real story? How have I not heard about a guy who stole two BILLION dollars worth of art, which he decorated the attic apartment in his mother’s house with? Again, I have no explanations, only a heartfelt plea: Go read this book.
Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart (Audiobook)
There are some books that you simply cannot fully appreciate until you have kids. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is one of those books. Ghost Rider, which I read on Kindle in May 2010 (crazy, I just checked the dates–I bought it again exactly 14 years and 2 days apart), is another. Neil Peart, probably the greatest drummer of all time (of the band Rush), lost his 19-year-old daughter and then his wife 10 months apart. A car accident and cancer shattered his life… so he hit the road on a motorcycle, trying to preserve his “small baby soul.” As David McCollough detailed in his book Mornings on Horseback, when Theodore Roosevelt lost his wife and mother in the same house on the same day, he did something very similar. “Black care,” he wrote, “rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough.” Ghost Rider, although a very different style than Bryson’s In A Sunburned Country, is another great among the travel/road trip memoirs. It hit me very differently now that I have a family of my own, and because I now know that after Peart picked up the pieces of his life, he would be struck down by cancer in 2020. What a life and what a talent, though. I saw Rush on their 30th-anniversary tour in high school. I was very lucky to witness his greatness in person.
Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality by Renee DiResta (Audiobook)
My friend Jordan Harbinger (who I just had on The Daily Stoic Podcast, listen here) pointed me to Renee’s book, which I read with horror and understanding. As hard as it is for me to believe that Obstacle is 10 years old, it’s even crazier to me that I started writing Trust Me I’m Lying in 2011! I remember thinking, as I worked on that book in New Orleans, “I hope I’m not too late with all this.” If anything, these ideas are more timely and more urgent now, as Renee points out. When people can make things trend… they can make things real. Sadly, people were much earlier to this stuff than either of us. When Renee was at The Painted Porch, I gave her a copy of Upton Sinclair’s (author of The Jungle) book The Brass Check. The Brass Check was written about media manipulation in 1919! Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is another classic and so is Daniel Boorstin’s The Image. If more people read these books and familiarized themselves with Reene’s work, perhaps we would not be so susceptible to demagogues and grifters and crazy people. But we are. (There’s a line in Sinclair’s book where he says in a country governed by public opinion, what forms public opinion governs the country). Media literacy is a foundational skill and if you do not have it, you are at the mercy of forces (and fools) you cannot even begin to comprehend. Thirteen years ago, I knew things were bad, but even I could not have imagined the consequences that would follow (the death toll from anti-vaxxers alone is mind-boggling). After reading this book, I shudder to think of what comes next…
Misc.
Keila Shaheen was nice enough to come out to the bookstore and sign some copies of The Shadow Work Journal (which Tony Gonzalez was nice enough to recommend to me last summer). Here’s a little video of me showing how I used one of my favorite journals (One-Line A Day Journal).
The Reading List Email For July 21, 2024
Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller (Audiobook)
Speaking of swimming, I found myself reading this book just down the street from the Blue Hole in Georgetown. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like it. It’s a story about a fish scientist. It’s a story of the history of taxonomy. It’s a memoir of a woman who blew up her relationship. It’s a story about finding order and meaning in life. It’s somehow about all these things, even though it’s only a short 250 pages? I dunno, I just need you to trust me: It’s great. Very sweetly written. You’ll learn a bunch of stuff you didn’t know. And if you think it’s weird that I’m recommending a book about taxonomy, let me also tell you I have an all-time favorite book about taxidermy. It’s called Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals. It also should not be good, but it’s awesome.
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel (Audiobook)
Ok look, this is another book I should have listened to my wife about earlier. Was she right about Tunnel 29 being spectacular? Yes. Has she been right about most of the books she recommends? Yes. Have pretty much all the major misses in my life been things that she advised against? Also yes. But I dragged my feet on this. Maybe I would have read it sooner had I realized that Michael Finkel wrote another book I was fascinated by (The Stranger in the Woods). But really, I have no excuse. In any case, people, please, learn from my painful mistakes. Read this book! How is this a real story? How have I not heard about a guy who stole two BILLION dollars worth of art, which he decorated the attic apartment in his mother’s house with? Again, I have no explanations, only a heartfelt plea: Go read this book.
Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart (Audiobook)
There are some books that you simply cannot fully appreciate until you have kids. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is one of those books. Ghost Rider, which I read on Kindle in May 2010 (crazy, I just checked the dates–I bought it again exactly 14 years and 2 days apart), is another. Neil Peart, probably the greatest drummer of all time (of the band Rush), lost his 19-year-old daughter and then his wife 10 months apart. A car accident and cancer shattered his life… so he hit the road on a motorcycle, trying to preserve his “small baby soul.” As David McCollough detailed in his book Mornings on Horseback, when Theodore Roosevelt lost his wife and mother in the same house on the same day, he did something very similar. “Black care,” he wrote, “rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough.” Ghost Rider, although a very different style than Bryson’s In A Sunburned Country, is another great among the travel/road trip memoirs. It hit me very differently now that I have a family of my own, and because I now know that after Peart picked up the pieces of his life, he would be struck down by cancer in 2020. What a life and what a talent, though. I saw Rush on their 30th-anniversary tour in high school. I was very lucky to witness his greatness in person.
Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality by Renee DiResta (Audiobook)
My friend Jordan Harbinger (who I just had on The Daily Stoic Podcast, listen here) pointed me to Renee’s book, which I read with horror and understanding. As hard as it is for me to believe that Obstacle is 10 years old, it’s even crazier to me that I started writing Trust Me I’m Lying in 2011! I remember thinking, as I worked on that book in New Orleans, “I hope I’m not too late with all this.” If anything, these ideas are more timely and more urgent now, as Renee points out. When people can make things trend… they can make things real. Sadly, people were much earlier to this stuff than either of us. When Renee was at The Painted Porch, I gave her a copy of Upton Sinclair’s (author of The Jungle) book The Brass Check. The Brass Check was written about media manipulation in 1919! Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is another classic and so is Daniel Boorstin’s The Image. If more people read these books and familiarized themselves with Renee’s work, perhaps we would not be so susceptible to demagogues and grifters and crazy people. But we are. (There’s a line in Sinclair’s book where he says in a country governed by public opinion, what forms public opinion governs the country). Media literacy is a foundational skill and if you do not have it, you are at the mercy of forces (and fools) you cannot even begin to comprehend. Thirteen years ago, I knew things were bad, but even I could not have imagined the consequences that would follow (the death toll from anti-vaxxers alone is mind-boggling). After reading this book, I shudder to think of what comes next…
Misc.
Keila Shaheen was nice enough to come out to the bookstore and sign some copies of The Shadow Work Journal (which Tony Gonzalez was nice enough to recommend to me last summer).
The Reading List Email For August 18, 2024
In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger (Audiobook)
If you thought Junger’s other two short books packed a punch (Tribe and Freedom), wait until you read this one. Good God… What’s crazy to me is that I’ve interviewed Sebastian twice (listen to his episode on The Daily Stoic Podcast here) and not once did it come up that on a quiet afternoon with his family he just nearly bled to death internally for no reason! And that he should not be alive today by any normal metric. Obviously I talk a lot about ‘memento mori’ as a part of Stoicism, but this is a profoundly moving book about the shortness of life, the mysteriousness of death and the things that make life worth living. He’s just an incredible writer to boot. Definitely read this book (and Tribe and Freedom). And if you want a memento mori reminder, we have a bunch over at Daily Stoic (like this medallion, pendant, and signet ring).
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Audiobook)
I’m writing about Lincoln a lot in the new book I am doing and after going back through my notes on a bunch of my favorite Lincoln books (Lincoln’s Virtues, President Lincoln, Lincoln’s Mentors and Lincoln: Biography of a Writer), I decided I would finally read Team of Rivals. This book has sat on my shelf since I bought it in 2007. I knew it would be amazing (I loved Doris’ Leadership in Turbulent Times which features a lot of her Lincoln work and I loved the Spielberg movie which was based on Team of Rivals), but I didn’t think it would be this good. To keep you riveted for 944 pages is no easy feat, but Doris manages to capture the paradoxes that Lincoln embodies: He was both a wise man and a savvy politician, a good person and an ambitious one. I could say more, but I think the fact that I could justify lugging this book on a roundtrip of 16,928 miles, plus all the coffee shops and beaches I carried it to, tucked under my arm, while in Australia, says enough!
84, Charing Cross Road by Helen Hanff (Audiobook)
A short but lovely little suggestion from my wife. You wouldn’t think that you could get a book out of a New York TV writer and a British bookseller exchanging letters in the aftermath of WWII, but you can. And it’s awesome! It’s a nice little celebration of the joys of discovery, of reading and of friendship in unlikely places. It’s also a reminder to any of us who have been planning to take a trip somewhere or have been meaning to go see a friend who lives far away: Don’t wait. You might miss your chance! The other book this reminded me of–which is particularly timely these days–is Kathrine Kressmann Taylor’s Address Unknown. Address Unknown is also a series of letters, this time between two business partners (one Jewish, one not) during the rise of Hitler in Germany. One is slowly corrupted by the events happening around him, his heart closing to the people and ideas he once believed in. It’s a heartbreaking but eye-opening look at the banality of fascism. People don’t just suddenly become evil or awful. It’s a process, a slide, even a response to incentives. It can happen to anyone. We should all be careful!
You Be Mother by Meg Mason (Ebook)
Walking into Gertrude and Alice, a lovely little bookstore in Bondi Beach, I noticed they had lots of signed copies of Meg Mason’s books. I had totally forgotten she lived in Sydney (in fact, I interviewed her for the Daily Stoic Podcast back in 2022). I LOVED her book Sorrow and Bliss and think it’s a very important novel about depression. So I asked them which other book I should read and the lovely owner recommended You Be Mother. It’s not quite as polished or perfect as Sorrow and Bliss, but I found it sweet and moving. Any recent parent or parent-to-be will relate to it–as well as anyone who has put together a kind of adopted family due to deficiencies of their own. Apparently, the book is hard to get in the US but you can read it as an ebook or grab an export edition I am sure.
Tree of Man by Patrick White (Audiobook)
In Admiral Stavridis’ book Sailing True North, he mentions that when he took command of NATO, he committed to reading a novel from every country in the alliance. I thought that was a lovely idea, so I decided to grab a Patrick White novel while I was in Australia (he’s considered the GOAT of Australian novelists). I bought this one at a used bookstore on our trip back from the Blue Mountains. It’s a long, plodding novel about a family in the outback, carving out a life for themselves. It reminded me a bit of East of Eden, both in style and substance. I was particularly interested in the lower-case stoicism of this frontier family–they were tough, they were not very emotional, they suffered and endured. But interestingly, the troubles of their son (this hit me hard as a father of two boys)–how much of this stemmed from his parent’s emotional stuntedness? The book presents him as a bit of a bad seed, but my more modern read is that he desperately needed the help that they were emotionally incapable of giving and that was what drove him into a life of crime. Anyway, it’s a fascinating novel I was glad to read.
Misc.
While I was in Australia, I got to see Julia Baird, who wrote an amazing book I love called Phosphorescence. She has a new one, Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything, coming out in the fall in the US that’s already out in Australia. I mentioned that I read Bill Bryson’s In A Sunburned Country in anticipation of my trip. Well, I grabbed an old used copy of The Lost Continent (his road trip across America book), which now has me planning a family trip in my head. This New York Magazine piece about two couples–all writers–and the affair that blew their relationships apart was riveting… almost as good and as insane as the “Who Is the Bad Art Friend?” piece from a couple of years ago. Writers are crazy, myself included…
Let These Books Make You Better (The Reading List Email For September 1, 2024)
Let These Books Make You Better
For the last 15 years, I’ve been doing this reading recommendation newsletter. It’s been a snapshot–monthly–of what I’ve been reading. That’s been the pure and unfiltered part of it. People have been able to see the rabbit holes I’ve gone down, the chain that connected various books, the themes I’ve been chasing as I’ve been writing my own books…as well as the slumps. All book lovers know those slumps where you can’t seem to find anything good and I’m no exception. But one of the benefits of reading consistently is that over the course of your life you find so many wonderful, wonderful books.
Which brings us to today’s email: In addition to the monthly email, I wanted to start sending out occasional deep dives into certain topics and themes. I’ve called this “the swarm strategy” in the past–where you read everything you can about certain topics. Given that Right Thing, Right Now came out earlier this year, I thought I’d send a quick email of my favorite books about the cardinal virtues (like Josef Piper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues and C.S Lewis’ essay on the topic in Mere Christianity) and about this idea of justice. Every book is a product of books and Right Thing, Right Now was the product of hundreds of books I read over the years that helped me understand Marcus Aurelius’ definition of justice (“good character and acts for the common good”). Enjoy!
Truman by David McCullough (Audiobook)
One of the main points I wanted to get across in the new book is the idea that Justice doesn’t begin in far-flung places, but at home with you and the decision you make about who you are going to be. Things like personal integrity, honesty, dignity, honor, treating people well—these are all matters of Justice. Truman, heavily influenced by Marcus Aurelius, said that a life well lived was one committed to the Four Virtues–and he lived by those virtues in moments high and low. This book is full of anecdotes from his life, many of which provide actionable lessons that I’ve brought into my own life. Honestly, I couldn’t believe the stack of notecards I took after I read this book—it was piled overwhelmingly high with all the great stuff I took from it. It’s an incredible book about an incredible life. When you finish this, read Plain Speaking by Merle Miller. I also highly recommend David Roll’s biography, Ascent to Power (which I got to talk about in this podcast episode.)
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 (Audiobook), Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65 (Audiobook), and At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68 (Audiobook) by Taylor Branch
I was blown away by Taylor Branch’s epic three-part biography on Martin Luther King Jr. when I first read it back in 2020—it was truly life-changing for me. I was once again profoundly impacted by this series as I picked it back up to do research for Right Thing, Right Now. One of the core themes of Right Thing, Right Now is the idea that justice is not a thing that happens, but it’s something that is made and is continuing to be made by the people who refuse to be neutral and accept their responsibility to others. Which, by the way, comes from ordinary people (people like you and I) who through their determination and willingness to get things done become extraordinary. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life is an incredible example of that and this trilogy does a phenomenal job of revealing the ways that an individual person really can have an impact on the collective. It’s a masterpiece of a series, made even better by the fact that Branch began the series when his son was born, and finished it with the help of that same son years later (read more about that here).
Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography by William Miller (Audiobook) and Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Audiobook)
History looks at Lincoln and sees a moral figure—which is true—but they forget that he was also an effective politician. Yes, caring is important, and yes, Lincoln cared a lot. But his good intentions would have fallen flat if he wasn’t also pragmatic, strategic, powerful, savvy. In other words, if he wasn’t competent. One of my favorite chapters in Right Thing, Right Now is all about this. Because, really, it doesn’t matter that a politician has all the right positions if they don’t know how the system works, if they don’t have the staff or relationships to get it done. Lincoln understood that and that’s why he was able to create lasting change. I first read Lincoln’s Virtues a while back but just recently picked up Team of Rivals. They’re both incredible and among my favorite Lincoln books. Do yourself a favor and check them out.
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (Audiobook)
Ok, this might seem like a crazy inclusion (isn’t this book evil?!?!). But this ties nicely to my point about competence and power. Like I said, it’s not enough to simply be good, you have to be able to do good. You have to have the power to bring this good into the world. Is there a darkness to the ideas in this book? Yes. But you have to understand the darkness to be able to defend against it and know how to know what you’re not willing to do. If you read this, I promise you will leave not just with actionable lessons but an indelible sense of what to do in many trying and confusing situations. If you’ve never read Robert Greene before, start with The Daily Laws (it’s kind of like his greatest hits album) which captures the totality of his brilliant, life-changing thinking in a one-page-a-day format.
The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss (Audiobook)
This book provides a roadmap to future generations of people trying to make the world a better and fairer place. It was also a roadmap for Part II of Right Thing, Right Now where I talk about how hard and incremental transformational change actually is. This riveting biography of how activists passed the 19th Amendment outlines the generational struggle it took suffragettes—roughly 100 years—to win their battle. And even then, it nearly didn’t happen. It took real guts, strategy, compromise, and brute force from one woman after another, one convention after another, one campaign after another, each offering its own small measure of devotion to the fight. It’s incredible. Pair this book with Penguin’s edition of Ain’t I A Woman?.
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur (Audiobook)
Moral philosophy, contrary to popular belief, does not have to be boring. Did you like the show The Office? Parks and Rec? Well then read this book because it’s written by the same person who wrote those shows. Michael Schur does a wonderful job making the writing of philosophers like Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Bentham, and others digestible, engaging and entertaining. This book addresses questions like “Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people?” “How much money should I give to charity?” and “Why bother being good at all when there are no consequences for being bad?”. I really enjoyed reading it and I think you will, too. He was on The Daily Stoic Podcast, you can listen to that episode here.
The Second Mountain by David Brooks (Audiobook)
Chasing personal success is the first mountain. But what happens when you find out, as many of us do, “Oh wait… this is not nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be"? That’s when we begin to look for what David Brooks calls the Second Mountain… and no, it’s not just a taller version of the first one. This is the one where we start thinking less about ourselves and more about other people. “True good fortune,” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself at the height of his power and fame, at the summit of his first mountain, “is good character, good intentions and good actions.” True good fortune is doing stuff for other people. For your community. For your country. For the world. Seriously, read this book. It won’t just make you think about your life, it will make you question everything in your life. It inspired an entire chapter in Part III of Right Thing, Right Now called “Climb Your Second Mountain.” Peter Singer’s The Expanding Circle is another great book about a similar concept that speaks to our great oneness (which inspired another chapter of the book).
The Reading List Email For September 22, 2024
Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo I bought this book at Gertrude and Alice in Australia (the bookshop’s name is an allusion to Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice B. Toklas. There is a great book on their relationship, BTW, written by one of my favorite writers Janet Malcolm…who also wrote one of my all-time favorite books The Journalist and the Murderer…but I digress). Oh my god. Papyrus is one of the best books I’ve ever read on such a seemingly uninteresting topic (the invention and history of paper???)…the only thing remotely close to it is The Notebook, which I recommend below. It also reminded me of Ann Wroe’s Pontius Pilate, by which I mean it is also a beautiful and insightful study of ancient thought and how we’ve been shaped by it. I swoon when you get to read an author who not only has complete mastery of their subject, but complete mastery of story and language, too. The only downside to this book was how many pages I folded for notes that I now need to transfer to my commonplace book (more on that below).
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson If you’ve read any of my books, then you’ve benefited from Wright’s incredible reporting and observations. I thank him in the back of Right Thing, Right Now because his profiles of Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, and Ted Williams have filled my books with so many great (and heartbreaking) stories. The best of that writing appears in one of my all-time favorite books, The Cost of These Dreams. But this book? Oh my god…I read it on an international flight and I had to keep putting it down–it’s just a masterwork. It would be a relief if the murder of Emmett Till was ancient history, but in fact, Wright talked to literally dozens of people who knew him, who knew the people who killed him, who witnessed the trial and the cover-up. You just have to read this book. Read it to understand the darkness of human beings. Read it to understand the grace and power and courage of human beings. Read it to understand what pandering, manipulative politicians can stir up. Read it to understand that the past isn’t dead, it’s not even past. Wright came out to the bookstore and signed a bunch of his books (which you can get here) and left with a bunch to read (which you can check out here). We also had a great two-hour talk for The Daily Stoic Podcast. That episode goes live on Wednesday, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it. In the meantime, his earlier episode is great, too.
On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything by Nate Silver In Conspiracy, I open the book with a story of a surreal night where I was at both Nick Denton and Peter Thiel’s houses–the two mortal enemies in that story. As it happens, Nate Silver–the election forecaster–was also there at Nick’s…and a few years later, he would ask me for an intro to Peter, who became a main character in this fascinating book he’s just written about risk and risk-takers. Basically the idea in the book is that there are two worldviews: the Village–academics, government officials, and media types–and the River–investors, poker players, hedge fund managers, and crypto traders. Silver explores the pros and cons of both ways of thinking in a really interesting way. (I suppose I am more of a Village resident…but then again, I have also started businesses and done quite a bit of investing). We had a great chat on The Daily Stoic Podcast–one of my favorite in-person ones to date. Nate also signed books while he was at the bookstore (grab those here) and left with a great stack (check those out).
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen My British publisher sent me an early copy of this book a few months back. It’s been tough waiting so long to be able to tell you about it, but I wanted to wait until there was a U.S. edition. I LOVED this book. We don’t really think of notebooks and journals as a piece of technology, but of course, they are–there were dark days before such wonderful things existed. My life is built around my notebooks. I journal before bed (there’s even a Daily Stoic Journal). I have kept a “One Line a Day” journal (my favorite) for the last 8 years. I have been keeping a “commonplace book” for even longer–none of my writing would be possible without it. (I learned this from Robert Greene). Have you heard the phrase “keeping a second brain”? That’s what my notebooks are. Anyway, one of the things that struck me in this book is how late the invention of the notebook was. Of course, people were taking notes in Greece and Rome (ahem, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations), but the more modern notebook as we understand it today dates to roughly the 1400s in Florence. And who was one of the first great minds to see them for all their potential? Da Vinci! Here’s my pod with Roly, which you might enjoy.
Misc. I loved Ian O’Conner’s book on Bill Belichick (one of the greatest coaching biographies ever). His new book on Aaron Rodgers, Out of the Darkness, is good. What an exasperating guy. Ego Is The Enemy I guess…I’ve been trying to read on my phone a bit, instead of defaulting to email, so I read Anna Marie Tendler’s memoir Men Have Called Her Crazy (which The New York Times rightly called an “NDA memoir”. There’s nothing here about her famous relationship but the result is a much more personal book. Isn’t that what makes memoirs good though? Not salacious details but what it is like to be that person?). Last year, Steven Pressfield came out to The Painted Porch and we went through the bookstore and talked about some of our favorite books. You can watch a video of it here, but some of the ones we raved about were Pontius Pilate, Conundrum, Asylum, and Gift From The Sea. Steven left behind some signed copies of The Daily Pressfield, The War of Art, The Warrior Ethos, A Man at Arms, Gates of Fire, Virtues of War, Turning Pro.
The Reading List Email For September 29, 2024
Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo I bought this book at Gertrude and Alice in Australia (the bookshop’s name is an allusion to Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice B. Toklas. There is a great book on their relationship, BTW, written by one of my favorite writers Janet Malcolm…who also wrote one of my all-time favorite books The Journalist and the Murderer…but I digress). Oh my god. Papyrus is one of the best books I’ve ever read on such a seemingly uninteresting topic (the invention and history of paper???)…the only thing remotely close to it is The Notebook, which I recommend below. It also reminded me of Ann Wroe’s Pontius Pilate, by which I mean it is also a beautiful and insightful study of ancient thought and how we’ve been shaped by it. I swoon when you get to read an author who not only has complete mastery of their subject, but complete mastery of story and language, too. The only downside to this book was how many pages I folded for notes that I now need to transfer to my commonplace book (more on that below).
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson If you’ve read any of my books, then you’ve benefited from Wright’s incredible reporting and observations. I thank him in the back of Right Thing, Right Now because his profiles of Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, and Ted Williams have filled my books with so many great (and heartbreaking) stories. The best of that writing appears in one of my all-time favorite books, The Cost of These Dreams. But this book? Oh my god…I read it on an international flight and I had to keep putting it down–it’s just a masterwork. It would be a relief if the murder of Emmett Till was ancient history, but in fact, Wright talked to literally dozens of people who knew him, who knew the people who killed him, who witnessed the trial and the cover-up. You just have to read this book. Read it to understand the darkness of human beings. Read it to understand the grace and power and courage of human beings. Read it to understand what pandering, manipulative politicians can stir up. Read it to understand that the past isn’t dead, it’s not even past. Wright came out to the bookstore and signed a bunch of his books (which you can get here) and left with a bunch to read (which you can check out here). We had a great two-hour talk on The Daily Stoic Podcast, you can listen to that here.
On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything by Nate Silver In Conspiracy, I open the book with a story of a surreal night where I was at both Nick Denton and Peter Thiel’s houses–the two mortal enemies in that story. As it happens, Nate Silver–the election forecaster–was also there at Nick’s…and a few years later, he would ask me for an intro to Peter, who became a main character in this fascinating book he’s just written about risk and risk-takers. Basically the idea in the book is that there are two worldviews: the Village–academics, government officials, and media types–and the River–investors, poker players, hedge fund managers, and crypto traders. Silver explores the pros and cons of both ways of thinking in a really interesting way. (I suppose I am more of a Village resident…but then again, I have also started businesses and done quite a bit of investing). We had a great chat on The Daily Stoic Podcast–one of my favorite in-person ones to date. Nate also signed books while he was at the bookstore (grab those here) and left with a great stack (check those out).
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen My British publisher sent me an early copy of this book a few months back. It’s been tough waiting so long to be able to tell you about it, but I wanted to wait until there was a U.S. edition. I LOVED this book. We don’t really think of notebooks and journals as a piece of technology, but of course, they are–there were dark days before such wonderful things existed. My life is built around my notebooks. I journal before bed (there’s even a Daily Stoic Journal). I have kept a “One Line a Day” journal (my favorite) for the last 8 years. I have been keeping a “commonplace book” for even longer–none of my writing would be possible without it. (I learned this from Robert Greene). Have you heard the phrase “keeping a second brain”? That’s what my notebooks are. Anyway, one of the things that struck me in this book is how late the invention of the notebook was. Of course, people were taking notes in Greece and Rome (ahem, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations), but the more modern notebook as we understand it today dates to roughly the 1400s in Florence. And who was one of the first great minds to see them for all their potential? Da Vinci! Here’s my pod with Roly, which you might enjoy.
Misc. I loved Ian O’Connor’s book on Bill Belichick (one of the greatest coaching biographies ever). His new book on Aaron Rodgers, Out of the Darkness, is good. What an exasperating guy. Ego Is The Enemy I guess…I’ve been trying to read on my phone a bit, instead of defaulting to email, so I read Anna Marie Tendler’s memoir Men Have Called Her Crazy (which The New York Times rightly called an “NDA memoir”. There’s nothing here about her famous relationship but the result is a much more personal book. Isn’t that what makes memoirs good though? Not salacious details but what it is like to be that person?). Last year, Steven Pressfield came out to The Painted Porch and we went through the bookstore and talked about some of our favorite books. You can watch a video of it here, but some of the ones we raved about were Pontius Pilate, Conundrum, Asylum, and Gift From The Sea. Steven left behind some signed copies of The Daily Pressfield, The War of Art, The Warrior Ethos, A Man at Arms, Gates of Fire, Virtues of War, Turning Pro.
5 Books That Are So Good They’ll Rip Your Face Off (The Reading List Email For October 13, 2024)
Some of the most pleasurable books I’ve read in my life belong in the genre of narrative non-fiction—epic true stories and sagas that are almost too insane to believe. It’s the kind of nonfiction book that’s so good it reads like fiction, except the story is totally true. I mentioned last month that in addition to the monthly email, I wanted to start sending out deep dives into certain genres and topics. So that’s what I’m doing today, sharing some of the very best narrative nonfiction books that are so unbelievably good, they’ll rip your face off. You’re probably pretty familiar with some of my favorites, which I’ve raved about time and time again–there’s A Night To Remember by Walter Lord (who invented the narrative nonfiction genre), and of course, I have to call out The Tiger by John Vaillant, River of Doubt by Candice Millard, Endurance by Alfred Lansing, and Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. If you’ve never read a narrative nonfiction book, you should start with those. But in an effort to expand that list, I put together five of the lesser-known narrative nonfiction books that are just as incredible. I hope you’ll do yourself a favor and check them out.
Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen This book is phenomenal. It’s the insanely captivating story of the grizzly bears of Glacier National Park, which on one single night in 1967, two grizzlies in two remote areas of the park attacked campers and and killed two women. The book reminded me a lot of Dead Wake (more about that one below), and I suppose A Night To Remember, where your dread increases as the book goes on, as each warning is ignored, each chance to prevent the tragedy is missed, and each page brings you closer to what you know will be the gruesome, violent, and now unavoidable action. This book deserves to be much more well-known. (Audiobook)
The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough Watching Hurricane Helene and Milton, you can see how incredibly vulnerable communities are to water (donate to the recovery fund here), so you can imagine the tragedy of the Great Flood of 1889 when the earthen South Fork Dam in Pennsylvania collapsed and killed over two thousand people. This book hit me very hard the first time I read it not only because it’s a captivating read, but because when I moved to my farm outside of Austin, Texas in 2015, there was a deadly 1000-year flood. We spent the first night in our new home listening to the radio as it warned us to “move to higher ground and act quickly to protect your life if necessary” because an earthen dam had burst a few miles away. This book hits even harder now as the country recovers from the devastating aftermath of Helene and Milton. McCullough’s gift is not just that he’s a beautiful writer, but he has a stunning ability to put you in his story and with his characters. I highly recommend this book and if you like it, read Rising Tide by John M. Barry and Wicked River by Lee Sandlin. (Audiobook)
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson I first picked up Dead Wake, about the sinking of the Lusitania, at an indie bookstore and tore through it in two days. I don’t want to say too much and spoil it, but I will share that the more I read about Woodrow Wilson, the more I hate him. The first Erik Larson book I read was Isaac’s Storm about the terrible Galveston Hurricane (a must-read for any Texan/Southerner). I also read his fantastic book The Splendid and The Vile, which is a fascinating look at London during the Blitz. For more shipwreck book recommendations (you’d be surprised how many great ones are out there), check out this video. (Audiobook)
Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall by Helena Merriman This is a book I should have read sooner. I don’t even have an excuse because my wife has been raving about it for like two years. I don’t know why I was resistant, but I feel like a real idiot now, because it’s incredible. Like, so good that I sometimes had trouble reading more than a few pages at a time–I would have to get up and walk around or just snack on something to calm down. It’s the story of a German graduate student who escapes into West Berlin…and then despite having no family or loved ones on the other side, spends thousands of hours–at great risk to himself–digging a 442-foot tunnel back to East Berlin to help others escape. So much good Cold War history here, but more than that, just a riveting story. It’s written by a TV journalist so it has a very unique feel to it and is different from the other narrative nonfiction books I’ve mentioned so far. I don’t think I’ve read anything like it. Just LOVED it. I’m sorry, Samantha, you were right. I should have listened. (Audiobook)
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel Once again, I am legally obligated to apologize to my wife for not reading a book she recommended earlier. She was right and I was wrong, just as she was right and I was wrong about Tunnel 29. I have even less of an excuse because I read Michael Finkel’s earlier book The Stranger in the Woods and loved it. This is even better. Like, unbelievably good. Just some random dude stole billions of dollars worth of art from European museums and hung it up in his bedroom at his mom’s house? And nobody caught him for years??? Wtf? The story is insane. And Finkel’s access was clearly incredible because he basically takes you into the room for the heists and shows you exactly how it worked. You’ll be mad that this book isn’t longer. (Audiobook)
The Reading List Email For October 27, 2024
I like big, thick, long books. There is nothing I love more than one of those door-stopper biographies. Robert Caro’s series on Lyndon Johnson or The Power Broker. Taylor Branch’s series on MLK. You know those magisterial, epic books that seem like they couldn’t possibly be worth reading, but somehow you’re riveted on every page. I thought that Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, which I recommended recently, was going to be the last thing I read about Lincoln for a while, but chasing something down for the book I am writing now, I ended up reading nearly 2,000 pages on Lincoln this month. I read Lincoln by David Herbert Donald and then I nearly lost my mind with how much I loved Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times by David Reynolds. The amount of research. The scope of understanding. The skill to make it interesting? I’m just in awe of biographers and writers who have the ability to do it. The only downside of these books is how long they take to read and the weight they take up in my suitcase when I travel! Anyway, I loved them so much and I also have some more Lincoln favorites below.
The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement by Sharon McMahon Maybe the only topic less likely to blow up on Instagram than Stoicism is government studies, but Sharon McMahon (account linked here) has managed to do it. To over one million followers, she explains U.S. history and civics in a remarkably relatable and fun way. I’ve gotten to interview a lot of interesting folks over the years, but the only one my in-laws wanted to stop by and meet was Sharon when she came out to do the podcast (subscribe so you don’t miss her episode, coming soon). And her book? It’s wonderful. I think you could call it a ‘hidden figures’ biography–telling the stories of a telephone operator, a teacher, a poet, a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter, a young boy detained at a Japanese incarceration camp, and their very outsized impact on freedom and democracy. If you’ve appreciated any of my wife’s recommendations over the years (which I ignore at my peril), she loved this book and would not stop talking about it. I concur and talk about many of the same characters in part two of Right Thing, Right Now. Sharon left the bookstore with a good stack of books, which you can check out here. (Audiobook)
Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It by Richard Reeves I’ve got two young boys (thus the Daily Dad email), so I’ve been following Richard Reeves’s work for some time. This book could so easily have been culture war fodder, but thankfully, he is so much above and beyond that. The gains society has made for women–especially in America–have been utterly unprecedented. Women are far more economically independent, educated, and seated in positions of political leadership than just 50 years ago. But men are struggling, or rather, young boys are struggling. How do we help them? How do we show them a better path? How do we teach them to fulfill their potential and contribute their unique contribution to society? Given my work with Stoicism, I think we’ve gone too far in describing masculinity as ‘toxic’ but I would say there are many toxic examples (and thinkers) out there who are misleading young men (some of which I talk about here). If you’re a parent or a teacher or a policy maker, you have to read this book. (Audiobook)
The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding by Robert Hughes Again, why would I read a 1,153-page book about a country I’m not from? Because Robert Hughes is an incredible writer who manages to tell an utterly fascinating story–how the British decided to set up a penal colony in 1788, 9,444 miles across the ocean on a continent they knew literally nothing about–and teaches so much by telling it. This book is not about Australia so much as it’s about 18th-century ideas about crime, so much as it’s about human nature (and human folly). It’s about colonialism and violence. It’s about slavery and cruelty. It’s about perseverance and hope and innovation. I was riveted on every page. I didn’t think I needed to know anything about this…but now I want to learn even more. I don’t usually mention book blurbs, but this book, published in 1986, was blurbed by some heavy hitters who nailed what made it so great. From Susan Sontag: “A great achievement: Hughes has a story to tell as vivid, large-scale, and appalling as anything by Dickens or Solzhenitsyn, but one that’s virtually unknown—until the writing of this splendid book.” Gord Vidal: “Splendid . . . Robert Hughes combines the narrative skills of the authors of Mutiny on the Bounty with the sharp eye of de Tocqueville.” From Arthur M. Schlesinger: “A brilliant and enduring achievement . . . history of the highest order combining thorough research with vivid narrative and thoughtful assessment.” Also, I must mention another all-time favorite book that happens to be about Australia. It’s lighter fare, but a must-read: In A Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson.
Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything by Julia Baird Maybe you don’t believe me when I say I love big, thick, long books, but I loved Julia Baird’s 752-page biography of Queen Victoria. I didn’t know anything about Queen Victoria (and unfortunately most of the epic biographies are about men) so I dove right in when I heard about this book in 2018 (I used it as a source in Stillness is the Key). After that, Julia wrote an amazing memoir called Phosphorescence: A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark which is a very obstacle-is-the-way kind of book (in fact, I referenced it in the 10th anniversary edition of Obstacle). So when I was in Australia, I sat down with Julia to talk about her new book, Bright Shining, which is all about the idea of grace (listen to that episode here). We are wicked people living amongst wicked people, Seneca said, that’s why we need to be patient with each other, why we need to forgive each other. I would say this is especially true coming out of the pandemic and going into this election. (Audiobook)
Misc. Some other Lincoln favorites I have raved about: Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman and Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography by William Lee Miller. My friend Chase Jarvis has a new book called Never Play It Safe: A Practical Guide to Freedom, Creativity, and a Life You Love, which we talked about on a recent podcast episode (listen here). I also liked his book Creative Calling. On the political front, another dear friend (my oldest friend…he’s 90), Judge Frederic Block has a new book called A Second Chance: A Federal Judge Decides Who Deserves It. His other book, Crimes and Punishments, is another great one.
Books For Every Person In Your Life (My Favorite Books To Gift): The Reading List Email For November 10, 2024
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport
Cal Newport is one of my favorite writers and thinkers, his book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World and my book Stillness Is The Key have some overlap. It’s funny, people think I read a lot and work a lot, but I don’t. I’m much closer to Cal’s outline in this book. I take my kids to school every day. I get home well before dinner every night. I take a lot of walks (here’s Cal and I talking about the power of walks for idea generation). I just do this steadily and consistently. When Cal came on The Daily Stoic Podcast (listen here, or watch on YouTube), we talked about this idea of festina lente–make haste slowly–that is my philosophy for the most part. Slow Productivity is a great book to give to someone who could use a nudge to slow down or perhaps rethink productivity.
A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy believed his most essential work was not his novels but his daily read, A Calendar of Wisdom. As Tolstoy wrote in his diary, the continual study of one text, reading one page at the start of each day, was critical to personal growth. “Daily study,” Tolstoy wrote in 1884, is “necessary for all people.” So Tolstoy dreamed of creating a book composed of “a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and all people… Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal.” As he wrote to his assistant, “I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers… They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue.” As you can imagine, I am a big fan of daily devotionals, so much so that I made my own (The Daily Stoic and The Daily Dad). But Tolstoy’s Calendar Of Wisdom book is an incredible book for just about anyone.
Montaigne by Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig’s Montaigne is just incredible. It’s the biography of a man (Montaigne) who retreated from the chaos of 16th century France to study himself, written by a man (Zweig) fleeing the chaos of 20th century Europe. I love it so much because of how timely it is–it’s hard to be a thinking person and not see alarming warning signs about today’s world while reading this book. Montaigne is truly one of humanity’s greatest treasures—a wise and insightful thinker who never takes himself too seriously. He was a man obsessed with figuring himself out: why he thought the way he did, how he could find happiness, his fetishes, his near-death experiences. He lived in tumultuous times and coped by looking inward. We’re lucky that he did, and we can do the same. Follow it up with How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell.
Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska by Warren Zanes
This book is fantastic–a great insight into not just the creative process but also the business and branding and career process. It’s the almost unbelievable story of Springsteen’s Nebraska. In 1981, one of the hottest acts in music, fresh off a world tour, set down and recorded a series of very dark, very strange demos on a four-track recorder in a rented house in New Jersey. These songs were supposed to be just first drafts, the bones of songs to which the E. Street Band would add a lot of flesh. Yet somehow that didn’t happen and instead, this raw album came out more or less as it was–and people loved it. It was an incredibly punk thing for Springsteen to do–more punk than destroying hotel rooms or getting tattoos. He bet all the momentum of his career on some vague feeling that this was the artistically correct thing to do…and he was right! Springsteen’s autobiography, Born To Run, is also a must (it’s an all-time favorite of mine).
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
This is a beautiful, philosophical book about rest and relaxation. For each chapter, Lindbergh takes a shell from the beach as the starting point for a meditation on topics like solitude, love, happiness, contentment, and so on. For an almost 70-year-old book, it feels surprisingly modern–especially, I would think, for women.
Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley by Brent Underwood
One of the coolest experiences of my life has been not just to watch Brent succeed, but to watch him do it as he brings a town back to life. His book, Ghost Town Living, tells the stories of Cerro Gordo, a desolate ghost town above Death Valley–which has become one of my favorite places in the world. It’s got an Edward Abbey meets Shop Class as Soulcraft vibe. It’s just a fascinating story about a fascinating place that would make for a great gift.
Parents
Parenting books can be tricky, but here are some of my all-time favorites that I give to parents or soon-to-be parents. Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Dr. Becky is a must. It’s not just a parenting book, but a book about life. It’s had a profound impact on me and I know it has for other people, too. Steven Rinella’s Outdoor Kids In An Inside World: Getting Your Family Out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature is another must. My favorite line in the book says you should raise kids who don’t use the word “ew”. Baby On The Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem is a wonderful book for mothers, about the relationship between motherhood and art.
The Reading List Email For November 24, 2024
I am still grieving a copy of Alexandra Horowitz’s Inside of a Dog that I left on a flight to New Orleans in 2009…and my first copy of 48 Laws of Power which someone stole from my desk at American Apparel around the same time. I suppose ebooks and audiobooks would solve this problem but I remain an unrepentant physical book lover. Anyway, onto this month’s recommendations (and if you like the leather Meditations, we also have a new version of The Daily Dad which is made by the same bindery in the UK!).
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America by Garry Wills
What is it about Lincoln? Last month, I read something like 1,500 pages on him (Lincoln by David Herbert Donald and and Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times by David Reynolds)–surely, that should have been enough. Surely, there was not much left to learn. But then I came across this book by Gary Wills (whose work on Washington and Kennedy I used in Stillness is the Key) that was entirely about the Gettysburg Address. This book has more pages than the address has words…and yet, like the address, each one was there for a reason. Just an absolutely incredible book. One of my favorite Daily Stoic emails ever is about the speech that came before Lincoln that day (some two hours long) and the power of distilling things down to their essence. Anyway, my son has been listening to a song that helps you memorize the address and I get goosebumps when I hear him do the opening lines. It also reminds me (since I interviewed Ken Burns recently–listen here or watch here) of one of the most moving documentaries I’ve ever seen: “The Address”, which is about a school for troubled boys who learn and perform the address each year and then get to visit the battlefield. A must-see and this book is a must-read. For more Lincoln books, these are some other favs: Lincoln: The Biography of A Writer, Team of Rivals, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman, and Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography.
The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party by Daniel James Brown
I don’t know why I didn’t even know about this book until this month. I only heard about it because my wife chose it for The Painted Porch Book Club (come out!) and as it happened, I had just taken my son to Sutter’s Fort when we were in Sacramento to see Iron Maiden (here’s a video I filmed after that concert). Anyway, I grew up going to Lake Tahoe and so I always knew about the Donner Party, but I don’t think I’ve read anything about them. This book is like Erik Larson’s book on the Lusitania: it’s a slow, dread-filled tragedy. You know what’s coming, you can’t stop it, and you just hope that maybe the character you’re currently reading about might be one of the lucky ones. But they probably won’t be! If Daniel James Brown’s name sounds familiar, that’s because he wrote The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which deserves all the success it’s gotten (and is a much happier story). I would also, given recent events, highly recommend his book Facing the Mountain: An Inspiring Story of Japanese American Patriots in World War II, about the internment of the Japanese and the heroic regiment formed by young Japanese men out of those concentration camps. If more people were familiar with the darker parts of American history, perhaps we would not now be casually talking about using the military to round up ten million people living in this country…nor would my home state of Texas be excitedly offering the land to build the camps to house and process them. This is what happens when you fail to study the past and when you play around with the dark forces of human nature. (Audiobook)
Herodotus by James Romm
Speaking of traveling, Herodotus is one of history’s great travelers. He is known as the ‘father of history’ for his famous book The Histories (which I used in Courage is Calling for the Spartans chapter) but he’s less well known as a great travel writer. His writing was informed by his travels–from Persia to Athens to Italy, Libya, Babylonia, Byzantium and the Black Sea, he painstakingly traveled thousands and thousands of miles in the course of his life. He traveled the Nile by boat. He visited Phoenicia, the birthplace of Zeno, centuries before he was born. Anyway, I found this book fascinating and remain a huge fan of James Romm and his biography of Seneca, Dying Every Day. We also just added a travel section at The Painted Porch and it’s got some of my all-time favs: A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, In a Sunburned Country, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, Swimming Holes of Texas, and Travels with Epicurus: A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life.
How to Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World by Donald Robertson
I remain as ever a big fan of Donald Robertson. His biography of Marcus Aurelius is one of the best books I’ve read and I loved his other book on Marcus Aurelius, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. There’s a hilarious quote by Macaulay that I used in the Wisdom book (just finishing it): “The more I read about Socrates the less I wonder that they poisoned him.” Because while the dialogs are fun to read now, they weren’t fun for the people he was making a fool of. Socrates considered himself the ‘gadfly’ of Athens. People hate flies! When Donald came on The Daily Stoic Podcast, this was one of the things I wanted to ask him about–that for all Socrates’ wisdom, he seemed to lack social intelligence. Emily Wilson talks about this in her book The Death of Socrates quite a bit (a good companion to Donald’s book). Fascinating book about a guy who, like Cicero, I can’t decide if I like. (Audiobook)
Misc
We did a video right after the election about what a Stoic should be thinking about in times like these. It might be of use to you. Me? I’m going to be picking up my copy of Zweig’s little book on Montaigne, which has been of solace and strength since I read it back in 2016. Dan Jones came on the podcast a few weeks back, and we talked about his new book, Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King (get signed copies here). We had a great conversation that you can watch a clip of here, or listen to the full episode here. Matthew McConaughey is coming out to the bookstore to do a live Q&A and book signing next week. The event is sold out, but he’ll be signing a ton of books that you’ll be able to order. We’ve got his book, Greenlights, in hardcover and paperback, as well as the Greenlights journal and his awesome children’s book, Just Because.
The (Very) Best Books I Read In 2024: The Reading List Email For December 8, 2024
Another year and what do I have to show for it? A big stack of books read and ruminated on is not a bad answer. I know some people assiduously track how many books they read, but I do not (Do you count books you made halfway through? Re-reads? Books you read to your kids? Favorites you took off the shelf to find a favorite passage?) because I don’t think it’s a contest. Epictetus was right when he said it’s not that you read but what you read. So I do track my favorites. And boy, there were some books I loved this year. Books that I got a ton out of. Books that in some cases, have already changed my life.
Here, at the end of the year, I try to narrow down all the books I read and recommended in this email list to just a handful of the best. The kind of books where if they were the only books I’d read that year, I’d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading. You can check out the best of lists from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011… I can’t believe it’s been 14 years of these roundups!
I promise you—you can’t go wrong with any of these.
Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall by Helena Merriman and Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen It’s almost a problem how many amazing books my wife recommended to me this year. It’s not a problem that the books were good, it’s that I sat on them for too long. I’m pretty sure she didn’t even recommend Tunnel 29 to me this year. What an idiot I am for taking my time getting around to reading this because it’s incredible. Like, so good that I sometimes had trouble reading more than a few pages at a time–I would have to get up and walk around or just snack on something to calm down. It’s the story of a German graduate student who escapes into West Berlin…and then despite having no family or loved ones on the other side, spends thousands of hours–at great risk to himself–digging a 442-foot tunnel back to East Berlin to help others escape. So much good Cold War history here, but more than that, just a riveting story. I love narrative nonfiction, as you know, but this one is written by a TV journalist so it has a very unique feel to it. I don’t think I’ve read anything like it before. Just LOVED it. I’m sorry, Samantha, you were right. I should have listened.
And yet…she’s guilty of it too. Because I have been raving about The Tiger for close to a decade and she read it…this year. Now is Night of the Grizzlies (one of my favorites this year) as good as The Tiger? Of course not, because The Tiger is the greatest man vs animal (or animal vs man) book ever written. What I am saying is that this book is also great. I found it mentioned in another book and tracked down a used copy. I’m glad I did because it’s a riveting story of how two grizzlies killed two women in two different areas of Glacier National Park after never having killed a person in the park’s 57-year existence. The book reminded me a lot of Erik Larson’s Dead Wake, too (and I suppose Walter Lord’s A Night To Remember) where your dread increases as the book goes on, as each warning is ignored, each chance to prevent the tragedy is missed, and each page brings you closer to what you know will be the gruesome, violent, and now unavoidable action. This book deserves to be much more well-known. It was a lot of work, but we tracked down the publisher and got a bunch of new copies for The Painted Porch…which we have repeatedly sold out this year. Very excited that this amazing book is getting a second life. It deserves it. Also if you want another great story, The Revenant is not just a good movie but an even better book.
James: A Novel by Percival Everett My wife grabbed this for me at First Lights Books in Austin, TX for my birthday. What a wonderful idea for a novel–to tell the story of Huckleberry Finn and Jim from Jim’s perspective! That Everett is able to take this much darker and tragic perspective and still make it funny? That’s a task worthy of Mark Twain. It’s also deeply moving and I think an important look at how slavery actually was (Twelve Years a Slave is one of the greatest memoirs ever written). I spent my birthday reading James and I consider that a great gift. Also, it reminded me of two other books I loved: Wicked River by Lee Sandlin (an absolutely incredible book about the history of the river) and another book I read and loved this year, Life on the Mississippi by Rinker Buck (about a guy who recently traveled the river on his own raft, not too dissimilar to the one Huck and Jim were on). And of course, the other book I thought of when I read James was Wright Thompson’s The Barn (which I took on a flight to Brazil and back this year), because The Barn is about Emmett Till and Emmett Till and Huck Finn were the same age. Both books are the story of America–its hope and its evil, its land and its people, its potential and its horrific past. Wright is one of my favorite writers and thinkers (here’s his episode on The Daily Stoic Podcast about the book) but this book is an essential contribution to American history. I think everyone needs to read James and The Barn this year.
Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo and The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen I am in awe of artists who can make something you didn’t think would be interesting, just utterly fascinating. And oh my god, Papyrus is one of the most impressive examples of that I can recall (the invention and the impact of paper???). Last year, I swooned over Ann Wroe’s Pontius Pilate for similar reasons–it’s a beautiful and insightful study of ancient thought and how we’ve been shaped by it. I just love when you get to read an author who not only has complete mastery of their subject, but complete mastery of story and language, too. The only downside to this book was how many pages I folded for notes that I now need to transfer to my commonplace book…and that brings me to The Notebook. My British publisher sent me this which I’m glad about because I haven’t heard anyone talking about Roland Allen’s lovely book about one of the most transformative pieces of technology ever invented. We don’t really think of notebooks and journals as a piece of technology, but of course, they are–there were dark days before such wonderful things existed. My life is built around my notebooks. I journal before bed (there’s even a Daily Stoic Journal). I have kept a “One Line a Day” journal (my favorite) for the last 8 years. I have been keeping a “commonplace book” for even longer–none of my writing would be possible without it. (I learned this from Robert Greene). Have you heard the phrase “keeping a second brain”? That’s what my notebooks are. Anyway, one of the things that struck me in this book is how late the invention of the notebook was. Of course, people were taking notes in Greece and Rome (ahem, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations), but the more modern notebook as we understand it today dates to roughly the 1400s in Florence. And who was one of the first great minds to see them for all their potential? Da Vinci! Here’s my pod with Roly, which you might enjoy.
And a few more… Of course, I couldn’t just pick those few titles. I was blown away by Gary Wills’ Lincoln at Gettysburg. I read 3,000 or so pages on Lincoln this year–and many more before that–and this is probably the best. I’ve given something like 30 copies of Brent Underwood’s Ghost Town Living out to friends at the bookstore this year. And I sent another friend a copy of Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity (something I’m working to get better at). My in-laws are big Sharon McMahon fans (one of the only podcast guests they wanted to meet), as a family we all really liked her new book The Small and the Mighty. It’s a book that’s even more important after this election. You can listen to my interview with her here. You can also listen to my interview with Julia Baird, who has two other important books for where the world is right now, Phosphorescence (about resilience and adversity) and her new one Bright Shining (about grace, which we could all use more of). Another recommendation my wife raved about was Charles Duhigg’s Supercommunicators (our chat here). I got to work on lacrosse great Paul Rabil’s The Way of the Champion, which I think you’ll like, too (and here’s our chat). And lastly, I’ve been hoping for a good biography of Marcus Aurelius for a long time and we finally got one–a great one actually–in Donald Robertson’s book, Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (here’s our chat about that one). Definitely read.
If You Only Read A Few Books In 2025, Read These (The Reading List Email For January 19, 2025)
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport As we head into 2025, the pressure to do more, to be constantly busy, to fill every moment with productivity and progress feels more intense than ever. In Slow Productivity, Cal Newport, one of my favorite writers and thinkers, rethinks what productivity can and should mean, making a strong case for the power of doing less but doing it better. It’s funny, people think I work a lot, but I don’t. I’m much closer to Cal’s outline in this book. I take my kids to school every day. I get home well before dinner every night. I take a lot of walks (here’s Cal and I talking about the power of walks for idea generation). I just do this steadily and consistently. When Cal came on the podcast (watch here), we talked about this idea of Festina lente—make haste slowly—that is my philosophy for the most part.
The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger Dr. Eger is a complete hero of mine. At 16-years-old, she’s sent to Auschwitz. And how does this not break a person? How do they survive? How do they endure the unendurable? And how do they emerge from this, not just not broken, but cheerful and happy and of service to other people? The last thing Dr. Eger’s mother said to her before she was sent to the gas chambers was that very Stoic idea: even when we find ourselves in horrendous situations, we can always choose how we respond to them, who we’re going to be inside of them, what we’re going to hold onto inside of them. Dr. Eger quotes Frankl, who she later studied under, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” It was this idea that allowed Dr. Eger to not only endure unimaginable suffering but to find meaning in it. I’ve had the incredible honor of interviewing Dr. Eger twice (here and here) and the joy and energy of this woman, this 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, is just incredible.
Montaigne by Stefan Zweig We did a video right after the election about what a Stoic should be thinking about in times like these. It might be of use to you. Me? I picked up my copy of Zweig’s little book on Montaigne, which has been of solace and strength since I read it back in 2016. There are two kinds of biographies: Long ones which tell you every fact about the person’s life, and short ones which capture the person’s essence and the lessons of their life. This biography is a brilliant, urgent and important example of the latter. It is what I would call a moral biography—that is, a book that teaches you how to live through the story of another person. If you’ve been struggling with the onslaught of negative news and political turmoil, read this book. It’s the biography of a man who retreated from the chaos of 16th-century France to study himself, written by a man fleeing the chaos of 20th-century Europe. When I say it’s timely, I mean that it’s hard to be a thinking person and not see alarming warning signs about today’s world while reading this book. Yet it also gives us a solution: Turn inward. Master yourself. This book helped me get through 2024, no question. Plutarch’s Lives is another one I’d add to the moral biography genre, which I used to help me write Right Thing, Right Now.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro As much as I love those short, moral biographies, there is nothing I love more than door-stopper biographies. You know those magisterial, epic books that seem like they couldn’t possibly be worth reading, but somehow you’re riveted on every page? If you want to try one of those this year, start with Robert Caro. Just these four books alone could tie you up for the whole year, and that alone would be well spent. It’s unquestionable to me that Caro is one of the greatest biographers to ever live. His intricate, complicated, sprawling investigation into Lyndon Johnson will change how you see power, ambition, politics, personality and justice. If there is one line that sums up the whole series it’s this: It’s that power doesn’t only corrupt. That’s too simple. What power does is reveal.
A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts by Leo Tolstoy Tolstoy said that his most essential work was not his novels but his daily read, A Calendar of Wisdom. Before he wrote it, he dreamed of creating a book composed of “a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and all people… Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal.” As he wrote to his assistant, “I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers… They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue.” As you can imagine, I am a big fan of daily devotionals. Check out dailystoic.com and dailydad.com for the free daily email versions I do.
Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It by Richard Reeves I’ve got two young boys (thus the Daily Dad email), so I’ve been following Richard Reeves’s work for some time. This book could so easily have been culture war fodder, but thankfully, he is so much above and beyond that. The gains society has made for women–especially in America–have been utterly unprecedented. But men are struggling, or rather, young boys are struggling. How do we help them? How do we show them a better path? How do we teach them to fulfill their potential and contribute their unique contribution to society? Given my work with Stoicism, I think we’ve gone too far in describing masculinity as ‘toxic’ (check out a recent video I did about Stoic lessons on masculinity) but I would say there are many toxic examples (and thinkers) out there who are misleading young men (which I talk about in this video). If you’re a parent or a teacher or a policy maker, you have to read this book. Check out my conversation with Richard Reeves here.
Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything by Julia Baird So when I was in Australia, I sat down with Julia to talk about her new book, Bright Shining, which is all about the idea of grace (watch that episode here). We are wicked people living amongst wicked people, Seneca said, that’s why we need to be patient with each other, why we need to forgive each other. I would say this is especially true coming out of the pandemic and the recent election.
The Children by David Halberstam I was deeply moved, in some cases to tears, by David Halberstam’s The Children, when I first read it in 2022. It tells the story of the early days of the Civil Rights Movement from the perspective of the young activists who played pivotal roles in the struggle for racial equality and grew up to lead the movement. It’s an incredibly powerful book about youth and social change–and how it comes from brave young people. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I first read it. Trust me, pick it up this year.
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65, and At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68 by Taylor Branch Another long biography series…I was blown away by Taylor Branch’s epic three-part biography on Martin Luther King Jr. when I first read it back in 2020—it was truly life-changing for me. I was once again profoundly impacted by this series as I picked it back up to do research for Right Thing, Right Now. This trilogy does a phenomenal job of revealing the ways that an individual person really can have an impact on the collective. It’s a masterpiece of a series, made even better by the fact that Branch began the series when his son was born, and finished it with the help of that same son years later (read more about that here).
Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes by Morgan Housel Too often, we give way too much attention to what is shiny and new or urgent and timely instead of focusing on what truly matters—the things that are perennial and enduring. Morgan (who I had a great conversation with Morgan on the podcast) put together a great book of anecdotes and musings on the constants of human nature and history. In a world that seems to change faster every year, this book reminds us of the things that stay the same—and why they matter. If you loved Morgan’s The Psychology of Money, this book is a natural next step. It’s not just about what we know—it’s about what we understand about ourselves, our behavior, and the world we live in. This is a book to read, reflect on, and revisit.
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Speaking of things that never change—there are some awful people and awful movements on the march around the world. This feels new, but of course, it’s not–these people have always existed. The problem is they are just not well understood. Worse, good people are not often armed with the tools (or the cunning) to defeat or to effectuate change. If you want to live life on your terms, climb as high as you know you’re capable, and avoid being controlled by others—you need to read this book. You’ll leave not just with actionable lessons, but an indelible sense of what to do in many trying and confusing situations. Is there a darkness to this book? Yes. But there is a darkness to life, too. You have to understand it and be able to defend against it. If you don’t want to read it because you think it’s ‘immoral,’ well then you definitely need to read it, as I explain in this video.
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis One of my reading rules is: If you want to understand current events, don’t rely on breaking news. Find a book about a similar event in the past. It’s also true that fiction helps us understand the human heart and the events of history more than nonfiction can. This book will make you so uncomfortable you’ll probably pick it up and put it down several times. One of America’s most famous writers wrote a bestselling novel in 1935 about an appalling populist demagogue who won the presidency of the United States. Life imitates art. Change the dates, places and names and it’s no longer fiction, it’s real. If you don’t read the book, at least please read about it. Because you need to know. It can happen here.
Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor This is another timely book to pick up this year. It’s a short but important read about a series of letters between two business partners (one Jewish, one not) during the rise of Hitler in Germany. One is slowly corrupted by the events happening around him, his heart closing to the people and ideas he once believed in. It’s a heartbreaking but eye-opening look at the banality of fascism. People don’t just suddenly become evil or awful. It’s a process, a slide, even a response to incentives. It can happen to anyone. We should all be careful! I first read Address Unknown years ago, but I was reminded of it again when I read 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff last summer which is about a New York TV writer and a British bookseller exchanging letters in the aftermath of WWII. Read Address Unknown and then follow it up with 84, Charing Cross Road.
The Expanding Circle by Peter Singer Even though Stoicism is a ruggedly individual philosophy, at the core of it is this idea of “the circles of concern.” Our first concern, the Stoics said, is ourselves. Then our family, our community, our country, our world, all living things. The work of philosophy is to draw these concerns inward—to learn to care about as many people as possible, to do as much good as possible. I dedicated an entire chapter in my book Right Thing, Right Now to this idea, titled “Expand The Circle” (you can listen to an excerpt of that chapter here!). So when I had Peter Singer on the podcast and mentioned this book, he said he only chanced on a similar metaphor, not knowing its Stoic origins. The Expanding Circle is a great book about expanding our focus on the welfare of family and friends to include, ultimately, all of humanity—animals, the environment, all of it.
Atomic Habits by James Clear A perennial favorite because it works. It’s when things are chaotic and crazy, when the world feels like it’s falling apart, that we most need to develop good habits. I think about James Clear’s concept of atomic habits on a regular basis. To me, this is a sign of a great book—that even just thinking about the title has an impact on you. I love the double meaning of the word atomic—not just meaning explosive habits, but also focusing on the smallest possible size of habit, the tiniest step you can take to start the chain reaction that can in fact lead to explosive results.
Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan: With an Extensive Introduction and Notes by Alexander Bennett by Inazō Nitobe I can’t remember which subscriber emailed me about this book, but I really liked it. Written in 1905, Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan was the first book written for a Western audience about the code of conduct that governed the lives of Japan’s ruling class. It gets to “the soul of Japan” by answering the question of why certain ideas and customs prevail. It was a huge sensation in the U.S. when it came out. I believe Theodore Roosevelt read it. It’s a lovely peon to the virtues of an ancient tradition and deserves to be read up there with The Book of Five Rings and Zen in the Art of Archery (two other favorites of mine). Fictionally, there is also Rules for a Knight, which is another great read.
How to Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World by Donald Robertson I remain as ever a big fan of Donald Robertson. His biography of Marcus Aurelius is one of the best books I’ve read and I loved his other book on Marcus Aurelius, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. There’s a hilarious quote by Macaulay that I used in the Wisdom book (just finishing it): “The more I read about Socrates the less I wonder that they poisoned him.” Because while the dialogs are fun to read now, they weren’t fun for the people he was making a fool of. Socrates considered himself the ‘gadfly’ of Athens. People hate flies! When Donald came on The Daily Stoic Podcast, this was one of the things I wanted to ask him about–that for all Socrates’ wisdom, he seemed to lack social intelligence. Emily Wilson talks about this in her book The Death of Socrates quite a bit (a good companion to Donald’s book). Fascinating book about a guy who, like Cicero, I can’t decide if I like.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius This will always be my ultimate book recommendation. No matter who you are, where you live, how old you are, or how many times you’ve already read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, it’s time for you to read it. I’m a champion of the Gregory Hays translation, but if you are re-reading it, I’ve found that a new translation of a book you’ve read (or love) is a great way to see the same ideas from a new angle…or find new ideas you missed on the previous go-arounds. So if you haven’t read Robin Walterfield’s edition, check that one out. There’s a reason this book has endured for almost twenty centuries (here are some lessons from me having read Meditations more than 100 times). If you haven’t read Marcus Aurelius or if you have…you should read this book and then read it again.
The Reading List Email For January 26, 2025
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe I read Empire of Pain in 2023. In a way this is a book that explains so much about why America is the way that it is these days. A massive, corrupt and terrible scourge was inflicted on the population…and nobody was held accountable. I also based a chapter on this in Right Thing, Right Now–had America responded to the crack epidemic with more empathy and collective spirit, it might not have been so ravaged by the opioid epidemic (this is why we have to take care of each other, people!). And you could argue that Say Nothing, his book about The Troubles in Ireland is a warning about where America could end up if we’re not careful. Sectarian violence, factionalism, political dysfunction, persecution, religious fundamentalism…these are wicked forces that once unleashed are very, very difficult to rein back in. Patrick is an amazing writer and to be reading Say Nothing while I was in Ireland was a haunting experience. a Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan My wife Samantha has read a ton of these little Claire Keegan books and picked this one for the book club we did at The Painted Porch last month. It’s also based in Ireland, but it starts off slow and simple…and then holy shit. I don’t want to spoil the ending but in a less extreme way, it reminded me of that scene in The Road (also an amazing novel) where they descend into that cellar and find it’s a dungeon and they’re eating the prisoners! Anyway, to me the most haunting question of the book is when the husband is talking to his wife about what he suspects and she tells him they have their own children to worry about. “But what if it was one of ours?” he asks. I think that’s a very powerful question that we have stopped asking as a society. As I wrote in a Daily Dad email (subscribe here for a parenting meditation each morning) a while back, we think too much about our kids and not enough about our kids these days. Samantha said she also recommends So Late In The Day and Foster.
Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 by Barbara Kingsolver It was strange to pick up a book about a mining strike in Arizona in a bookstore in Europe, but you never know what you might find in a bookstore (and that’s why I love browsing them). Kingsolver is most famous for her novel Demon Copperhead, but this book is a work of non-fiction about a mining strike in the copper towns of Ajo, Clifton, Douglas, and Morenci, Arizona in 1983 (written in 1996)–and it’s largely about the role that women played in organizing, supporting and stealing the union to hold out against overwhelming intimidation (including from the National Guard). I found the whole book very inspiring. Again, I like to understand the moment we are in by studying other moments–viewing current events through a historical context. People are talking a lot about appealing to the working class in American politics these days…we’ll see if they actually mean it.
The Devil Behind the Badge: The Horrifying Twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer by Rick Jervis I was down in Rosemary Beach (down in the former Gulf of Mexico I guess…) in November watching the lighting of a Christmas Tree with my family when a guy recognized me and told me he was an author, too. I asked him what he’d written and he told me he’d just published a true crime book about a border agent in Laredo who’d gone on a killing spree. A few minutes later in the The Hidden Lantern Bookstore, I picked up a copy. It’s dark…but great. And like the best true crime books, the larger context instructs and informs (in this case, both about border security and the danger of dehumanization for people in positions of authority). It reminded me a lot, actually, of a book another friend of mine wrote that I read when I first moved to New Orleans, a true-crime classic called Shake the Devil Off.
Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik I forget where I saw this one but given all the Didion books I’ve read and recommended over the years (including The Year of Magical Thinking, Blue Nights, and South and West), I had to read this one. Eve Babitz was a famous writer, socialite and model in the 1970’s in LA (you may have seen the famous photo of her playing chess with Duchamp). She was friends, rivals, and in a way, polar opposites, with the smaller, mousier and more conservative Joan Didion. This was a fun, gossipy read that also pairs well with The Big Goodbye, which I recommended two years ago. Lili, the author, is an unabashed Eve partisan, I will say (it’s rare you read a book where the author’s love for the subject is so overwhelming). I didn’t mind it but to me, it meant she missed the fact that Eve was a far more tragic than heroic figure, a person whose obvious addictions–drugs, alcohol and obviously sex–deprived the world of her literary and artistic talents. Joan Didion didn’t ‘win’ because she was more calculating and cold, as Lili seems to think, Didion won because she worked harder and had more discipline.
Misc As I said, we’ve been doing a little book club at The Painted Porch. Last month we did Public Enemies by Bryan Burroughs (a good book to re-read in light of the United Health CEO shooting). We still have some signed copies of that classic in stock. We also read Booth by Karen Joy Fowler, which is also relevant again, I think (also a parenting how-not-to). This month we’re doing James by Percival Everett and The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, two books worth reading any month, but I think good picks for Black History Month. Here’s a piece I wrote about how I think picking up a book is a transgressive act in this 24/7/365 media world and I think all of us should read/watch less news and read more books…especially old books.
These Books Changed How I Think About History (The Reading List Email For February 9, 2025)
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson This is one of my absolute favorite books about American history (it’s also the book club book for The Painted Porch this month). It’s a beautiful, painful and eye-opening look at the Great Migration through biographical sketches of individuals who left the Jim Crow South for a chance at a better life in California, in Chicago, in New York City. Wilkerson’s other book, Caste, is another one of my favorite books. There’s a great analogy at the center of Caste that I think works as both an approach to life and to learning. In order for a doctor to cure you of your ills, Wilkerson writes, you have to give them a medical history. If you’re ashamed of something or in denial of something and you hold back, you’re not helping anyone. In fact, you’re hurting yourself. Our own history–in America or anywhere in the world–is not a list of the things we’re proud of. It is a list of the things that happened. To get better, to improve, to get closer to ‘a more perfect union,’ we have to gather and put up for review an unflinching history. It’s not always fun…but it’s the only way.
What You’re Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports by George Raveling I met George Raveling ten years ago and he’s become not just one of my favorite people but one of my best teachers (and, at 88, one of my oldest friends!). George was one of the winningest coaches of all time, a mentor to legendary athletes, and a confidant of the sport’s greatest coaches (including Bob Knight and John Wooden) and he convinced Michael Jordan to collaborate with Nike on the Air Jordan. Oh, and he happened to own the ‘I Have A Dream Speech’ that MLK personally gave him on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial! Last year, his son called me and asked if I thought there was a book in Coach’s story. I called my publisher and they bought it the next day. You’re going to love this book as much as I love George. George just signed 500 copies of the book and sent them to The Painted Porch. We will almost immediately sell out of them next month when the book comes out, so I’m telling you about it here first.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison I picked this book back up in 2020 in light of the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. It’s a book with police shootings, race riots and agitators trying to exploit the crises on both sides for political gain. It was terribly sad to read a book originally published in 1952 and think how little has changed. It’s not an easy read, but it’s essential. I learned more about what’s relevant today by picking this back up than through any trendy, virtue-signaling book that might be topping the best-seller lists in recent years. Do yourself a favor and read this one instead. It’s not going anywhere because it is timeless.
My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass If you haven’t read My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass, man are you missing out. This is the incredible story of a man who is born a slave, teaches himself to read, decides he will no longer consent to being whipped, then runs away and becomes one of America’s foremost intellectuals and one of our second founding fathers. (Here are 5 of my favorite pages).
Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor In my office, I have a small piece of a door jam from the White House (a relic from the remodel done during the Truman Administration). Sometimes, I look at it from my desk and think about the enslaved craftsman who made it–and the inherent contradiction in the American story hits me. This book about Paul Jennings is an underrated book about the kind of hidden figure of history that I love learning about. Paul Jennings was born into slavery on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison in Virginia, later becoming part of the Madison household staff at the White House. Once finally emancipated later in life, he gave an aged and impoverished Dolley Madison–his former owner–money from his own pocket, wrote the first White House memoir, and saw his sons fight with the Union Army in the Civil War.
The Children by David Halberstam In 2020, I started reading Taylor Branch’s definitive series on Martin Luther King Jr. and the American civil rights movement, which I have strongly recommended here before. Through that, I had some familiarity with the characters in The Children, but I did not expect to be so overwhelmed with emotion in reading about a group of 20-something-year-olds—John Lewis, Diane Nash, James Lawson, James Bevel, among others—who galvanized the civil rights movement. The courage of these young men and women is otherworldly and I can’t recommend this book enough. I’m a longtime Halberstam (a master who died too young): Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, Breaks of the Game (about Portland Trail Blazers’ 1979-80 NBA season), and The Education of a Coach (about the brilliance of Bill Belichick).
Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 by Thomas E. Ricks If Caste is the shadowy lower part of American history, the higher and more transcendent part is revealed in Ricks’ book First Principles, which is about the deep influence the Greek and Roman philosophers had on the American founders. Waging a Good War is about what he calls the greatest war in American history led by what he describes as the greatest generation in American history—the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. It was Martin Luther King who came to Washington in 1963 to ‘cash a check,’ to redeem that promise first made in the Declaration of Independence. We’re still trying to do that nearly 60 years later today. I will say, this book does not have a good subtitle but please don’t let it deter you. This is a brilliantly written book about how those leaders of the Civil Rights Movement effectuated so much change and what we can learn—strategically, tactically, philosophically, culturally—from them. Listen to my conversation with Ricks here.
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson I’m mentioning this one again because it’s a masterwork. If you’ve read any of my books, then you’ve benefited from Wright’s incredible reporting and observations. I thank him in the back of Right Thing, Right Now because his profiles of Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, and Ted Williams have filled my books with so many great (and heartbreaking) stories. The best of that writing appears in one of my all-time favorite books, The Cost of These Dreams. But this book? You just have to read it. It’s an essential contribution to American history. Read it to understand the darkness of human beings. Read it to understand the grace and power and courage of human beings. Read it to understand what pandering, manipulative politicians can stir up. Read it to understand that the past isn’t dead, it’s not even past.
James: A Novel by Percival Everett What a wonderful idea for a novel–to tell the story of Huckleberry Finn and Jim from Jim’s perspective! That Everett can take this much darker and tragic perspective and still make it funny? That’s a task worthy of Mark Twain. It’s also deeply moving and I think an important look at how slavery actually was (Twelve Years a Slave is also an incredible book). It reminded me of two other books I loved: Wicked River by Lee Sandlin (an absolutely incredible book about the history of the river) and Life on the Mississippi by Rinker Buck (about a guy who recently traveled it in his own raft, not too dissimilar to the one Huck and Jim were on). In Right Thing, Right Now I talk about the work of abolitionist Thomas Clarkson–again we want to study the past to figure out how to improve the present–and Adam Hochschild’s book Bury the Chains is an inspiring look at how someone managed to see slavery as it was in the 18th century and do something about it.
Ain’t I A Woman by Sojourner Truth In her time, Sojourner Truth was triply discriminated against. A woman. Black. A former slave. She would fight tirelessly for the post-war amendment, even though it effectively only gave Black men their rights. But once the ice was cracked, she said, she kept stirring and stirring. Ain’t I A Woman is a collection of Sojourner’s best speeches and stories. She actually would never have said something like ‘Ain’t I A Woman’ because she was not from the South…she was a slave in New York City and in fact, spoke Dutch! The slave dialect attributed to her was a journalistic invention. But it’s a great little book. Read it and then follow it up with Sojourner Truth: A Life, which is a fascinating scholarly biography about this incredible woman.
The Reading List Email For February 23, 2025
Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell You want to talk about another crazy life? Pamela Harriman married Winston Churchill’s son (who was a disaster) and became a favorite of her father-in-law despite her troubled marriage. She went on to become a kind of courtesan and diplomat in WWII, working with (and working) everyone from Gianni Agnelli, Edward R. Murrow, Stavros Niarchos, and Elie de Rothschild. Would America have entered the war without her? Would Britain have survived without her? What an unreal life. She would go on to establish herself as a prominent figure in international high society in Paris, become a political powerbroker in Washington D.C., and eventually the American ambassador to France. I had a fascinating conversation with a U.S. Senator about this book and Harriman’s legacy in D.C. back in December–we were both just blown away by this. Related: I loved Purnell’s biography of Clementine Churchill as well as her thriller/narrative non-fiction book, A Woman of No Importance.
Augustus by John Williams How did I not know about this book??? Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar–a fictional memoir of the dying Hadrian–is one of my all-time favorite novels. This is basically the same thing, but about Augustus (who was quite frankly, a much more interesting and impressive historical figure). Both books are internationally acclaimed for good reason (Augustus won the National Book Award in 1973). I thought this book was beautiful and illuminating, especially on the themes of power and ambition and happiness. There is a powerful scene where Augustus meets an old nurse of his and he realizes that this ordinary woman with kids she still sees is probably happier and had a better life than him. The point is…you might think you want to be emperor or president or a billionaire, but a look at what that might actually be like wakes you up quickly.
Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot by James B. Stockdale I’ve read a lot of Stockdale over the years, but I am making my way back through his collection of essays. When the world feels like it’s falling apart, when you’re not sure you can get through something, I always recommend spending some time with someone who really went through something. I always recommend history. Stockdale, who was introduced to Epictetus at Stanford, is one of the great modern Stoics, one of the few people who have tested the ideas of the ancients in what he calls the ‘laboratory of human behavior.’ If you’re looking for a place to start with Stockdale, this one is good, although there is an even shorter book–every page is excellent–called Courage Under Fire. It’s so popular we often have trouble keeping it in stock. (And by the way, for the last couple of years I have been brought by the Stockdale Center to speak at the US Naval Academy about Stoicism. Here’s a recent talk I gave to the Naval Academy about Jimmy Carter, here’s another about discipline, one about justice, and another about courage).
Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden I’ve read too much on the Revolution, on the Civil War and on WWII…I have not read nearly enough on Vietnam. Last month, I read Jonathan Schell’s The Village of Ben Suc and then I followed it with Bowden’s book on the battle for Hue. Not only is Bowden a gripping master of narrative nonfiction (check out my favorite narrative nonfiction books here), but he manages to perfectly capture the paradox and tragedy: Moments of individual heroism and sacrifice…in a nonsensical, inexplicable war. Wrap your head around the fact that Stockdale had already been a prisoner for three years by the time North Vietnam began the Tet Offensive (although the war was already a disaster by 1965, as Schell details in his book). And yet it would nevertheless continue to 1975 even though it was obvious to everyone! As I said before, studying the past helps us understand the present. The tragedy of Vietnam is that we have failed to do this…and then just went ahead and did it again in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Miscellaneous I wrote a piece on George Raveling and human wormholes you might find interesting here. Dan Pink was at the bookstore this month and signed copies of his book The Power of Regret. My friend Randy Blythe, the lead singer of Lamb of God, has a great new book called Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head that he just signed at the store. His first book Dark Days is also really good. You can check out my conversation with Randy on The Daily Stoic Podcast (listen here). We read James by Percival Everett for The Painted Porch book club this month, along with Isabella Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Sons (if you missed my Black History Month picks, I have a bunch of books here). We have a “staff picks” corner in the bookstore, which we’ve now put on the website. So if you want book recommendations from the staff at the bookstore and The Daily Stoic employees, check those out here.
These Books Made Me A Better Leader (The Reading List Email For March 9, 2025)
How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership by Plutarch The Stoics talked over and over again about how studying the lives of the “greats” is one of the best ways to learn. Studying their flaws, their virtues, their strategies, and their failures. Plutarch took that lesson to heart. He was obsessed with what we could learn from the figures he wrote about, balancing praise with shortcomings: Caesar’s brilliance and his fatal ego, Cicero’s eloquence and his vanity, Cato’s austere self-discipline and his failure to compromise. He wasn’t obsessed with dates and places and piddly biographical details but getting to the essence of what made someone great. It’s also worth noting that he wasn’t just a mere writer, but a leader himself, serving as a priest at the Oracle of Delphi and also holding the chief magistracy and other municipal posts in Chaeronea.
Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership by Sam Walker The great Paul Rabil recommended this one to me years ago (check out my conversation with him on The Daily Stoic Podcast). What a book! It proves that we have really missed what makes great teams and organizations work. It’s not star players, it’s not even how much they can spend–it’s whether they have great captains. Athletes like Bill Cartwright of the Chicago Bulls, Carla Overbeck on the U.S. Women’s Soccer team, Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees and Jack Lambert of the Pittsburgh Steelers were not by any means the most famous or the most talented players, but they were the glue that held the team together. Walker’s chapter on “carrying the water” had some great insights for Ego is the Enemy and I think this incredibly well-written book should be studied by anyone trying to build a great organization (or trying to find a role for themselves inside one).
Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin This is an absolutely incredible book. I think I marked up nearly every page. Obviously, Doris is one of the great living biographers and this book is basically her greatest hits, a study of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Lyndon Johnson. It is so clearly the culmination of a lifetime of research…and yet somehow not overwhelming or boring. Distillation at its best! I have read extensively on each of those figures and I got a ton out of it. Even with stuff I already knew, I benefited from Goodwin’s perspective. This is the perfect book to read right now—a timely reminder that leadership matters. Or, as I wrote about in this piece about leadership during the plague in ancient Rome: when things break down, good leaders have to stand up. And then of course, there is Team of Rivals which is her most famous book and a case study in how a great leader cultivates and keeps together a big coalition (and is not afraid of dissent or other great leaders).
Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War (Larry Hedrick’s Edition) This is a weird book. It’s kind of based on real history and also largely fictionalized–I guess it’s somewhere between a real biography and then great historical fiction like Gates of Fire. In any case, there are lots of lessons here about a figure that most people don’t know much about, Cyrus the Great (aka the father of human rights and the man that historians call “the most amiable of conquerors.”) The book is a veritable classic in the art of leadership, execution, and responsibility. There are so many great lessons in here and I wish more people would read it.
The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple by William H. McRaven Admiral McRaven’s books are just great, tight, well-done books. I guess we shouldn’t expect anything less from a Navy SEAL. As McRaven and I discussed when he was on the Daily Stoic podcast (great interview you can watch here), it’s so easy to sneer at mottos and credos—“Expect what you inspect”, “Who dares wins”, “No plan survives contact with the enemy”, “The only easy day was yesterday”—but then you meet high performers, be they athletes or Special Forces Operators or CEOs, and you find they take these seriously. Like very seriously! If you can get over your cynicism, this earnestness is infectious and inspiring. There’s a line from Nietzsche actually, about how the Stoics were superficial out of profundity. You find that at the highest levels and with the most difficult jobs, they find ways to boil things down to their essence. Anyway, McRaven’s books are largely meditations on a series of those simple ideas and I think most people would be better off for reading them.
The 48 Laws Of Power by Robert Greene Look, if you think the point of this book is to make you into a ruthless killer and tyrant, you are not reading it right. The point is that human beings have been striving for power, putting up against powerful interests, trying to create change or build institutions for as long as there has been such a thing as society. A few lessons have been learned along the way…and more than a few patterns have emerged. You’re an idiot if you don’t try to familiarize yourself with them. You will also have a hard time if you ignore them because it increases the chances that you will be a victim of these forces and lessons. Robert just recently celebrated it’s 25th anniversary with an incredible leather edition. It’s one of the coolest designed books I’ve ever seen (and the 48 Laws of Power was already beautifully designed). If you flip the gold pages in one direction, you see Machiavelli’s hidden face…and if you flip them in the other direction, Robert’s face appears. If you’re a fan of Robert’s work, check out this 2+ hour talk I had with him on The Daily Stoic YouTube.
Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography by William Lee Miller If 48 Laws of Power left a bad taste in your mouth, this book will help restore your faith in humanity. History looks at Lincoln and sees a moral figure—which is true—but they forget that he was also an effective politician. Yes, caring is important, and yes, Lincoln cared a lot. But his good intentions would have fallen flat if he wasn’t also pragmatic, strategic, powerful, savvy. In other words, if he wasn’t competent. I wrote an entire chapter in Right Thing, Right Now all about this. Because, really, it doesn’t matter that a politician has all the right positions if they don’t know how the system works or if they don’t have the staff or relationships to get it done. Lincoln understood that and that’s why he was able to create lasting change. Lincoln sought power and then sought to use that power for good–to keep the Union together and then ultimately to destroy slavery. That’s what leaders do.
Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (Ancient Lives) by Donald Robertson We tend to hear the most about ‘natural’ leaders. You know, the leaders who are ambitious, who are charismatic. It’s they who we think most about when we think about famous leaders throughout history. But the truth is that many of the best leaders wanted nothing to do with leadership. And so it went for Marcus Aurelius. Marcus wasn’t born to power, nor was he drawn to it. In many ways, power repelled him. But he saw it as a job, not a chance for personal advancement. He saw it as duty, not a fulfillment of his ego. This happened to be a recipe for great leadership. Robertson manages to thoughtfully and readably capture the essence of this great man and his great life in this biography. Obviously, I think Meditations is also a must-read for any leader–after all, it is the private thoughts of the most powerful man in the world–but after that, read this book to help understand him better.
Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle Even the best athletes have a coach. Tom Brady. Tiger Woods. Caitlin Clark. They are a product of their coaches. And so it goes with leaders. They have mentors. They have boards of advisors. They have leadership coaches. As it happens, Bill Campbell was for many years a football coach–at Columbia University–and then he started coaching upcoming entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt. He played an instrumental role in the growth of companies like Google, Apple, and Intuit. Anyway, like I said, Coach Raveling has been one of my coaches–and I’m like his least successful student. He’s the go-to advisor for people like Shaka Smart, John Calipari, Yao Ming, Dirk Nowitzki…and he was who Jordan turned to when he was deciding what shoe company to sign with.
Sailing True North: Ten Admirals And The Voyage of Character by Admiral James Stavridis One of the honors of my life has been this series of lectures I have done on the Naval Academy (you can watch the talk I gave about Jimmy Carter, here’s another about discipline, one about justice, and another about courage). As part of my research for those talks, I read this amazing book by Admiral Stavridis, who many years before he became a four-star admiral and the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, was a graduate of the Naval Academy. In this book, he looks at the great naval heroes of American (and world) history and examines what they can teach us–not just about victory and courage under fire but also for our most important duty in life: to be men and women of character. Which, the Stoics would say, is your fate (as I talk about here).
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You’ll notice I didn’t add any biographies in this list. Even Leadership In Turbulent Times by Goodwin (an incredible biographer) is a book of lessons extracted from the biographies she’s written. Of course, I think biographies are a great way to learn the art of leadership, so one of these days I’ll do a list of my favorite biographies, too…
The Reading List Email For March 23, 2025
A Time to Stand by Walter Lord I know, I know, I’m supposed to ‘Forget the Alamo’ as my friends Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford wrote in their controversial book (which our snowflake Lt. Gov tried to ban). I know that many of the myths about the Alamo are not true but I still had to take my kids there to see it. Of course, they found it all fascinating but then as we walked through the gift shop, I spotted a book. Walter Lord wrote a book about the Alamo?!?! I thought I’d read everything he’d written! I’ve raved here about A Night To Remember (the Titanic), Day of Infamy (Pearl Harbor), The Past That Would Not Die (Civil Rights Movement) and The Dawn’s Early Light (War of 1812). It makes sense–it’s the perfect story for his sparse, but detail-obsessed style of events tending toward disaster. And whatever the more complicated motives of the men in the Alamo (and the last Mexican-American War), there is undeniably something beautiful and tragic about their stand and there is a reason it stands next to Thermopylae as one of the great heroic stories of history (and is the subject of Gates of Fire!),
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart When I heard about this book, I told my wife, “There’s no way a book with a title this good isn’t terrible.” That is, I should say, one of my unfortunate rules: Novels with amazing titles usually suck. I would say I am happy to be wrong here, although it’s more like a manic, fever-dream poem than a novel. The real story the novel is based on is crazy: Elizabeth Smart’s consuming and tragic love affair with the married British poet, Goerge Barker, for whom she bears multiple children and follows all over the world, even as it tears her life apart…and he sacrifices nothing for her. (I will say, I was confused a good chunk of the time and had to read a bunch of articles to make sure I was following.) It sort of reminds me of the Eve Babitz book I recommended in January–sometimes really great and talented artists are just absolutely deranged in their personal lives. But Elizabeth Smart can write and I am here for it. Would I have wanted her to be my mother? Um, no, as this sad piece from her son helps contextualize. George Barker was a monster. The Stoics warn us against the passions for a reason. Because they blind us and prevent us from seeing what is so obvious.
Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuściński I heard about this book from Irene Vallejo’s Papyrus (an absolutely incredible book, I must reiterate and if you haven’t read it yet, go get it now). As it happens, I have a chapter about Herodotus–our first great historian and travel writer–in the book I am working on now, so I grabbed it. The book is by a Polish journalist in the late 1950s, who gets sent all over the world to cover foreign events and brings with him one of the few books that hadn’t been censored or repressed in his home country. It’s a lovely meditation not just on the ecstasies of travel, but the perennial foibles of humanity–of which Herodotus was our greatest observer. I first read Herodotus in college and have come back to him many times, including, in a very full circle moment, for his retelling of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae (which I portrayed in Part III of Courage is Calling). A couple other favorite travel books, by the way: In A Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson, Ghost Rider, and Travels with Epicurus. Also my friend Nomadic Matt has a new edition of his book How To Travel the World on $75 a Day, which he was nice enough to come talk about and sign at The Painted Porch this month.
The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault How did no one tell me about this book?!?! Seriously! It was like it was written specifically for me. It’s a historical novel about the coming of age of a young boy, Alexis, in Periclean Athens. It touches on many of the events Herodotus experienced or wrote about–and every few pages features a delightful appearance of someone (Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Xenophon) or some place or battle you’ve heard of (Marathon, Sicily, Thrace, Battle of Munychia). Sometimes fiction can get us closer to the truth than history and I felt like this was one of those books–Socrates can be hard to get into but this puts a face to the name and allows you, I think, to go back and understand the philosophy better. Speaking of which, if you want a good Socrates book, Donald Robertson’s new one, How to Think Like Socrates is great (and so was his conversation on The Daily Stoic podcast about it). I will recommend again Memoirs of Hadrian as well as Augustus and Gates of Fire here, as they are all similar great historical fiction.
Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert Wright Thompson talked about this book quite a bit in his haunting book, The Barn (about the murder of Emmett Till on a cotton plantation in 1955). Since I learned a lot from The Ledger and The Chain–about the slave trade–I thought I would read this. Again, I am always impressed when someone can make a seemingly boring topic (the history of cotton) into a riveting tale, but like Irene Vallejo in Papyrus or Christopher Knowlton in Cattle Kingdom, Beckert manages to do exactly that. I didn’t think of cotton as technology nor did I think of it as an interconnected global commodity, but of course it was. And again as always, I find that reading about the past helps us understand the present and the future–in this case, it informed my perspective on the arguments for and against tariffs, as well as the eerily 19th/20th-esque saber-rattling over access to global markets and territorial expansion. Another related book I highly recommend is Bury the Chains, about Thomas Clarkson’s campaign to abolish slavery in the British Empire.
Misc I mentioned Bryan Burrough earlier–this article he wrote about the halcyon days of Vanity Fair is insane. It also led me to this incredible piece he did back in the mid-2000s about the fall of Michael Ovitz, which happened also to intersect with the person who ‘discovered’ me as a writer and young up-and-comer in Hollywood back an eternity ago. Yung Pueblo came out to the store to film for The Daily Stoic Podcast. He’s been on the podcast before (listen to that interview here), but this was the first time he came on in person (watch the most recent interview here). He signed a ton of his books: The Way Forward, Lighter, Clarity & Connection (which I saw in a General’s office two days after), and Inward. And, of course, he left with a great stack of books (check those out here). When I was in Canada back in November, I interviewed John Vaillant, author of one of my all-time favorite books: The Tiger (and also author of The Golden Spruce). You can listen to that conversation here. When McConaughey came on the podcast, I gave him a tour of the bookstore and my office. He also left with a ton of great books, which you can see in this video here.
The Book That Changed My Life (The Reading List Email For April 13, 2025)
In October 2006, I placed an order on Amazon that changed my life. I ordered three books—this was long before I had a bookstore and before even Amazon Prime and I needed the free shipping. I bought Deborah Blum’s Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences Between Men and Women, Edmund Morris’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, and Gregory Hays’ translation of Meditations.
My whole order came to $26.11, and in retrospect, it’s the best investment I have ever made. Blum’s book of evolutionary psychology was interesting, Morris’ biography of Roosevelt remains a favorite, but Meditations opened up a whole world to me. I didn’t know that anyone had ever written anything like that! I didn’t know this is what philosophy could be! It’s funny, I went back and looked up my order number for that purchase in my email and you know what I found? The shipment was delayed by several days and there I was, the 19-year-old me, indignantly demanding recompense from Amazon’s customer service. I didn’t yet know, as Marcus so perfectly writes in Meditations, that I had the power to not get upset about trivial things that didn’t matter, that I didn’t have to turn this—or anything—into something. I would go on to read this book hundreds of times over the next two decades, putting miles literally and figuratively on that paperback I had bought. It moved with me to Los Angeles and New York and New Orleans and Austin. It traveled with me to Europe and Asia and the rest of the world. I brought it to Rome. I read it in Acquincum, outside Budapest, where Marcus wrote parts of it. It has sat at my bedside and on my desk. How many people have I turned onto Meditations in the years since? I won’t guess, but I did find, in another paperback edition of it on our shelf, a receipt from Borders—the defunct chain—dated February 2007. It hit me: This was my wife’s copy and she had bought it after I had spent too much of our first date talking about it. I was walking through the airport in Sao Paulo last fall and saw the cover peeking out at me from a bookshop in the terminal. I walked over and saw a quote from me on the cover…in Portuguese. Not long after, the Modern Library asked if I would write a Foreword to a new edition they were putting out. The hardcover edition just came out (in addition to the leather edition that Daily Stoic carries). In honor of that, I thought I’d do a Meditations-themed edition of the reading list email because although your journey should begin with the Hays translation, it should not end there.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Hardcover) (Leather) (Paperback) Why do I like the Gregory Hays edition so much? Because it’s alive and accessible. Hays uses clear, modern, plain English, but still manages to capture the power and beauty of Marcus’s writing and wisdom. There are no “thou’s,” “shalls,” “thys” or “thees,”—nothing old-fashioned to confuse you and slow you down. I didn’t realize how important that was until I later picked up another translation of Marcus—probably one by George Long or A. S. L. Farquharson—which I found online for free. I was immediately struck by how the beautiful, lyrical book I loved had become dense, boring, unreadable, and hard to connect with. If I had cheaped out and tried to get for free what I’d bought instead, my entire life might have turned out differently.
Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (Ancient Lives) by Donald Robertson The first thing I looked for when I finished Meditations was a great biography of Marcus Aurelius. Although I found essays here or there (some of which Hays talks about in his introduction), I had to wait nearly twenty years before I could find a really good one. That book is Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor by my friend Donald Robertson, and it’s incredible. We immediately started carrying it in The Painted Porch. It’s just one of the best books I’ve read, and I’m glad Donald wrote it so that I didn’t have to (though I did write a small bio of Marcus in Lives Of The Stoics). Donald lives in Greece, but he came out to the podcast studio and we had a wonderful conversation (watch the interview here) about our joint fascination with this man who was the most powerful in the world, and—as Matthew Arnold said in one of those essays about Marcus—proved himself worthy of it. What does it take to do that? How does a person do that? And no one is better suited to answer those questions than Donald because not only is he a great writer, but he’s a great thinker about Stoic philosophy. He has another book, which I also love, called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.
Meditations: The Annotated Edition (Robin Waterfield) One of the best parts of the Hays translations is the end notes, where he explains what some of the more cryptic passages mean. Although I would kill for a fully annotated edition from Hays, this one provided by Robin Waterfield is quite good as well. For almost every passage, Robin provides the necessary context, gives insight into what Marcus was referencing, draws connections to other passages, etc. I did a two-hour interview with Robin, which you can listen to on The Daily Stoic Podcast. Though I champion the Hays translation, reading a new translation of a book you’ve read (or love) is a great way to see the same ideas from a new angle…or find new ideas you missed on the previous go-arounds. Marcus, like Heraclitus, believed we never step in the same river twice.
How To Read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (A Guide) While Meditations is easy to read, it’s the work of a lifetime to explore its depths. That’s why I’ve spent the last decade trying to make its wisdom more accessible and applicable to everyone. It’s also why, more recently, we created How To Read Meditations (A Daily Stoic Guide). It’s the companion I wish I had when I first started. Like a personal field guide to Meditations, it’s part book club, part masterclass, part daily practice. It’s designed to help you not just read the words of Marcus Aurelius, but live them—to turn timeless wisdom into real change in your own life and the lives of those around you. Sign up before April 26th (Marcus’ 1905 birthday) to get access to a live Q&A with me, where we’ll go deep on all things Meditations, Stoicism, and how to apply these ideas right now, in today’s world. I hope to see you there.
The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius by Pierre Hadot If there was one translation of Meditations I would love to read it would be one by Hadot. He did original translations for the passages he quotes in The Inner Citadel, but sadly he died without publishing a full translation of Marcus for wider consumption. It was in reading Hadot that I first got an explicit explanation of what he calls “turning obstacles upside down.” I’d obviously read the original passage he quotes several times in Hays, but Hadot’s translation was different, it made it clearer. The original title of The Obstacle is the Way was “Turning Obstacles Upside Down.” In any case, the introduction and the last two chapters of The Inner Citadel are crucial to understanding Marcus. The concept of an “inner citadel”—the Stoic idea of the self as a fortress—was a brilliant metaphor for Marcus’ philosophy. Hadot says that Marcus worked to create a core that fate, hysterics, vice and outside influences could never penetrate. And that he wrote to himself to strengthen the walls.
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar There are not many great works of fiction about Stoicism, but this is one. Written from the perspective of Hadrian, the book takes the form of a long letter of advice to a young Marcus Aurelius, who would eventually succeed him as emperor. It is just an utterly beautiful book. It’s somber but practical, filled with beautiful and moving passages from a man near death, looking to prepare someone for one of the most difficult jobs in the world. I will also recommend Augustus by John Williams. It is basically the same thing as Memoirs of Hadrian, but a fictional memoir of Augustus (who was quite frankly, a much more interesting and impressive historical figure). Both books are internationally acclaimed for good reason. I hope someone will give Marcus the fictional memoir treatment someday. Another work of fiction to check out is Tom Wolfe’s A Man In Full, in which one of the characters discovers the work of Epictetus.
Misc I said before that I read a few biographical essays of Marcus Aurelius and I have. Over the years, I’ve read Matthew Arnold’s 1863 essay, Brand Blanshard’s essay in Four Reasonable Men, Renan’s 1882 biography of Marcus, Cassius Dio’s 3rd-century biography of Marcus in Roman History, and Joseph Brodsky’s “Homage to Marcus Aurelius”—about the famous equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius (which I went to Rome a few years ago to see)—in On Grief and Reason. I tried to provide my own biographical sketch of this nature in Lives of the Stoics also (it’s 22 pages long). I also thought this piece in the Spanish newspaper El Pais, which draws on the insights of Professor David Hernández de la Fuente, does a good job of explaining why Meditations matters.
The Reading List Email For April 27, 2025
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green Sometimes the perfect topic meets the perfect writer. I have long held up The Big Short as an example of this–a lifetime of financial journalism and character-driven storytelling (Michael Lewis) intersects with the global financial crisis and makes one of the most interesting and bestselling business books ever. John Green has been writing accessible and interesting fiction for many years (along with viral YouTube and social media videos about history). Then he gets obsessed with tuberculosis–a disease very few people know or care about–and produces this book, which deserves (and is finding) a huge audience. As he says in the book, we could live in a world without tuberculosis (which currently kills over 1 million people a year) but for some reason, we choose not to. Why? I remember, when I lived in New Orleans, passing an old beautiful brick building that was closed up. I got closer and saw an old, fading sign above the entrance “John Dibert Tuberculosis Hospital.” In 1936 it was so bad they had to have dedicated hospitals? Yup! You don’t have to study much history (here’s a podcast we did on the Antonine Plague) to quickly realize that public health is one of our greatest inventions. You don’t have to be a data scientist or an ethicist to realize that people who undermine public health–or oppose basic public health funding or programs–have as much blood on their hands as any mass murderer. Anyway, this fascinating and heart-wrenching book I would love for you to read. It’s short, which is good. Its only flaw is that I don’t think Doc Holliday appears once…and that’s inexcusable. Also if you haven’t read The Great Influenza, it is also very good and you might like my interview with Dr. Katalin Kariko, who, as it happens, is also a big fan of the Stoics.
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson I live in a small town in Texas, filled with mostly decent people. A couple of years ago, they wanted to build an apartment complex down near the Autozone off Highway 95. Everyone got together and blocked it–it was “too close to the historic core” they said. They just did the same thing when someone tore down a derelict house next to a gas station, hoping to build some duplexes. None of these people who say they are discriminatory or selfish…but they are! Where are those people supposed to live?! People are going to line up to go to city council meetings opposing these projects, but are people like me who don’t want to stand in the way going to go spend hours to wait my turn to speak up for some random guy’s duplex that I don’t profit from? Unfortunately, most of the time, no. The reality is that the population here has boomed anyway. Prices have gone way up. And when I drive out to my ranch, you know what I see? Dozens and dozens of RV parks that cost hundreds of dollars a month just to park in. This is what Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson are railing against in Abundance. You can tell yourself you’re a good person but when you pull up the ladder behind you because you like ‘the way things are now’ you are depriving people of a better future. I firmly believe that much of our political dysfunction and division would go away if housing was cheaper and if we felt like we were making progress on the big, vexing problems of our time (cancer, climate change, food insecurity, human trafficking and war). We could live in a world of abundance–to paraphrase John Green’s line about tuberculosis–we just choose not to. We have to care about creating abundance as much as some people care about maintaining scarcity. Like I said, great book. Definitely read. And I think Ezra’s podcast is one of the best there is right now.
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick At our staff meetings for Daily Stoic and The Painted Porch, one thing we do is all go around and explain interesting ways we are using AI to be more productive and efficient. I do this because 1) I don’t want people doing it in secret. I want to be clear about ethical and non-ethical uses (for instance, I would never use it to write one of these emails) 2) I want to encourage smart and creative productivity gains 3) I like learning new strategies and ways of doing things. This book, which I heard about on Ezra Klein’s episode with the author last April, is a great primer on how and why to use AI to get better at what you do. I like his term “co-intelligence.” I am mostly an analog guy in how I write and research (see how I do that here), but that doesn’t mean I am anti-technology. If a tool can help me get better, I want to understand how it works. That’s why I have been studying AI and experimenting with it. You should do the same…because it’s the people who don’t who are mostly likely to be replaced or manipulated by it. (Also I did a Daily Dad episode about how I am teaching my kids how to use AI and how we use it together to have fun and learn things.)
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy My wife sure liked it when I came home with this book, after reading a review in the NYT about it. “It’s really good,” I said, “I think you should read it.” “I read it weeks ago,” she replied. “And we’ve already talked about it.” Oops. The story centers around a family, the Salts, who are last inhabitants of an abandoned research base and seed bank on a small island not far from Antarctica. Not a perfect book (it has some plot holes–namely the timeline is kind of insane and unnecessarily spread out), but great. I guess it continues my reading streak about stuff related to Australia (In A Sunburned Country and The Fatal Shore). I also kept thinking back to this book on ‘Liberation Day.’ The world laughed when Trump announced tariffs on an island inhabited only by penguins…but all I could think was, “Hey, that’s the island from the book I just read!” I also thought quite a bit about Endurance (about Shackelton) and David Grann’s The Wager, which both feature similarly desolate islands.
Dispatches by Michael Herr My Vietnam reading continues, as I study Stockdale and the conflict that defined him. Someone recommended this book last month and man, is it heartbreaking…We fed a generation of young men (and the whole population of North and South Vietnam) into a meat grinder, and for what? Everyone knew…that nobody knew. That’s the haunting part of Herr’s book, how obvious it was and how little moral courage there was about it. It’s sort of a fever dream of a book (it was weird reading it after By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept). I admire writers who can pull that off. In the foreword he admits it’s more fictional than people first assumed, but it certainly lands with more truth than most of the ‘official’ news coming out at the time. (If you haven’t listened, I interviewed Francis Ford Coppola on The Daily Stoic Podcast back in 2024. Coppola wrote Apocalypse Now with Herr.)
Misc You may have heard by now that I got into a bit of a thing at the U.S Naval Academy over their policy of book banning. The front window of The Painted Porch has a giant sign with these Rage Against the Machine lyrics: “They don’t gotta burn the books they just remove ‘em”. How could I not say anything when I heard 400 books had been removed from the university library? Here’s the New York Times op-ed I wrote about it and here is the video of the speech I would have given, if I had not been prevented from doing so. As I write in Courage is Calling and Right Thing, Right Now, our job is to stand for truth and principle, whatever our career is. This was my attempt to do that. In these troubling, destabilizing times, I ask that you try to do the same. The talk I was supposed to give was on the Stoic virtue of wisdom, which is also the topic of my fourth and final book in the Stoic Virtues Series (you can preorder that book here). It’s been a good month for The Daily Stoic Podcast. Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones, came out to the studio to film an episode and we had a great conversation. She signed a ton of books and even left with a good stack of books that I recommended she read (check that out here). Michael Easter also visited, listen to our episode here and get signed copies of his books The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain. Bonnie Tsui came back on the podcast. Her book Why We Swim is one of my favorites. Chris Guillabeau was on the podcast just last week (listen here). He wrote The $100 Startup.
These Books Made Me A Better Parent And Partner (The Reading List Email For May 11, 2025)
Parenting Books
Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Dr. Becky Kennedy WOW, this book is so good. I could only make it a couple of pages at a time before I had to just stop and think. And then to go back through it for my notecard system took equally long, there was just so much stuff I had to get down. I’ve already written close to a dozen Daily Dad emails about lessons from the book, from parenting anxieties and frustrations to being present and asking tough questions. I can summarize the core lesson in two sentences: You’re to mess up as a parent all the time. So you have to get really good at repair. I interviewed Dr. Becky, too, but you just HAVE to read this book. I also filmed a whole episode talking about this book with my wife for The Daily Dad Podcast that you can watch here.
Outdoor Kids in an Inside World: Getting Your Family Out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature by Steven Rinella Our youngest graduated from his outdoor, nature school on Friday. Both our boys spent multiple years at this incredible school that had no buildings, no desks, no tests. They were outside all day, rain or shine. They learned how to start fires and follow their curiosity. They learned about animals and teamwork and solving problems. Sending them there was, without question, one of the best parenting decisions we ever made. I said this to Samantha last night: We should celebrate wins when we have them and this was a win. Why? We live in an inside world—screens, phones, computers. So what’s success as a modern parent? Raising an outdoor kid. Nobody wants an inside kid–a kid who can’t step away from their screen, who says “ew” when they see dirt, who doesn’t know how to hold their own on the playground or know a thing about the wonderful world around us. Well, this book is a great resource for parents in the perennial struggle against screens and comfort and everything else. Being cold and wet. Being bored. Being tired. Being quiet. Screwing up. These are things our kids need to experience.
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein I loved this book when it came out, and have often told people I think it’s a parenting book in disguise. It opens with the contrasting careers of Roger Federer and Tiger Woods, one a specialist from an early age, the other a generalist (who seemed to have a much more pleasant childhood and life), but both became great. I have always seen myself as a multi-hyphenate and believe my books have benefited from the experiences, interests, and occupations I’ve had. The book’s message is that the broader path—the one with range—is more sustainable. Specialization, especially too early, often leads to burnout and destruction. The same holds true beyond sports. If you want to raise resilient kids, give them range. This is a book I always recommend, even though it’s not technically a parenting book.
The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents by William Martin I’ve always loved the “daily read” format, books that I reach for daily and benefit from each time I pick them up. I’ve recommended some of my favorites here before, and I’ve been lucky enough to publish two of my own (The Daily Stoic and The Daily Dad…more on that in a moment). The Parents Tao Te Ching is one of those books. It lives on my nightstand and I read a bit of it each night.
The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids This book has my name on the cover, but an embarrassing number of the entries began with things I first heard from Samantha. She could easily write her own version of this book…in any case, the one I did write would not have been possible without her. But this book is just that, a collection of the best parenting lessons I’ve come across—pulled from books, from history, from psychology, from conversations with fellow parents. It’s a patchwork of stories, insights, and reminders. Last year, we released a premium leather edition with beautiful illustrations and a list of the 10 Parenting Commandments on the back cover. It’s the nicest version of the book we’ve ever made.
How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes: Science-Based Strategies for Better Parenting—From Tots to Teens by Melinda Wenner Moyer Yes, that’s the real title. The goal? Raise a kid who isn’t a jerk. Who treats people well. Who’s capable of kindness, empathy, and compassion. Enough said. She also has a new book coming out at the end of this month called Hello, Cruel World!: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times, which apparently I helped inspire when I asked her the first time she was on the podcast for advice on raising kids in a world filled with assholes. Melinda came out to the bookstore to record an episode for The Daily Stoic Podcast (subscribe here so you don’t miss it). We had a great conversation. But seriously, read this book.
Reading for Our Lives: A Literary Action Plan from Birth to Six by Maya Smart We’re all trying to raise readers, right? Well, it’s not just about reading to them when they’re little. It’s not just about getting them into a good school or insisting they do their homework. It’s about being involved. It’s about making reading a family affair. It’s about letting them benefit from your experiences—all the ideas and books you’ve been exposed to in the time you’ve been on this planet. You raise a reader by being a reader…and by being a good reading guide and companion. So if you’re trying to raise a reader, Maya Smart wrote this great book on exactly that–I think every parent should read it. Then check out our conversation on The Daily Stoic Podcast.
Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It by Richard Reeves We have two young boys (thus the Daily Dad email), so I’ve been following Richard Reeves’s work for some time. This book could so easily have been culture war fodder, but thankfully, he is so much above and beyond that. The gains society has made for women–especially in America–have been utterly unprecedented. But men are struggling, or rather, young boys are struggling. How do we help them? How do we show them a better path? How do we teach them to fulfill their potential and contribute their unique contribution to society? Given my work with Stoicism, I think we’ve gone too far in describing masculinity as ‘toxic’ (check out this video I did about Stoic lessons on masculinity), but I would say there are many toxic examples (and thinkers) out there who are misleading young men (which I talk about in this video). If you’re a parent or a teacher or a policy maker, you have to read this book. Check out my conversation with Richard Reeves here.
Letter To The Father by Franz Kafka This is a touching and painful unsent letter from Kafka–a sensitive, sensitive, nerdy, bookish son–to his domineering, businessman father. It explores what Kafka wished his father had been. The tragedy? He sent the letter to his mother to give to his father…and she just sent it back. It’s raw, therapeutic, powerful, basically a how-to on what not to do. If you’ve ever been hurt by an emotionally distant parent—or don’t want to become one—this book is a must-read. It was mentioned in Boorstin’s The Seekers and reminds me a lot of the stuff in Lindsay Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents (which I also highly recommend).
Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do by Eve Rodsky Like a lot of men of my generation, I’ve learned about this concept of “mental load” in relationships (the way, unthinkingly, a lot of responsibilities, emotional obligations and tasks are placed on women). This has necessitated a lot of changes in my life–not all of which have been easy–and this book helped me along the way. This book is the PERFECT Mother’s Day gift for your spouse. Not to have her read, but for you to read yourself.
Some Favorites From Samantha
Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall by Helena Merriman Samantha raved about this book for like two years before I actually read it. I don’t know why I was resistant, but I felt like a real idiot once I finished it, because it’s incredible. Like, so good that I sometimes had trouble reading more than a few pages at a time. There’s so much good Cold War history here, but more than that, just a riveting story of a German graduate student who escapes into West Berlin…and then despite having no family or loved ones on the other side, spends thousands of hours–at great risk to himself–digging a 442-foot tunnel back to East Berlin to help others escape. It’s written by a TV journalist so it has a very unique feel to it. I don’t think I’ve read anything like it. I just LOVED it. Don’t be like me and wait two years to read it, do yourself a favor and pick this one up today.
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel This is another one I had to apologize to Sam for not reading earlier. She was right and I was wrong, just as she was right and I was wrong about Tunnel 29. I had even less of an excuse because I read Michael Finkel’s earlier book, The Stranger in the Woods, and loved it. The Art Thief is even better. Like, unbelievably good. Just some random dude stole billions of dollars worth of art from European museums and hung it up in his bedroom at his mom’s house? And nobody caught him for years??? Wtf? The story is insane. And Finkel’s access was clearly incredible because he basically takes you into the room for the heists and shows you exactly how it worked. You’ll be mad that this book isn’t longer.
Wild Dark Shore: A Novel by Charlotte McConaghy As I said last month, I found this from a review in the NYT. I told Samantha about it excitedly. “I read it weeks ago,” she replied. “And we’ve already talked about it.” Oops. The story centers around a family, the Salts, who are the last inhabitants of an abandoned research base and seed bank on a small island not far from Antarctica. I kept thinking back to this book on ‘Liberation Day.’ The world laughed when Trump announced tariffs on an island inhabited only by penguins…but all I could think was, “Hey, that’s the island from the book I just read!” I also thought quite a bit about Endurance (about Shackleton) and David Grann’s The Wager, which both feature similarly desolate islands. But if you plan on picking Wild Dark Shore up, read it this month as it’s one of our May Book Club picks at The Painted Porch (if you live in the area, follow the bookstore on Instagram for updates on each month’s book club picks and meeting times!).
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan Samantha read a ton of these little Claire Keegan books while we were in Europe for The Stoic Life Tour last year. Small Things Like These is based in Ireland and it starts off slow and simple…and then holy shit. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but in a less extreme way, it reminded me of that scene in The Road (also an amazing novel) where they descend into that cellar and find it’s a dungeon and they’re eating the prisoners! Anyway, to me, the most haunting question of the book is when the husband is talking to his wife about what he suspects and she tells him they have their own children to worry about. “But what if it was one of ours?” he asks. I think that’s a very powerful question that we have stopped asking as a society. As I wrote in a Daily Dad email (subscribe here for a parenting meditation each morning) a while back, we think too much about our kids and not enough about our kids these days. Samantha said she also recommends So Late In The Day and Foster.
Horizontal Parenting: How To Entertain Your Kids While Lying Down by Michelle Woo And to close out this email, I will leave you with a new favorite: Horizontal Parenting. Because isn’t that what every parent wants? To just lie down and exert a little less energy?
The Reading List Email For May 25, 2025
On Character: Choices that Define a Life by Stanley McChrystal I read this back in December and I have had to sit on telling you about what I think is the best new book I’ve read in some time. Perhaps the book struck me extra hard because I read it while I was at the White House giving a talk to departing staffers (you can listen to that here)–character obviously counts everywhere, but nowhere does it count more than in government. The Stoics–who are quoted liberally in this book–believed that character was destiny. They believed that accomplishments and power mattered little if a person could not be trusted, if they did not hold themselves to high standards, if they did not work actively for the common good. McCrystal’s book is a throwback to an older style of book, a meditation on a theme in the form of short essays and stories. It is also a throwback in terms of its earnestness and vulnerability. There’s no performance here. It’s not designed to get speaking gigs or consulting opportunities. It is the thoughts of a man in the latter stages of his career and life, reflecting on what he’s learned, the mistakes he’s made, the future he hopes to leave his children and grandchildren. Like I said, I just loved this book. I hope a lot of people read it and more than that, I hope more people live by it. Also, it was a delight to see, as I got to the Acknowledgments, that my friend Jeff Goins was involved in the project. He had a book I like (and worked on many years ago) called Real Artists Don’t Starve, which I’d recommend to any creative person.
The Annotated Great Gatsby: 100th Anniversary Deluxe Edition by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby changed my life. Not just because it is the best and most beautiful novel in the English language, but because of an essay I wrote about it in 11th grade. I thought I was just completing an ordinary assignment and then the next day, I came in and my English teacher, Mrs. Kars had printed it out and spent the entire class period reviewing it with my Honors English class. This was the first time any of my writing had ever been recognized…and honestly, one of the first times in my life that I had ever felt like I might be anything but average. So I still have that copy of Gatsby and I re-read it every few years (you might remember that it’s featured in a big way in the preface of my book, Conspiracy). That’s why I was so excited to see this new annotated edition of Gatsby come out–it was a chance to re-read the book from scratch but also learn a lot more about it. It’s really a beautiful book that is wonderfully re-done. All the asides (many of which are in the margins 48 Laws of Power style) are fascinating and provide a ton of context. If you haven’t read Gatsby, read this one. If you have, read it again with this new one. You’ll love it. (Some other Gatsby stuff…Read The Crack-Up, which is the best account–from Fitzgerald directly–of the author’s self-induced collapse. Read Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Bakewell and listen to our episode of the Daily Stoic podcast about it.)
Notes To John by Joan Didion I am writing this edition of the Reading List Newsletter from the chair that I have written all the emails for the last 4 years from…the same chair that Joan Didion once wrote in. In fact, we record all the episodes of The Daily Stoic Podcast from her former dining room table. So when I saw that a new book was coming out, I about fell out of that chair. And it is a unique read, to say the least–it is the notes that Didion took from several years of therapy (preserved for her husband John) as their daughter struggled with alcoholism. If you haven’t read A Year of Magical Thinking or Blue Nights (do it now!), you can still get a lot out of these notes–which actually function as a deeply moving insight into family dynamics and the way that we all struggle, as parents, to help our kids. It’s a tragic and terribly sad story but I learned a lot from it. While some critics have said they don’t think these notes should be published, it is obvious to me as a Didion fan that she very much wrote them with an eye towards publication. Honestly, they’d work even as a kind of epistolary novel. Another Didion favorite from Didion is South and West.
The Fish That Ate The Whale by Rich Cohen Speaking of re-reading, I decided to re-read this book for a project I am working on. It remains, in my opinion, one of the most unique and eye-opening biographies I have ever read. As Rich Cohen writes in the intro, in Zemurray “the story of the age is collapses to the scale of a single life: the ascent from humble origins, the promise and ambition, the sudden, dazzling, disorienting wealth, the corruption, the brutality, propaganda, wars and overreach–and the grinding late day melancholy.” I bought this book for the first time the night of my very first book signing (at Octavia Books in New Orleans) and like with Gatsby, it was surreal to re-read it 13 years later. It was even more surreal when I compared my two copies to notice that I had marked, on two verso pages, the exact same lines and paragraphs. Anyway, very glad to re-read this–if you haven’t read it, you must. If you want some other Rich Cohen books, I also recommend Pee Wees: Confessions of a Hockey Parent and Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and Wild Heart of Football.
The Vietnam War: A Military History by Geoffrey Wawro As you’ve noticed, my reading about Vietnam continues. I continue to be struck with the contrast between Stockdale’s principled, selfless leadership inside the Hanoi Hilton (and men like John McCain who could have gone home early) and the only universal failure of political and military leadership in the upper ranks. At every point where the POWs had the opportunity to do the self-interested or expedient thing, they declined. At every point where the politicians had the chance to change course, to tell the truth, to make a hard but expensive decision, they declined…to do the right thing. One of the things I talked about in Courage is Calling is how often moral courage is rarer than physical courage. H.R McMaster points out the remarkable fact (in his Vietnam book) that not a single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff resigned in protest over the course of the 20 year war…even though Hawk and Dove alike, they were almost all horrified at the direction of the war for one reason or another. During my kerfuffle at the Naval Academy, some people questioned why soldiers should be taught to question or criticize policies, why they needed to learn about history or hear from America’s criticism–this is why! Because an army that cannot think–a country that is not thinking–ultimately finds itself engulfed in messes and moral catastrophes like Vietnam (or the Charge of the Light Brigade, as I explain in this clip). This book was well-done and I am glad to read it. At the same time, I wonder how much more of this depressing, avoidable car crash I can continue to take.
Misc I read this haunting NYT piece about a teenager from 1949 in Ireland who became pregnant and was immediately disowned from her family and community, which reminded me of the novel Small Things Like These. It’s always remarkable and moving when something you’ve read about intersects with the real world or real news events. That also happened to me last month when I was traveling to New York City to give a talk. In the span of less than 24 hours, I ran through Central Park past the Sherman statue, (one of my heroes whose biography is an all-time favorite and was used in Ego Is The Enemy), jogged past the Women’s Rights Pioneer Monument (the Women’s Movement was a huge part of Right Thing, Right Now and Elaine Weiss’ book The Women’s Hour is another favorite), saw Hamilton’s dueling pistols at the J.P Morgan Chase building (my 9-year-old is obsessed with Hamilton and I just interviewed Ron Chernow, who wrote Hamilton’s biography), and saw the pipes of the famous Americans who ate at Keene’s Steak house (Joseph Gordon Bennett, who I read a lot about in The Brass Check and deeply influenced what I wrote in Trust Me I’m Lying, Teddy Roosevelt whose biography I bought the same day I bought my first copy of Meditations, and MacArthur whose biography is fantastic. I really enjoyed The Stoic Capitalist by Robert Rosenkranz and just had him on The Daily Stoic Podcast, which you can listen to here or watch on YouTube. If you’re interested in learning more about what the Stoics thought about money, we did this course called The Wealthy Stoic that might be of use to you.
You Have To Read These Novels This Summer (The Reading List Email For June 15, 2025)
My life has been changed by countless books and when I think about it, many of them were novels. It’s kind of weird that something fake can change something real, but isn’t that what great art does? So it’s always weird when people ask me if I ever read fiction because the answer is of course. I don’t read it often as non-fiction, and I tend not to enjoy most modern fiction, but The Painted Porch is nearly 50% novels (to be fair, that’s largely my wife’s influence). But we should all be reading them because oftentimes novels get us closer to the truth than non-fiction. And so in today’s edition of the reading list email, I wanted to share some of those novels with you. Each book I am about to share with you has changed me in one way or another, and I encourage you to add them to your summer reading lists.
Augustus by John Williams and The Last of The Wine by Mary Renault As I said when I first recommended this book earlier this year, my first thought after reading it was: How did I not know this existed?!?!? One of my all-time favorite novels is Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, which is a fictional memoir of the dying Hadrian. This is basically the premise but about Augustus (who was quite frankly, a much more interesting and impressive historical figure). I thought this book was beautiful and illuminating, especially on the themes of power and ambition and happiness. Another historical novel I wish I had read sooner is Mary Renault’s The Last of The Wine. It’s about the coming of age of a young boy, Alexis, in Periclean Athens and touches on many of the events Herodotus experienced or wrote about. Every few pages feature a delightful appearance of someone (Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Xenophon) or some place or battle you’ve heard of (Marathon, Sicily, Thrace, Battle of Munychia). Socrates can be hard to get into but this puts a face to the name and allows you to go back and understand the philosophy better.
What Makes Sammy Run? and The Harder They Fall by Budd Schulberg My introduction to Schulberg began with a recommendation to read What Makes Sammy Run? in 2007 as I was about to start my first job in Hollywood. It chronicles the rise and fall of Sammy Glick, the rags-to-riches boy from New York who makes his way through deception and betrayal. Sammy is Ari Gold from Entourage…but younger so you sort of root for him. You watch as his ambition curdles and corrupts him, as he gets what he wants…but loses his soul in the process. This book sparked a love affair with Schulberg’s work which I’ve been writing and talking about ever since. I featured What Makes Sammy Run? in the conclusion of Ego Is The Enemy, I brought him up in my interview with Francis Ford Coppola, and I even reference him again in the afterword of my new book (preorder Wisdom Takes Work here!). I picked up The Harder They Fall shortly after reading What Makes Sammy Run? The way I remembered it, immediately after finishing it I decided to quit my job in marketing and write my tell-all. Clearly, it affected me deeply. But as I re-read it more recently, I realized I stayed in that job for three more years. I guess life does imitate fiction and growth is always more gradual than we’d like. Anyway, this book is about boxing and is loosely based on the Primo Carnera scandal. Follow those up with The Apprenticeship of Daddy Kravitz (which ironically was Dov Charney’s favorite story), for another cautionary tale about ambition and hustle.
James: A Novel by Percival Everett James just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for good reason. I read it when it came out last year and thought it was a wonderful idea for a novel–to tell the story of Huckleberry Finn and Jim from Jim’s perspective! That Everett is able to take this much darker and tragic perspective and still make it funny? That’s a task worthy of Mark Twain. By the way, I just interviewed Mark Twain’s biographer, Ron Chernow (who also wrote Alexander Hamilton), and together we raved about James. (That episode is coming out soon, subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss it.) But James is essentially the story of America–its hope and its evil, its land and its people, its potential and its horrific past. It’s deeply moving and I think an important look at how slavery actually was. Everyone needs to read this one.
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy The Moviegoer is like Cather in the Rye, but for adults. It’s also one of my favorite books ever. The main character—who lives in New Orleans just a few blocks from where I lived when I was in New Orleans—is so in love with the artificiality of movies that he has trouble living his actual life. He has all sorts of interesting theories about it. I actually wrote a piece many years ago about one of the more interesting observations in the book, where Percy talks about how seeing your neighborhood in a movie (or anywhere you’ve been) suddenly makes it seem more alive, more livable. He calls this “certification” and, because I lived where this book took place, I had that experience while reading it. Just a perfect book that has a great Stoic thread running through it.
The Annotated Great Gatsby: 100th Anniversary Deluxe Edition by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby changed my life. Not just because it is the best and most beautiful novel in the English language, but because of an essay I wrote about it in 11th grade. I thought I was just completing an ordinary assignment and then the next day, I came in and my English teacher, Mrs. Kars had printed it out and spent the entire class period reviewing it with my Honors English class. This was the first time any of my writing had ever been recognized. I do see a flicker of the writer I would later become but mostly, I see the beginning of my fascination with the themes of that novel. Just last month, I read from cover to cover this incredible annotated 100th-anniversary edition of The Great Gatsby and found myself thinking again about what this book means and why it has endured now for over a century. If you haven’t read Gatsby, read this one. If you have, read it again with this new edition.
All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison To understand the present, read novels about similar moments in the past. All The King’s Men is obviously a very famous book so I don’t need to sell it too much here, but it’s the fictional account of a Huey Long-type demagogue in the 1930s, told from the perspective of one of his fixers—a sort of disenchanted but entangled observer not unlike those of Budd Schulberg’s novels or The Great Gatsby. Invisible Man, originally published in 1952, is a book with police shootings, race riots and agitators trying to exploit the crises on both sides for political gain. It’s not an easy read, but it’s essential.
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis and Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor Again, fiction often helps us understand the human heart and the events of history more than nonfiction can. These two books will do that. It Can’t Happen Here will make you so uncomfortable you’ll probably pick it up and put it down several times. One of America’s most famous writers wrote a bestselling novel in 1935 about an appalling populist demagogue who won the presidency of the United States. Life imitates art. Change the dates, places and names and it’s no longer fiction, it’s real. Address Unknown is a series of letters between two business partners (one Jewish, one not) during the rise of Hitler in Germany. One is slowly corrupted by the events happening around him, his heart closing to the people and ideas he once believed in. It’s a heartbreaking but eye-opening look at the banality of fascism. People don’t just suddenly become evil or awful. It’s a process, a slide, even a response to incentives. It’s a good reminder that it can happen to anyone. We should all be careful!
Sorrow and Bliss and You Be Mother by Meg Mason When I was in Australia for The Stoic Life Tour (you can watch the talk I gave here), I walked into Gertrude and Alice, a lovely little bookstore in Bondi Beach, and noticed they had lots of signed copies of Meg Mason’s books. I had totally forgotten she lived in Sydney (in fact, I interviewed her for the Daily Stoic Podcast back in 2022). I LOVED her book Sorrow and Bliss and think it’s a very important novel about depression. So I asked them which other book I should read and the lovely owner recommended You Be Mother. It’s not quite as polished or perfect as Sorrow and Bliss, but I found it sweet and moving. Any recent parent or parent-to-be will relate to it–as well as anyone who has put together a kind of adopted family due to deficiencies of their own. Apparently, the book is hard to get in the US, but you can read it as an ebook or grab an export edition I am sure.
The Son by Phillip Meyer I found The Son at a Barnes and Noble on the Gulf Coast of Florida on vacation with my family. How could I have known that this epic Western–one of the greatest I’ve ever read–was largely based in Bastrop, where I live and where my bookstore, The Painted Porch, is? How cool is that? As it happens, Philipp was the first in-person guest on The Daily Stoic Podcast–recorded in a building that dates roughly to the period of the book. The Son is on par with the show Yellowstow, but better. It’s an epic book that spans multiple generations, from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the border raids of the early 1900s and the oil booms of the 20th century. I also recommend Philipp’s other novel, American Rust. Meyer is so in tune with the themes that we see ruminating in our country every day–the dignity of work, the despair of not being able to get ahead, the terrible cost of so many shortsighted economic decisions by American industry. But all of that is subsumed here in a great novel with great characters.
Company K by William March This book is said to be the best, most accurate and least glamorous novel about WWI. Not only is this book beautifully designed, and well written, it’s the best thing I have read about WWI or WWII. WWI occupies a strange place in US and World History. We know that it happened, and we know that it was bad. But we have forgotten why and we have mostly forgotten how bad it really was. In fact, it was one of the worst things to have ever happened. This book is a short read but if you read one book about WWI, read this one.
Ask The Dust by John Fante This is the West Coast’s Great Gatsby. Fante has benefited from some recognition–mostly thanks to Bukowski championing him in his later years–but because the book is about Los Angeles and not New York City, it is mostly forgotten. Better than Gatsby, it is a series. Bandini, the subject of the series, is a wonderful example of someone whose actual life is ruined by the fantasies in his head–every second he spends stuck up there is one he wastes and spoils in real life. He’s too caught up and delusional to see that his problems are his fault, that he’s vicious because he can’t live up to the impossible expectations they create, and that he could have everything he wants if he calmed down and lived in reality for a second. (DO NOT watch the movie version of Ask the Dust, it is embarrassingly bad.)
Some favorites from Samantha: As I mentioned earlier, nearly 50% of the books at our bookstore, The Painted Porch, are novels and that’s largely thanks to my wife Samantha. Here are some of her favorites that she asked me to pass along to you:
Middlemarch by George Eliot What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad The Dutch House by Ann Patchett All Mariana Zapata books (check them out here) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Reading List Email For June 29, 2025
Travels with Epicurus: A Journey To A Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life by Daniel Klein and Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuściński Two of my all-time favorite travel books that I re-read before (and on) this trip. In fact, Travels with Epicurus has one of my all-time favorite paragraphs ever in it: “I remember one long-ago evening, on an overcrowded train to Philadelphia, hearing a young woman moan to her mother, ‘God I wish we were there already!’ Her white-haired mother replied eloquently, ‘Darling, never wish away a minute of your life.’” This is what Seneca, Epicurus’ rival and secret fan, meant when he said that life isn’t short, we just waste it. And of course, Travels with Herodotus is a book about our first (and possibly greatest) travel writer, an ancient Greek named Herodotus. But like another one of my all-time favorite books, Montaigne by Stefan Zweig, we meet Herodotus through a man who discovered him late in life and at a difficult time in his life. Ryszard, the author, is a Polish journalist in the late 1950s who gets sent all over the world to cover foreign events. Herodotus’ Histories was one of the few books that hadn’t been censored or repressed in his home country, so he brought it with him. It’s a lovely meditation not just on the ecstasies of travel, but the perennial foibles of humanity–of which Herodotus was our greatest observer. Also, it is from Herodotus that we hear the story of the 300 Spartans and so many other great Greek legends and stories.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami Why am I re-reading this classic? For the same reason I also had to go to my classics shelf and grab my twenty-plus-year-old-copy of Herodotus, too: Because I am going to try to run from Marathon to Athens in early July as the Athenians did after they defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon (and when the tired, dusty soldiers shocked the second Persian force by arriving back in Athens a few hours later, the Persians sailed away in defeat). This was the marathon (not as part of a race, just solo) that Murakami does in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and it was the original story that we first hear from Herodotus. My favorite line from Murakami in this book (among many others) is one that I think will ring true to anyone who does endurance sports: “I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it another way: I run in order to acquire a void.”
Mark Twain by Ron Chernow I did the math: I have read roughly 4,626 pages of Ron Chernow books. Not only have I loved every one of them, many, many pages in my own books would not be possible without them. I loved all his others: Alexander Hamilton, Washington: A Life, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, and Grant. I love this new one on Twain, of course, and I think the NYT review was preposterously unfair. In fact, that’s why this month’s email is a little short. Mark Twain is 1,200 pages and I took my time with each one. But as good as this one is, as I have explained, here in my house, it is all Hamilton all the time. My son has listened to the soundtrack 1,000 times. We have listened to the audiobook together. When he heard that Ron Chernow was going to be on the podcast, he asked his teacher if he could leave school early to ask him some questions. Both she and Ron were very supportive (and you can listen to a clip of it here…I nearly cried when I played it back). The message of the Twain book? Don’t chase investment schemes and be content with your book royalties!
Spying on The South: An Odyssey Across The American Divide by Tony Horwitz OK, one of my all-time (and all-too-unknown) books about Texas is actually by Frederick Law Olmsted. Yeah, the guy who designed Central Park. In 1856, he took a 2,000-mile roundtrip journey across the state of Texas on horseback and did some of the best travel and historical writing in American history (especially important since this was all on the eve of the Civil War.) There is also a great passage where people are complaining that Austin is getting too expensive! Anyway, I was telling this to Bryan Burrough (who has an amazing new book about gunfighters in the old West) when he was at the bookstore and he politely told me that Tony Horwitz had recreated this journey in 2016 and then wrote a whole book about it…and that this was the last thing he worked on before he suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack. WHAT? The Confederates in the Attic guy? Turns out he did, and it’s amazing. And Horwitz does a much wider swath of territory too, through Appalachia, down the Mississippi River, into bayou Louisiana, and across Texas to the contested Mexican borderland. Does this detract from Olmsted’s book? No, I would say both are still readable, but sometimes it’s helpful to have a modern popularizer kick things off (I think the same thing about Russ Roberts’ book How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life). Olmsted thought every American needed to understand the cultural and economic forces pulsating through the South in the 1850s, and Horwitz makes it clear how and why this is still true even in 2025.
Misc. On an earlier trip a few months ago, I grabbed a collection of Jack London stories I didn’t know about–Stories of Hawaii–and liked it quite a bit. It’s sad that this medium is no longer thriving as it was. I’ve talked about Melinda Wenner Moyer’s How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes quite a bit and I’m happy to report she just released her second: Hello Cruel World: Science-Based Strategies For Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times. She came out to the store to do the Daily Stoic Podcast, which you can watch or listen to here. Bryan Burrough, who has written some books I’ve raved about before (Forget The Alamo, Public Enemies, and The Big Rich), also came on the podcast (listen here or watch here). And lastly, I enjoyed my conversation with Olga Khazan, author of Me, But Better on the podcast as well (listen here or watch here). And by the way…I have a series on my YouTube called Bookmarked, where I take each guest through my bookstore and recommend books. Here we have Matthew McConaughey, Tim Ferriss, Cal Newport, Angela Duckworth, Maggie Smith, and Sharon McMahon. Talking about books is obviously one of my favorite things to do, so if you enjoy this email you’ll probably enjoy that series as well. Check out the playlist and subscribe here.
These Are The Books I Read For My Summer Vacation (The Reading List Email For July 13, 2025)
The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault I almost never read guidebooks. Instead, my favorite thing to do when I am traveling somewhere is to read novels about it. Why? Because it gives you a sense, a vibe, that rivals even the best history. Well, this book combines those two things, and really brought Athens to life for me. I felt like I had a sense of the topography and the layout of the city through the eyes of a person who had lived there 2,500 years ago. The Last of The Wine is about the coming of age of a young boy, Alexis, in Periclean Athens. It touches on many of the most famous moments in classical Greek history and every few pages feature a delightful appearance of someone (Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Alciabides, Xenophon) or some place or battle you’ve heard of (Marathon, Sparta, Sicily, Thrace, the Peloponnesian War). Sometimes fiction can get us closer to the truth than history and I felt like this was one of those books–Socrates can be hard to get into but this puts a face to the name and allows you, I think, to go back and understand the philosophy better.
Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield It was probably inevitable that I’d find visiting Thermopylae a little bit of a letdown. I’ve read Gates of Fire so many times and it is so good, I’m not sure anywhere or anything could have lived up to the picture you get in your head from this book (and unfortunately, in reality the battlefield at Thermopylae is not well-preserved and the museum is probably one of the lamest I’ve ever been to in my life.) Which is a shame, because the Battle of Thermopylae has one of the greatest–if not the greatest and most heroic–military stands in history. The 300 Spartans went into the battle fairly certain they would lose at the ‘Hot Gates’, and yet they still fought against the enormous Persian army, sacrificing their lives to buy a little more time for their Greek allies to prepare. It’s an incredible story (one that I detail in part three of my book Courage is Calling) and Pressfield’s novel tells it from the perspective of Xeones, a fictional Greek survivor of the battle. Gates of Fire is one of my absolute favorite books, you just have to read it. I even have the last page of the original manuscript framed in my office, which I think is the most important and beautiful page in the whole book. I will also recommend Tides of War, which is a similarly epic Pressfield novel about the Peloponnesian War (close observers will note there is a copy of this book in the book tower/fireplace at The Painted Porch).
Lives of the Eminent Greeks and Romans by Plutarch Standing at Delphi, looking at the ruins of the Temple of Apollo, I wasn’t just thinking about the architecture. I wasn’t thinking of the Oracle, either (or the fact that a prophecy from the Oracle changed a young man named Zeno’s life and set in motion the creation of Stoicism). Mainly, I was thinking of a priest who worked there in 95 AD…and also happened to be the greatest biographer who ever lived. Seriously. Even more, he was the master of one of my favorite categories of books to recommend–moral biographies. That is, short biographical sketches about great men and women, written with an eye towards practical application and advice. As Plutarch prefaced his portrait of Alexander the Great, “I am writing biography, not history, and the truth is that the most brilliant exploits often tell us nothing of the virtues or vices of the men who performed them, while on the other hand a chance remark or a joke may reveal far more of a man’s character than the mere feat of winning battles in which thousands fall.” That’s why Shakespeare based many of his plays on the stories of Plutarch; not only are they well-written and exciting, but they exhibit everything that is good and bad about the human condition. Greed, love, pain, hate, success, selflessness, leadership, stupidity—it’s all there. I talk about Plutarch in the wisdom book (BTW, you can preorder Wisdom Takes Work here), via Truman, who once said “When I was in politics, there would be times when I tried to figure somebody out, and I could always turn to Plutarch, and nine times out of ten I’d be able to find a parallel in there.” Another book I’d recommend is his book On Sparta, which is a collection of biographies (and aphorisms) from the famous Spartans.
Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski and Travels with Epicurus: A Journey To A Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life by Daniel Klein These are two of my all-time favorite travel books that I re-read before (and on) this trip. Travels with Herodotus is a book about our first (and possibly greatest) travel writer, an ancient Greek named Herodotus. But like another one of my all-time favorite books (Montaigne by Stefan Zweig), we meet Herodotus through a man who discovered him late in life and at a difficult time in his life. Ryszard, the author, is a Polish journalist in the late 1950s who gets sent all over the world to cover foreign events. Herodotus’ Histories was one of the few books that hadn’t been censored or repressed in his home country, so he brought it with him. It’s a lovely meditation not just on the ecstasies of travel but also on the perennial foibles of humanity–of which Herodotus was our greatest observer. Also, it is from Herodotus that we hear the story of the 300 Spartans that I just raved about and so many other great Greek legends and stories. The other, Travels with Epicurus has one of my all-time favorite paragraphs ever: “I remember one long-ago evening, on an overcrowded train to Philadelphia, hearing a young woman moan to her mother, ‘God I wish we were there already!’ Her white-haired mother replied eloquently, ‘Darling, never wish away a minute of your life.’” This is what Seneca, Epicurus’ rival and secret fan, meant when he said that life isn’t short, we just waste it. Another travel book I read while I waited for our flat tire to get fixed after our trip to Mt. Olympus was Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi.
The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton The Greek Way is the story of how the magic of Ancient Greece–creatively, intellectually, culturally–is still being felt in our everyday lives if we only just look around. The Greeks, with their insatiable curiosity and relentless pursuit of truth, laid the foundations for much of Western thought, waiting for those who would listen, who would learn, who would be better because of their experiences. I revisited this book while working on Wisdom Takes Work because in one of the chapters, I reference a famous speech that Robert F. Kennedy gave shortly after the assassination of MLK. In the speech, Kennedy actually quotes the ancient poet Aeschylus, whom he only knew because he read The Greek Way. More on that story here, but this book is just a wonderful discussion of what made the Greeks special and what they can teach us and how they thought about life. Definitely read.
How To Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World by Donald Robertson Of course, the most famous Greek philosopher is Socrates. If you want a good Socrates book, Donald Robertson’s new one, How to Think Like Socrates is for you. I’ve long been a huge fan of Donald’s work and we had a nice lunch at the Painted Porch at the beginning of my trip–like, literally, the stoa poikile, in the Athenian agora, where Stoicism started. He wrote one of the best biographies of Marcus Aurelius ever written and his other book, How To Think Like A Roman Emperor, is another must-read for Marcus fans. Donald has been on The Daily Stoic Podcast a handful of times, most recently to talk about Socrates and how, for all of Socrates’ wisdom, he seemed to lack social intelligence (watch that episode here). There’s a hilarious quote by Macaulay that I use in the Wisdom book (preorder here!) that sums up that sentiment pretty well: “The more I read about Socrates the less I wonder that they poisoned him.” While the dialogs are fun to read now, I sometimes think about how frustrating they would have been for the people in them (who were so often made a fool) Emily Wilson talks about this in her book The Death of Socrates quite a bit (a good companion to Donald’s book). Fascinating book about a guy who, like Cicero, I can’t always decide if I like.
A Man In Full by Tom Wolfe I’ll round out today’s recommendations with Tom Wolfe’s A Man In Full, which is a novel based on the writings of Epictetus. In it, a young man named Conrad Hensley is unfairly imprisoned after a series of bad coincidences where he mistakenly receives a copy of Epictetus’ work. It’s a beautiful and inspiring novel that every aspiring philosopher needs to read. I wish I could rave about the Netflix series, which I had high hopes for, but I’ll leave it at that. If you’re joining us for Epictetus month over at Daily Stoic, I highly recommend you read this one, too.
The Reading List Email For July 27, 2025
The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides by Aeschylus and Medea and Other Plays by Euripides I was honestly pissed the first time I read The Oresteia (a series of three plays which cover the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra, the revenge killing of Clytemnestra by her son Orestes and then finally, the famous trial of him for that murder) because I had just published my book Conspiracy: A True Story Of Power, Sex, And A Billionaire’s Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire, which was also about revenge and the legal system. You’re telling me there is a famous Greek play literally about “The Furies” and about the establishment of the legal system (and a 12-person jury) to moderate and end the cycle of retribution? How did I not know this? Anyway, it was lovely to return to these plays again, which are of course some of the greatest writing ever done. It was also fitting that I did this now, since Aeschylus fought at Marathon and had it inscribed on his tombstone. I also just learned as I was writing this that Terry Bollea (aka Hulk Hogan and the main character of Conspiracy) just died. Here’s an interesting piece that AJ Daulerio wrote about a behind-the-scenes part of the healing process that most people don’t know. Now, what about Euripides? I had read Medea before, but that was before I had kids. It is a very different experience after…But I also read it now as effectively a play about a painful divorce and how easily one can go from loving to hating someone they were once so close to. But the play that struck me the hardest of all of these was Euripides’ The Children of Hercules. Here we have, written in 430 BC, a play about the plight of the refugee, and how a society is judged by how it treats the weak and the vulnerable. The young children of Hercules are hounded to the Temple of Apollo (in Marathon, of course) by a bounty hunter from an angry king. He demands they be handed over to be punished. “They are suppliants and strangers,” the Athenians reply, “Who look to our city for help. / To reject them is to defy the gods.” But the angry king threatens war over it. In the play, Athens–like America, like Europe, now and forever–is torn. Sure, you say you care about people…but would you fight for them? What would you risk for them? I found it to be incredibly moving given our current political climate. Again, I wish I had read this play when I was writing the chapter about Angela Merkel and the German pledge to accept one million Syrian refugees in Right Thing, Right Now. She was widely criticized, but she reassured the public: Wir schaffen das. We can do this. I also wish I could have referenced this in my now viral clip about U.S immigration and deportations. If you need help reading either of these plays, I suggest Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way as a good place to start for context and insight.
The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller I grabbed this in what felt like a small Kinkos/office supply store in Ithaca. I had never heard of it and I almost let the horrendously inaccessible title deter me. It should be called ‘Travels Through Greece’ or something. In any case, the blurb on the front from Pico Iyer is right–it probably is “one of the five greatest travel books of all time.” In 1939, as WWII was breaking out, Henry Miller–then an infamous but still struggling writer–took a boat to Greece to visit some friends. What ensued is a rapturous, incredible travel memoir that holds up remarkably well 86 years later. “Out of the sea, as if Homer himself had arranged it for me, the islands bobbed up, lonely, deserted, mysterious in the fading light,” Miller writes. “I couldn’t ask for more, nor did I want anything more. I had everything a man could desire, and I knew it. I knew too that I might never have it again.” I thought of that quote many times during our trip. Such a good book. Definitely read it, whether you’re interested in going to Greece or not.
The Road To Sparta: Reliving the Ancient Battle and Epic Run That Inspired the World’s Greatest Footrace by Dean Karnazes Rich Roll sent me this when he heard I was going to attempt to do the original marathon. I’d actually interviewed Dean back in 2021 in an early episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. The man is superhuman. He ran 50 marathons in 50 states…in 50 consecutive days. He ran a marathon at the South Pole. On ten separate occasions, he ran a 200-mile relay race solo. He won the Badwater Ultramarathon (350 miles). In this book, Karnazes documents running the 153-mile route that Pheidippides took in 490 BCE. Most people believe that Pheidippides ran the original marathon (Marathon to Athens), but this isn’t true. Pheidippides was actually dispatched from Athens to Sparta, which he ran 36 hours straight (153 miles) to gather troops to help the Athenians battle the Persians at Marathon. The original marathon is just a fraction of that journey, which all the Athenian soldiers covered after they defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon (and when the tired, dusty soldiers shocked the second Persian force by arriving back in Athens a few hours later, the Persians sailed away in fear). Really liked this book. It pairs well with Rich Roll’s Finding Ultra and you might also like my podcast with the great Courtney Duwalter, another one of the greatest endurance athletes in the world.
My Dog Skip by Willie Morris I bought this at Sundog in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida over Memorial Day and read it in a day. I guess I’d heard of the movie and didn’t know it was based on a book from one of the greatest Southern writers ever (North Toward Home is a classic). As soon as I finished, I started reading it aloud to my eight and six-year-olds, and we’re just finishing it together now. It’s a lovely book about small-town America (not unlike Bastrop, where I live). This passage should remind you that the book is as much for adults, who reflect on their childhood, as it is for kids, who take for granted the wonders and friendships of their pets. “In remembering moments such as these,” Morris writes towards the end, “I retain the sad-sweet reflection of being an only child and having a loyal and loving dog, for in the struggles of life, of the dangers, toils and snares of my childhood hymns, loyalty and love are the best things of all, and the most lasting, and that is what Old Skip taught me that I carry with me now.”
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas As a kid, I read everything. I’ve read 20-30 Clive Cussler books. 50+ Louis L’Amour novels. I read whatever I could find on people’s shelves or at libraries. Even more recently, I remember reading all the Hunger Games books. All the Twilight books. All the Fifty Shades of Grey books. As I’ve gotten older and busier (and as television has gotten better), I’ve had less time for 600+ page mass market novels (and I’ve probably gotten snobbier). My wife Samantha has sold more copies of Sarah J. Maas’ books to women at our bookstore than probably anyone on the planet…yet I kept putting it off. I finally grabbed an ebook of the first book somewhere on our road trip, looking for something lighter after reading all those Greek plays. Turns out…she was right again. I mean, the book is ridiculous and yet I read the whole thing in like two days, so maybe it’s actually really good? I don’t know…all I can tell you is that I’m in the middle of the second one (which is much smuttier, I will say).
Us: How Moving Relationships Beyond You and Me Creates More Love, Passion, and Understanding by Terrance Real My therapist recommended this and I think it’s very good. Like Dr. Becky’s Good Inside or Dr. Sue Johnson’s Hold Me Tight good. The author, Terrence Real, is a marriage counselor who looks at how our toxic culture of individualism hurts relationships. It’s the same traits that might push you forward in your career, he explains in the book, that hold you back from creating meaningful personal relationships. Us is easy to read with a lot of thoughtful, real-life takeaways that are good for everyone, whether you’re in a relationship or not. Plus, the foreword is by Bruce Springsteen, who mentions something I have written about for The Daily Dad time and time again, which you can read here. And if you haven’t read Bruce’s Born To Run, it’s absolutely incredible and you should read that, too.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad I was deeply disturbed by Omar’s book American War (which imagines a second American Civil War, this time over fossil fuels). I was deeply disturbed by this book, which stemmed from a viral quote he posted on Twitter in 2023 about the war in Gaza: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” There’s no doubt in my mind that Israel has every right to exist (I tell the story of Truman’s role in this in Right Thing, Right Now)–in any case, it does exist and has existed for 77 years and thus like every other country has the right to defend itself (I’m not sure why this is controversial). But life these days seems to demand we deal with endless “But at the same time’s…” and so it must also be said that its current leadership is wildly dangerous, corrupt, cruel and fanatical. They are committing unfathomable and at this point, avoidable crimes against a civilian population that would be wrong if any country did it, just as it has been wrong when America has. In any case, it’s good to read books from people you disagree with, too, or have political views you disagree with. It’s good to read books that disturb and upset you–it’s how you learn things, it’s how you learn about yourself.
Misc. I had the very surreal experience of interviewing Donald Robertson at the Painted Porch. Not my bookstore, but like, literally, the stoa poikile, in the Athenian agora in Greece, where Stoicism started. I’ve long been a huge fan of Donald’s work; he wrote one of the best biographies of Marcus Aurelius ever written and his other book, How To Think Like A Roman Emperor, is another must-read for Marcus fans. You can listen to that conversation here. I had Rick Rubin back on the podcast earlier this month (if you haven’t read his book The Creative Act yet, you need to) and we talked about the intersection of creativity and AI. We also talked at length about a book Rick has read hundreds of times, Tao Te Ching. I’ve mentioned before The Parents Tao Te Ching, which I’ve been reading a page from every night. James Altucher came on the podcast, too (listen to his episode here) and signed a ton of copies of his book Choose Yourself, which you can get here.
8 Books Worth Reading Again (And Again): The Reading List Email For September 7, 2025
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius I heard someone say that it wasn’t that they had watched The Office, but that they were still watching The Office. That is to say, even though they had seen every episode, it was still a show they turned to when they were stressed, wanted some relief or just some silliness in their life. I feel like that’s the proper relationship we ought to have for the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations most of all. I read the book in 2006. I am still reading it twenty years later… In the course of those readings, a lot has changed. Marcus Aurelius has guided me through breakups and getting married, through being relatively young and poor and relatively older and well-off. His wisdom has helped me with getting fired and with quitting, with success and with struggles. I’ve carried Meditations to nearly a dozen countries (I almost lost my favorite edition on a flight from Heathrow to Vancouver last year) and moved it with me to multiple houses. I’ve turned to it for articles and books and casual dinner conversation. With every read, I’ve gotten something new or been reminded of something timeless and important. And as of this year, the book now features a foreword from me…so I guess the book is a little different. Anyway, I know most of you have already read this book…but here I am telling you to read it again.
The Annotated Great Gatsby: 100th Anniversary Deluxe Edition by F. Scott Fitzgerald As I’ve written about before, this is a book that changed my life. Not just because it is the best and most beautiful novel in the English language, but because of an essay I wrote about it in 11th grade. I thought I was just completing an ordinary assignment, but the next day, my English teacher, Mrs. Kars, printed out my essay and spent the entire period reviewing it with the class. This was the first time any of my writing had ever been recognized…and honestly, one of the first times in my life that I had ever felt like I might be anything but average. I still have that copy of Gatsby. I can see the food I spilled while I read it at the kitchen table of my parents’ house, or as I threw myself over the arm of the couch in the living room, as teenagers like to do. I can see my handwriting in the margins. I can also see the things I noted when I re-read it in college. I can see the notes I took when I read it in my twenties. More recently, I picked up this incredible 100th anniversary annotated edition. It gave me the chance not only to re-read the book from scratch, but also to learn more about it (sometimes it’s good to re-read the same copy, sometimes a fresh edition is helpful). It’s really a beautiful book that is wonderfully re-done. If you haven’t read Gatsby, read this one. If you have, read it again with this new one. You’ll love it. (Some other Gatsby stuff…Read The Crack-Up, which is the best account–from Fitzgerald directly–of the author’s self-induced collapse.)
Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor You think you know someone. You think you’re on the same page. You think all human beings have certain basic commitments to decency, kindness, justice. But then what happens? Politics happens. Movements happen. People change. People get caught up in things. People become something you could have never imagined. This book is a haunting series of letters between two men, both art dealers in business together–one Jewish, one not–during the rise of Hitler in Germany. One is slowly corrupted by the events happening around him, his heart closing to the people and ideas he once believed in, to the point that it eventually overrides the love and affection he once had for his close friend. As a novel, it serves as a perfect, indirect way of capturing the process we have all seen over the last few years, where people we thought we knew, thought we understood, become radicalized (or indifferent) and thus complicit in truly evil things. I have been thinking about this book a lot recently and have returned to it several times since I first read it because it shows us the stakes, the risk, the subtle ways that people betray their values and lose their compassion. And look, in a time where masked government officials are pulling people–including American citizens–off the streets and in some cases, shipping them to gulags in foreign countries, it could not be more relevant or more of a cautionary tale.
The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature by Robert Greene This book exists because I wanted to be able to read something from Robert Greene every day. Obviously, The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery (along with his other books) are masterpieces and designed to be picked up and read in pieces, which is something I’ve been doing with them for nearly twenty years. But as a lover of the page-a-day format, I thought his work was uniquely suited to a daily read as well. I put this one on my desk when it first came out a few years back and it has not left my desk since.
A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts by Leo Tolstoy Another of the page-a-day genre…Tolstoy’s Calendar of Wisdom. This is what Tolstoy said was his most essential work. Before he wrote it, he dreamed of creating a book composed of “a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and all people… Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal.” As he wrote to his assistant, “I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers… They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue.” This is another one meant to be read day after day, year after year. I almost always recommend this book to friends when they visit my bookstore, and I’ve given dozens of copies to Daily Stoic Podcast guests (check out my series where I recommend books to podcast guests like Matthew McConaughey, Whitney Cummings, Arthur Brooks, and more).
Montaigne by Stefan Zweig Stefan Zweig didn’t get much from Montaigne when he read him the first time. But in 1941—living in exile after the Nazis condemned him, as they had all the Jews, banned his work, and burned his books in the streets—he chanced upon a “dusty old edition” of Montaigne’s essays, who himself had been writing in a time of religious persecution and violence and disruption. “Certain authors,” Zweig would later write, “reveal themselves to us only at a certain age and in chosen moments.” I first read Montaigne in 2016 (Montaigne lived through divisive political times). I read it again in 2020 (Montaigne lived through the plague). I read it again about a year and a half ago (Montaigne lived through technological disruption, economic instability, and a kind of mass hysteria Zweig would refer to as “the herd’s rampancy”). It’s a very surreal experience to read a book about a man turning inward amidst the cruelty and close-mindedness of his time, written some 350 years later by a man fleeing the brutality and persecutions of his time…as modern society continues to experience (and inflict) the same horrors on itself. Even if you only read a few books this year, let this be one of them. He is the primary character in the final book in my series of the Stoic Virtues–Wisdom Takes Work–and this book was one of the most powerful things I read while researching it (you can still preorder here for signed and numbered first editions and other awesome bonuses). Every time I read it again, I get something new from it.
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield I read The War of Art long before I was an author–before I could have even aspirationally called myself a writer. I definitely understood Pressfield’s argument about The Resistance that gets in between us and what we’re meant to do, but I didn’t really understand it until I pursued this life full-time. And I understand it a little better each time I write a book because one of my rituals is to flip through The War of Art before I sit down to start writing. I picked it up before writing Wisdom Takes Work and I picked it up again recently as I started my next project. Pretty much every writer and artist I know swears by this book.
The Odyssey by Homer This is a book that we have been reading as a species for thousands of years, and it has meant something different not just to individuals as they go through life, but to each generation as well (how many references and allusions you start to notice everywhere once you know it well). The Odyssey was seen almost as the sum total of human wisdom to the ancients, a text to read and understand like the Bible. We’re no longer quite that familiar with it these days, but as my two boys were introduced to it via the rock opera Epic by Jorge Rivera-Herrans, I was fascinated by the seamless way they slipped into this timeless tradition, asking me and debating with me its moral questions. I first heard the story of The Odyssey when I was their age. I read it again in high school. I read the Fagles translation in college. Then I read Emily Wilson’s translation more recently. My own understanding of Odysseus has evolved in this time, and I take something new from the story each time I read or listen to something inspired by it (be it the songs my kids like, episodes of the Greeking Out podcast or famous poems). Speaking of which, I found Odysseus heroic at first, but today, I am closer to the view captured in the Tennyson poem–I see Odysseus as tortured, tragic, almost pathetic (to say nothing of monstrously violent). But this is what great books and great characters do, right? They challenge us. They appear different from every angle. They contain multitudes. They inspire other artists, too. Having just spent a chunk of my summer in Greece (and in Ithaca) and now understanding the region as a physical place, I’ve seen it from another angle and have an even more nuanced view. For starters, I can tell you why he fought so hard to return to Ithaca! It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been in my life! (It also made me love this poem from the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy even more.)
The Reading List Email For August 31, 2025
A Marriage At Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst My kids were at the New Orleans Zoo last month and I was killing time, so I swung over to Octavia Books and saw this one on the front table. My wife had actually read me a passage from this book a few days prior (reading from the Kindle) and then I saw a blurb from Patrick Radden Keefe whose book Say Nothing I’d read and loved, so I didn’t need any more convincing. What a great book! And for the author’s debut, no less! The story is about a young couple shipwrecked at sea who survive for months on a tiny raft in the Pacific. It’s destined to be a classic of the shipwreck genre, a genre that I love. Have you read In The Heart of the Sea (the real-life story that inspired Moby Dick)? Or Dead Wake? Or Endurance? Or The Wide Wide Sea? All must-reads, some of which I recommended to Manu Ginobili after he finished The Wager. A Marriage At Sea also reminded me of Bugliosi’s book, And The Sea Will Tell (about a murder on a boat involving a similar couple). Loved this one.
The Fish That Ate The Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen Ok, so 14 years ago, I was also killing time in New Orleans and stopped in at Octavia Books (but in this case, it was a few minutes before I was about to do my first-ever bookstore event/signing), and I came across this exquisitely titled book, The Fish That Ate the Whale. I had no idea who Samuel Zemurray was or that I ran by his house nearly every single day as I ran up St. Charles Avenue (the wedding cake house, it’s called). Nor did I know what an amazing writer Rich Cohen was. I loved this book. I didn’t love Zemurray exactly–United Fruit was an evil company–but I loved the hustle that animated him, the savvy that made him successful and the tragic, Breaking Bad-esque arc of his story. Anyway, I decided to re-read this book for a project I am working on and instead of reading my old copy (the hardcover was blue), I grabbed a green paperback off the shelf at the Painted Porch to take with me on a trip. I think I liked the book even more this time, and find the tragic arc of his life even more fascinating. And then after, I put both copies side by side and noted which pages I had noted. We never step in the same river twice, but apparently I was still moved and challenged by some of the same pages (see below). If you haven’t read this book after all the times I’ve recommended it, c’mon, now is your chance.
Necessary Trouble: Growing Up At Midcentury by Drew Gilpin Faust Another great find at Sundog Books in Santa Rosa Beach. I read Gilpin Faust’s book on the Civil War many years ago–Republic of Suffering–but to see that she wrote a memoir whose title was a nod to the famous line from John Lewis intrigued me. Rarely do the lives of academics warrant a memoir–or at least warrant making time to read them–but like Adam Hochschild’s book Half The Way Home, which I have raved about, this one is an exception. It’s her story of growing up in a conservative Southern family in the 1950s and 1960s and how she forged her own path against the traditional upbringing that lay ahead of her. Layer on top of this the fact that this book is beautifully and introspectively written, and I loved it. It also provokes the timeless question that each of us will ask when we are older: Were we involved enough in the struggles of our time? Or were we merely passengers, passively accepting injustices and a status quo we should have questioned? Read this book. Make good trouble.
The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis Sometimes I miss living in Los Angeles. I miss the weather. I miss the natural beauty. I do not miss the darkness, the darkness that is there right beneath the palm tree lined, swimming-pool dotted surface. There is no one better at capturing that darkness–perhaps with the exception of Raymond Chandler or John Fante–than Bret Easton Ellis (and as it happens, this book opens with an epigraph from Fante and one of my all-time favorite novels, Ask the Dust). Less Than Zero is obviously Bret Easton Ellis’ classic LA novel and this one, more a collection of short, character-driven stories, picks up where it leaves off. Haunting, disturbing, funny, weird…it temporarily cures my nostalgia for Los Angeles. Also, I noted that the author’s photo was taken by Quintana Roo, the daughter of Joan Didion. This is a connection made poignant if you have read Blue Nights or the more recent Notes to John.
The Plague by Albert Camus I didn’t have the stomach to read this book during the pandemic, but it’s been sitting in my mental to-read list. I’ve read The Stranger and The Fall. I was most affected by The Fall, which partly inspired the talk I gave in the Netherlands back in the fall (here’s a clip where I tell the main story from the book). It’s always amazing to me when fiction manages to capture something you’ve experienced in real life years before you’ve experienced it–the subtle observations and insights into how people deny, then accommodate themselves to something as insane as a plague. All of Camus’ novels are sort of philosophical allegories and both The Fall and The Plague are uniquely suited to the crises of our moment. Of course, two other plague books I have recommended a million times: The Great Influenza and The Premonition. If you’re thinking, “why should I read this, we’re past the pandemic?”, I assure you, at this rate, we’ll be experiencing one again soon enough. The past is prologue…
Misc I always love Admiral Stavridis’ books and I’ve been meaning to read Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans. I loved To Risk It All and Sailing True North. This one is a great history primer that I recommend, especially in a world of great power conflicts. (Again, past is prologue.) I also read and enjoyed Elaine Weiss’ book Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Changed The Civil Rights Movement. Elaine wrote The Woman’s Hour, a book that I have recommended many times before and used in Part II of Right Thing, Right Now. As it happens, I had an experience related to Spell Freedom with Sharon McMahon’s book The Small and The Mighty. For years, I passed by this old building a million times, but it wasn’t until I read Sharon’s book that I realized it was a Rosenwald School. I read and recommended My Dog Skip in my July reading list email. Well, I have another dog book recommendation, Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs.
The Reading List Email For August 24, 2025
A Marriage At Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst My kids were at the New Orleans Zoo last month and I was killing time, so I swung over to Octavia Books and saw this one on the front table. My wife had actually read me a passage from this book a few days prior (reading from the Kindle) and then I saw a blurb from Patrick Radden Keefe whose book Say Nothing I’d read and loved, so I didn’t need any more convincing. What a great book! And for the author’s debut, no less! The story is about a young couple shipwrecked at sea who survive for months on a tiny raft in the Pacific. It’s destined to be a classic of the shipwreck genre, a genre that I love. Have you read In The Heart of the Sea (the real-life story that inspired Moby Dick)? Or Dead Wake? Or Endurance? Or The Wide Wide Sea? All must-reads, some of which I recommended to Manu Ginobili after he finished The Wager. A Marriage At Sea also reminded me of Bugliosi’s book, And The Sea Will Tell (about a murder on a boat involving a similar couple). Loved this one.
The Fish That Ate The Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen Ok, so 14 years ago, I was also killing time in New Orleans and stopped in at Octavia Books (but in this case, it was a few minutes before I was about to do my first-ever bookstore event/signing), and I came across this exquisitely titled book, The Fish That Ate the Whale. I had no idea who Samuel Zemurray was or that I ran by his house nearly every single day as I ran up St. Charles Avenue (the wedding cake house, it’s called). Nor did I know what an amazing writer Rich Cohen was. I loved this book. I didn’t love Zemurray exactly–United Fruit was an evil company–but I loved the hustle that animated him, the savvy that made him successful and the tragic, Breaking Bad-esque arc of his story. Anyway, I decided to re-read this book for a project I am working on and instead of reading my old copy (the hardcover was blue), I grabbed a green paperback off the shelf at the Painted Porch to take with me on a trip. I think I liked the book even more this time, and find the tragic arc of his life even more fascinating. And then after, I put both copies side by side and noted which pages I had noted. We never step in the same river twice, but apparently I was still moved and challenged by some of the same pages (see below). If you haven’t read this book after all the times I’ve recommended it, c’mon, now is your chance.
Necessary Trouble: Growing Up At Midcentury by Drew Gilpin Faust Another great find at Sundog Books in Santa Rosa Beach. I read Gilpin Faust’s book on the Civil War many years ago–Republic of Suffering–but to see that she wrote a memoir whose title was a nod to the famous line from John Lewis intrigued me. Rarely do the lives of academics warrant a memoir–or at least warrant making time to read them–but like Adam Hochschild’s book Half The Way Home, which I have raved about, this one is an exception. It’s her story of growing up in a conservative Southern family in the 1950s and 1960s and how she forged her own path against the traditional upbringing that lay ahead of her. Layer on top of this the fact that this book is beautifully and introspectively written, and I loved it. It also provokes the timeless question that each of us will ask when we are older: Were we involved enough in the struggles of our time? Or were we merely passengers, passively accepting injustices and a status quo we should have questioned? Read this book. Make good trouble.
The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis Sometimes I miss living in Los Angeles. I miss the weather. I miss the natural beauty. I do not miss the darkness, the darkness that is there right beneath the palm tree lined, swimming-pool dotted surface. There is no one better at capturing that darkness–perhaps with the exception of Raymond Chandler or John Fante–than Bret Easton Ellis (and as it happens, this book opens with an epigraph from Fante and one of my all-time favorite novels, Ask the Dust). Less Than Zero is obviously Bret Easton Ellis’ classic LA novel and this one, more a collection of short, character-driven stories, picks up where it leaves off. Haunting, disturbing, funny, weird…it temporarily cures my nostalgia for Los Angeles. Also, I noted that the author’s photo was taken by Quintana Roo, the daughter of Joan Didion. This is a connection made poignant if you have read Blue Nights or the more recent Notes to John.
The Plague by Albert Camus I didn’t have the stomach to read this book during the pandemic, but it’s been sitting in my mental to-read list. I’ve read The Stranger and The Fall. I was most affected by The Fall, which partly inspired the talk I gave in the Netherlands back in the fall (here’s a clip where I tell the main story from the book). It’s always amazing to me when fiction manages to capture something you’ve experienced in real life years before you’ve experienced it–the subtle observations and insights into how people deny, then accommodate themselves to something as insane as a plague. All of Camus’ novels are sort of philosophical allegories and both The Fall and The Plague are uniquely suited to the crises of our moment. Of course, two other plague books I have recommended a million times: The Great Influenza and The Premonition. If you’re thinking, “why should I read this, we’re past the pandemic?”, I assure you, at this rate, we’ll be experiencing one again soon enough. The past is prologue…
Misc I always love Admiral Stavridis’ books and I’ve been meaning to read Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans. I loved To Risk It All and Sailing True North. This one is a great history primer that I recommend, especially in a world of great power conflicts. (Again, past is prologue.) I also read and enjoyed Elaine Weiss’ book Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Changed The Civil Rights Movement. Elaine wrote The Woman’s Hour, a book that I have recommended many times before and used in Part II of Right Thing, Right Now. As it happens, I had an experience related to Spell Freedom with Sharon McMahon’s book The Small and The Mighty. For years, I passed by this old building a million times, but it wasn’t until I read Sharon’s book that I realized it was a Rosenwald School. I read and recommended My Dog Skip in my July reading list email. Well, I have another dog book recommendation, Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs.
The Reading List Email For September 28, 2025
Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America by Sam Tanenhaus I’ve been raving about this book to friends since I started it. Do I understand that’s a tough sell? Yes, it’s a 1,040-page bio about a somewhat obscure (and divisive) right-wing commentator. But this fits what we’re talking about perfectly: Understand the present through the lens of someone from the past. William F. Buckley was a brilliant, articulate, compelling thinker and organizer who–with the help of big-pocketed donors–managed to create a movement that not only galvanized a generation of young people, but helped elect (multiple) presidents. Does this remind you of Charlie Kirk? It should. So should much of the dark energy that Buckley channeled for (and at other times, purged) from his movement. Buckley wrote a book attacking colleges in 1951, he was instrumental in the rise of McCarthy, and then, for the next 30+ years, led the conservative movement as its premiere intellectual and entertainer. Tanehaus is an incredible biographer and this book is a work of art. Whatever your political persuasion, you should read this book. It will help you understand the media, it will help you understand culture, it will help you understand political power. It will also help you understand the reactionary mind. The best biographies–the way they can justify being so long–are the ones that aren’t just about a person, but the entire era they lived in. So this book is also a book about the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and even up through the present day, because Buckley’s ideas and influence outlive him. In another way, this book is also a book about a tragic family. I was fascinated by the way that Buckley was clearly shaped by his (objectively) anti-Semitic and racist father and the incredible intellectual work–consciously and not–he put into creating cover for those ideas he grew up around. The Buckleys are a mirror image of the Kennedys and similarly Shakespearean–the powerful father, funding the brilliant children, pushing them into public life, each of them desperate to make him proud, live up to the expectations and pressure, and at the same time, cursed by overbearing and dominant parental figures. I could go on, but instead, I’ll just recommend the book again. It’s great, truly great.
American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback and It’s Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness by Seth Wickersham Seth is one of the great living American sportswriters. I was so excited for this book to come out. Quarterbacks are fascinating–they are the most famous and important players of the most popular American sport…yet they do it in a helmet, their face mostly obscured. Unlike, say, basketball, they cannot singularly take over the game or the league, the way a generational talent like LeBron or Kobe can. It’s a fascinating book that looks at players like Johnny Unitas, John Elway, Peyton Manning, Warren Moon, Steve Young, and at the younger players like Caleb Williams and Arch Manning. When Seth came on the podcast (you can listen to our conversation here or watch it on YouTube), I mostly wanted to talk about Andrew Luck, who walked away from all this at age 29. Seth writes about Luck at great length in the book, for good reason: His story is fascinating. I also really liked Seth’s book on the Patriots, It’s Better to Be Feared Than Loved.
Dark at the Crossing by Elliot Ackerman I’ve read a handful of Elliot’s books, including Green on Blue and 2054, and I have long loved his non-fiction and journalism. I don’t know how I skipped this one, but I am trying to reach for more fiction. History teaches us, but so does literature. This book is about an Arab American man in Turkey trying to get to Syria and fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime. It’s beautifully written, and like most of Elliot’s books about the Middle East–and indeed the Middle East itself–it has a sad and dark ending. I had Elliot on the podcast this past summer (listen here or watch on YouTube), and I also had him on twice in 2022 (once to talk about Green on Blue and another to talk about his book The Fifth Act). I think he’s one of our best novelists right now, and like some of the best novelists of the 20th century, he’s not just a writer. He’s also a veteran of the Marine Corps and CIA special operations, having served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. Oh, and then as a writer, he’s been nominated for the National Book Award. He’s just incredible, and if you’re like me and trying to read more fiction, you have to check his books out.
Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born To Run by Peter Ames Carlin If you’ve watched the walkthrough videos I’ve done with people at the Painted Porch (it’s a series I do called Bookmarked, check it out here), you’ve probably seen me recommend Deliver Me From Nowhere about 20 times. The book is that good (it’s about the making of Springsteen’s Nebraska). I was very glad to see this book by another journalist about the making of Born to Run. There are probably more songs I like on Born to Run, but I think Deliver Me From Nowhere is a better book. Still, both books are fantastic and I hope someone writes about the making of Born in the USA because I’ll read that, too. And if you haven’t read Springsteen’s autobiography, you should go read it–it’s one of the best music/creativity books ever.
Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence by Bryan Burrough I recommended Days of Rage above, but I went back and found out when I had first read and recommended it. Here’s what I said back in 2015 (10 years ago!): “This one is particularly timely, and was even more so while the news showed pictures of the Baltimore riots. The book focuses on the political activists (terrorists) who set off thousands of bombs, murdered dozens of police officers and took hostages across America in the late 60s, 70s and 80s (groups like FALN and Weather Underground). Bryan’s book is uniquely empathetic but also clear in its ultimate judgement: these were sincere people on the utterly wrong side of history, responsible for terrible things. To me, it was a lesson in the dangers of intelligence when combined with radical politics. Time and time again, it was smart people advocating and committing inexcusable acts for what they thought were good reasons. And what did they accomplish? Nothing (as compared to say the actual Civil Rights movement). It was also interesting to me just how trusting and ill-equipped America was to deal with this threat: buildings didn’t have metal detectors, prisoners could easily be broken out of jail, fake documents were plentiful, people could simply disappear. All in all, a great book that deserves a lot more attention and made me think more than any other book I’ve read this year. It will help you see today’s political unrest in a new historical context.” I will also add that Bryan has been a wonderful supporter of local writers here in Austin and runs a writers group that has been incredibly helpful to me personally. In fact, it was something I was thinking about when I wrote the ‘Find Your Scene’ in Part I of Wisdom Takes Work. He’s also written some of my favorite books, including Public Enemies, Forget The Alamo, The Big Rich, and most recently, The Gunfighters. Definitely check his books out.
Misc & Kids I shared a little video on Instagram about parenting books to help you not mess up your kids, which you can check out here. I included books I think every parent should read, like Kafka’s Letter to the Father, How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes, Churchill & Son, Opposite of Spoiled, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Anxious Generation, and Outdoor Kids In An Inside World. Last month, I interviewed Doris Kearns Goodwin on the Daily Stoic Podcast (listen here). I’m always recommending Doris’ books to people. I’ve mentioned her book Leadership: in Turbulent Times dozens of times in this email list alone, and just last summer I finally read her biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals, while I was writing Wisdom Takes Work in Australia. Speaking of Lincoln…I also enjoyed Lincoln and the Fight for Peace by journalist and political commentator John Avalon, who I was happy to have on the podcast earlier this month (listen to that episode here). I also had a former NASA astronaut and USAF F-16 Pilot, Terry Virtz (listen to that episode here), on the podcast. I liked his book, How To Astronaut, which you can get signed copies of here. I actually interviewed TWO fighter pilots this month. The other being Michelle “MACE” Curran, a former United States Air Force fighter pilot with nearly 2,000 hours of F-16 flying time. You can listen to that episode here. I’ve been reading Painting the Game to my oldest this month (thanks to the reader who recommended that) as well as some pages from the new Lin-Manuel Miranda biography (his hero). My youngest is still obsessed with Don’t Trust Fish.
9 Amazing Books They Tried To Ban (That Everyone Should Read)
I was surprised to find out that many people seem to not understand what a banned book is.
‘Banned Book Week’ wrapped up yesterday, and I was continually surprised by some of the comments people posted on the videos we made for The Painted Porch and even what I heard people say when they looked at some of the titles we featured in our display of banned books. A banned book doesn’t mean you’re forbidden by law from reading it (although that does happen). It doesn’t mean that they burned on a bonfire of vanities as once happened in the past (although this too is happening once again). Book banning is something often much less violent and sadly much more commonplace: It is the attempt to restrict access to a book. It happens in schools. It happens in public libraries. It happens through churches. It happens with pressure from the public. It can be anything from an attempt to remove it from the curriculum or a campaign to smear the author with controversy or misinterpretation. It can be done by publishers or politicians. It happens in democracies and dictatorships. Whoever does it, wherever they do it, it is wrong and dangerous. Especially when you learn that many of the most banned books are not only brilliant pieces of literature, but include sacred religious texts and perfectly ordinary and utterly unthreatening books alike.
The front window of The Painted Porch has a giant sign with these Rage Against the Machine lyrics:
“They don’t gotta burn the books they just remove ‘em”.
Little did I know that a year or so later, I’d find myself in a position to put up or shut up about my beliefs about this issue. In April of this year, I was supposed to give a talk at the U.S. Naval Academy. A few days before I was set to talk–on the theme of wisdom–news broke that the Academy had removed 381 books from the school library because the titles (which included Maya Angelou!) were apparently ‘too woke.’ I planned to address the folly of this policy in my talk…and was then myself ‘banned.’ I ended up writing about the experience in The New York Times and talked about it on CNN and other places. The reason I felt that I had to take a stand on this is that one of the things I was going to address in my talk was how Admiral James Stockdale’s experience studying the works of Marx and Lenin at Stanford helped him to better understand his interrogators and endure seven years as a POW in North Vietnam. In many moments as a POW, Stockdale would have had the opportunity to compromise and obey, but he chose not to. He rejected the extortionary choice and stood on principle. I felt I could not, in good conscience, fold when asked not to mention such an egregious and fundamentally anti-wisdom course of action.
As you can tell, access to books and the free flow of ideas is something I feel very strongly about–and always have. In 2022, we gave away hundreds of banned books in front of The Painted Porch. And one of the most popular articles I ever wrote, now more than a decade ago, is about how people miss the real message of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. We can’t afford to be snowflakes when it comes to ideas…or we will melt.
So for this special edition of the Reading List Email, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite banned books…
A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts by Leo Tolstoy Tolstoy believed his most essential work was not his novels but this page-a-day compilation…which most people don’t know about because it was banned! An edition of Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom was published in 1912, but after the Russian Revolution, it was banned by the Soviet regime because of the book’s “spiritual orientation and its number of religious quotes.” It wasn’t until 1995, after democratic reforms, that it was published again and sold 300,000 copies. I’ve raved about this book countless times and almost always give it to my friends when they visit me at my bookstore. It’s one of my all-time favorites and I try to read a page from it every single day. It’s full of amazing quotes from everybody from the Stoics to Schopenhauer, Socrates and Confucius. READ IT!
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Perhaps you read The Great Gatsby in High School, although maybe if you grew up in Florida or went to college in Charleston, you didn’t because they tried to ban it. Yes, Gatsby! The greatest novel in American history! Because they thought it was ‘vulgar’ and had ‘strong’ language in it. When I read that, I thought of the books in Gatsby’s library…whose pages had never been cut. Had these people ever actually opened a book? Did they not understand how powerful this book is, what it’s supposed to teach? All I know is that this book changed my life. I was assigned it as a sophomore and my English teacher, Mrs. Kars, printed out my essay and spent the entire period reviewing it with the class. This was the first time any of my writing had ever been recognized…and honestly, one of the first times in my life that I had ever felt like I might be anything but average. I still have that copy. More recently, I picked up this incredible 100th anniversary annotated edition. It gave me the chance not only to re-read the book from scratch, but also to learn more about it. It’s really a beautiful book that is wonderfully re-done. If you haven’t read Gatsby, read this one. If you have, read it again with this new edition. You’ll love it.
The New Testament: A Translation by David Bentley Hart Did you know the Bible is one of the most banned books of all time? Of course it is! It’s been banned by countries and school districts and religious leaders. In fact, some critics of the recent laws on book banning have been attempting to show that the laws would also require restricted access to the Bible because of its adult and violent themes. That’s the problem with religious intolerance; eventually, the wheel turns and now you’re being persecuted as the minority. I am not religious, but I think the Bible is worth reading as a beautiful and important work of literature–just as we read The Odyssey and Virgil and the Tao Te Ching. I like to recommend this translation by David Bentley Hart, who is a religious studies scholar and translator at Yale. He basically translates the Bible not just as a religious text, but as any ancient text.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou When I was asked about the book banning at the Naval Academy by CNN, one of the things I said–and I think this is important–was that most of the books they removed seemed to be of dubious quality or scholarship. But that’s not the point! Many books are bad/dumb/ridiculous. Does that mean they should be removed or banned? No! And certainly not by government decree! But one of the remarkable things about the Naval Academy purge was that it removed Maya Angelou’s 1969 memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings…while leaving Hitler’s Mein Kampf. On what planet does that make sense? This is why we should not get into picking and choosing which titles run afoul of our standards and instead, you know, let librarians do their jobs. In any case, Maya Angelou is an absolute treasure. There is a beautiful quote from an interview she gave to NPR in 1986 that I quote in Wisdom Takes Work that I think applies to the conversation about banned books. Here it is: “There is no human voice which is unbeautiful to me. I love them, and so I’m able to learn languages, because I really love the way people talk. I still get excited about any human being speaking or singing.” Great memoirs give us a way into someone else’s life. The best memoirs, then, are about people of radically different backgrounds, lifestyles, experiences, personalities and beliefs. If we ban or censor them, we are missing out on essential opportunities to learn from the people who have the most interesting things to teach us.
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Would you have guessed that this one is the most requested and most banned book in the federal prison system? (It’s also one of the most shoplifted!) A friend of mine who works on death penalty cases told me that he has to warn defendants against reading it, as prosecutors will have possession of it against them in sentencing! As I’ve said before, I think people mistake this book as a how-to book when they should look at it, at the very least, from a defensive standpoint. Is there a darkness to this book? Yes. But there is a darkness to life, too. You have to understand it, be able to defend against it, and know how to know what you’re not willing to do. The irony of banning this book is that it made it much more controversial, which he talks about in Law 6: “Court attention at all costs,” and Law 7: “Get others to do the work for you.” I love the leather 20th anniversary edition that Robert put out. It’s one of the most beautiful premium editions of a book I have ever seen. Makes a great gift.
Montaigne by Stefan Zweig In 1933, Stefan Zweig’s work was banned in Germany and his books were publicly burned. A few years later, when Zweig was living in exile in the cellar of a bungalow in Petrópolis, Brazil, he chanced upon a “dusty old edition” of Montaigne’s essays, who himself had been writing in a time of religious persecution and violence and disruption. This book isn’t banned, but you know what, it almost went out of print. Earlier this year, I bought all 1,000 remaining copies and wrote an article about it. They immediately sold. Thankfully, the publisher was willing to relent to another printing so we have some more, but I was shocked to see how close we came to losing access to such an important test. It is a very surreal experience to read a book about a man turning inward amidst the cruelty and close-mindedness of his time, written some 350 years later by a man fleeing the brutality and persecutions of his time…as modern society continues to experience (and inflict) the same horrors on itself.
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford Back in 2021, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas cancelled events with the authors of Forget the Alamo because he doesn’t understand the point of history. History is not supposed to make you feel good. History is imperfect. History is challenging. History is uncomfortable. Although I also loved Walter Lord’s book about the siege of the Alamo, this book gives you the unvarnished history (which is to say the darker motivations, the contradictions, the uncomfortable truths.) When I teach my kids history–and we’ve been to the Alamo–I try to paint the full picture. I try to encourage them to question, to consider other perspectives, to relate to the little guy and of course, to think about what they would have done if they were alive back then. As I said last month, Bryan Burrough is a wonderful supporter of local writers here in Austin and even runs a writers group that has been incredibly helpful to me personally. In fact, it was something I was thinking about when I wrote the ‘Find Your Scene’ in Part I of Wisdom Takes Work. He’s also written some of my favorite books like Public Enemies and The Big Rich. Most relevant these days is his book Days of Rage, which everyone should read.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Like many public school kids, I was assigned Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 in high school. I remembered the book as a warning against totalitarian censorship by the government. It was only later, re-reading it as an adult, that I realized Bradbury—who had written the book on purchased time at a library typewriter—was depicting something much more insidious. As Captain Beatty explains to Montag, who had begun to doubt his terrible profession, censorship was what the people wanted. This horrendous burning of books hadn’t been forced on them by a tyrant. They had chosen this. “Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo,” he says, using terms that today would render the book politically incorrect, if not entirely canceled. “Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping. Burn the book.” Bradbury’s message is a much more salient warning to modern Americans than many of us are ready for upon first reading. America is, and always has been, in less danger of top-down Chinese or Soviet style suppression and much more vulnerable to short-sighted or even well-intentioned democratic censorship. I didn’t grasp this as a high schooler, but I can see it now.
I Need a New Butt by Dawn McMillan For some insane reason, people are trying to ban this children’s book in Texas. But honestly, that’s just another reason to buy it (I’ll spoil the ending…this kid needs a new butt because his has a crack in it.) My kids love it and think it’s hilarious. Plus, the edition we carry at The Painted Porch makes fart noises. Protect this classic at all costs. Also,just to stick it to the prudes, last night I read A Dumb Birds Field Guide to the Worst Birds Ever to my six-year-old just so we could laugh at all the cursing.
I opened this email with a quote that we put on the window of The Painted Porch. I’ll conclude with another quote that I considered putting up there, which is both darker and more urgent. It’s a reminder of what’s at stake in these discussions and a warning that Bradbury–who said there was more than one way to burn a book–would have agreed with:
Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people. – Heinrich Heine
The Reading List Email For October 26, 2025
The Nightingale’s Song by Robert Timberg Haven’t I said before that the best books are old? I don’t always mean really old. The Nightingale’s Song is from 1995, and yet it seems to have largely been forgotten. Yet it’s INCREDIBLE. It’s a joint biography of five graduates of the US Naval Academy, John McCain (1958), James Webb (1968), Oliver North (1968), Robert McFarlane (1959), and John Poindexter (1958), but because of the nature of their lives and times, it reads more like a sprawling Russian novel. McCain, coming from a storied Naval family, ends up a heroic POW (alongside Stockdale, see: Courage Under Fire). Poindexter graduated at the top of his class, but was convicted for his role in Iran-Contra. Webb earned a Navy Cross in Vietnam (plus a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts) and went on to be the Secretary of the Navy and then a Senator. And then of course, Oliver North becomes a decorated Marine…and then goes to jail for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. And the author—like a great Russian novel—is not just some boring writer. Robert Timberg also graduated from the Academy and was grievously wounded in Vietnam. I was riveted on every page. This book should be a non-fiction classic, read by anyone who loves big stories and great writing and wants to understand the human condition. Oh, and as I’ve said before, it’s these kinds of books that help us understand the current political moment too…it’s brimming with insights about how hard it is to run an effective government, what it means to be a public servant (or soldier), and how even well-intentioned people can end up doing terrible things. And as with everything that pertains to Vietnam, a harrowing reminder of how humans blunder into things and bad leaders fail to learn the lessons of those mistakes over and over.
A Sense of Honor by James Webb Again, I just feel blessed to stumble on books I would have never heard of. If I hadn’t had my experiences with the Naval Academy earlier this year (which I wrote about in the NYT) and if I hadn’t picked up The Nightingale’s Song, is there any chance I would have read a nearly out-of-print novel about a 1968 graduate of the Academy? No, I would not…and so I would have missed this fantastic book written by one of the subjects profiled in Timberg’s book, Jim Webb. Who, as I said, also went on to be the Secretary of the Navy and then a Senator. This is a short book—it only takes place over a few days in 1968—and yet it covers so many modern (and timeless) themes: Coming of age. Duty. Hazing. Honor and morality. Loved this book. I would highly recommend it to anyone with a relative thinking about going into the service or a service academy.
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy I had to re-read this book for a podcast I was doing in New York (coming soon) and again, how lucky am I? Because this remains not only one of my favorite novels but a genuine treat to read. Binx Bolling is a successful and seemingly well-adjusted young man in 1960s New Orleans. But he is also listless and empty, desperate for meaning and purpose. He hopes to get out of the “everydayness” of his life, and so he undertakes his “search,”…which is really just watching movies and dicking around. Stoicism doesn’t work. Neither does religion. So what will? In any case, re-reading remains not just instructive but a pleasure. I couldn’t find my old copy, which I’ve read at least four or five times, so I started fresh (something I did with the new 100-year-anniversary annotated edition of The Great Gatsby earlier this year, alongside my other favorite New Orleans book, The Fish That Ate The Whale). In the way that we never step in the same river twice, it was like reading a totally new book–because I am older, because I’ve read more, because the world is changing…and yet at the same time, it was comfortable and familiar and felt like home.
These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore I’ve been reading Jill Lepore’s pieces in The New Yorker for years but never got to her books. I had to go to the Union Square Barnes and Noble to sign copies of Wisdom Takes Work and finally bit the bullet. Of course, she’s spectacular. We’ve been hardcore into the American Revolution in our house—due to my son’s Hamilton obsession (we did the Ron Chernow book together in audio and he got to interview him)—and yet there’s so much in here that’s fresh and freshly told. I honestly don’t know how people do these big sweeping books like These Truths or The Nightingale’s Song, being able to weave in all these different threads and make it look easy, like each little paragraph didn’t require multiple trips to archives and diaries and interviews. Not every page here–as is the case with great history–will make you feel good. No. History, as I say in Wisdom Takes Work, should challenge you. It should make you uncomfortable. It should teach you. If it doesn’t…you’re not reading history.
Misc On our drive up from Los Angeles to Tahoe, we stopped and spent the night at Cerro Gordo, a ghost town from the 1860s, which had been dusted by about four or five inches of snow. It was breathtakingly beautiful—one of my favorite places on earth. If you haven’t read Brent Underwood’s book Ghost Town Living: Mining For Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley, you’re missing out. And of course, looking down on the empty lakebed of Lake Owens, I thought not just of the movie Chinatown but the fascinating book about the making of that movie, The Big Goodbye. In Truckee, we took the kids to the Donner Pass Museum, which was exciting for me because while I had driven through the pass hundreds of times, we’d never stopped before. We read Daniel James Brown’s Indifferent Stars Above for The Painted Porch bookclub, which I’m happy to recommend again.
Books For Every Person In Your Life (My Favorite Books To Gift) | The Reading List Email For November 16, 2025
So, with the holidays coming up, that’s what I thought I would theme this edition of the Reading List Email–books that you ought to give to people in your life.
Oh yeah, and before I forget, I am doing a talk in Seattle on December 3rd and then Phoenix and San Diego in February. Come see me, ask questions and get your books signed! You can get your tickets here.
The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874-1965 by William Manchester I know this one is a good gift because Robert Greene gave it to me as a wedding present and then my wife, more recently, gave me a new set of covers for it that make it even cooler. This is easily a year’s worth of reading for some (and it would be a year well spent!). The book is masterfully written about a masterful man—Churchill was a soldier, a writer, a politician, a statesman, a strategist and a true great man of history. Like all truly great long reads, you learn not just about the subject but every intersecting one: the history of British peerage, the Victorian era, the British Empire, Colonialism, modern warfare, international relations, evil, the nature of genius, the effects of absent parents. It is an epic achievement on par with Caro’s Lyndon Johnson series (also a year’s worth of reading). Manchester’s biography of MacArthur is also incredible and makes a good gift along similar lines. And if you need a single volume on Churchill–perhaps for a father-in-law–I like Eric Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile.
The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins (Signed) I was walking down a rocky beach in Ithaca over the summer and saw someone reading a bright green book. “No way,” I thought and I asked to take a picture, which I promptly sent to Mel. “That’s funny you sent that,” she texted back, “because when we designed the cover [the idea] was ‘I’d love to be walking down the beach and from far away recognize the cover if someone were reading it.’” In any case, there’s a reason this book is blowing up. It’s a simple idea (not that it’s easy), but one we could all do better at applying. It’s also, I think, related to Stoicism. Some stuff is up to you, some isn’t. You gotta let the stuff (and people) that isn’t, happen. We all have people in our lives who would benefit from that. Plus with the holidays coming up, we could probably practice a little more ‘Let them’ as well, especially with visiting family. Anyway, Mel was here in Bastrop two weeks ago and we did a lovely event at the Opera House. She signed a bunch of copies, which, given the popularity of the book, are hard to find. You can grab them here.
Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton This is one of my favorite books of the year and I think it’s perfect for the animal lover in your life, or better, a very busy person in need of slowing down. It’s the story of an ambitious and connected political advisor who finds herself in an old house in the English countryside during the pandemic. There, she discovered a leveret—a baby wild hare—and nursed it back to health. What followed was extraordinary: the hare became her constant companion, freely roaming her home, napping beside her as she wrote, coming when called, and even raising its young under her roof. Through countless quiet hours with her unnamed friend, Dalton learned to see the world through new eyes, understanding the subtle rhythms and habits of this remarkable creature. I loved this book and I’ve gifted it to so many people.
The Great Mental Models by Shane Parrish This is another good box set that I might suggest for an entrepreneur, business owner or aspiring investor in your life. Shane is the entrepreneur and wisdom seeker behind Farnam Street and the host of The Knowledge Project. His expertise is rooted in personal experience–he started working at an intelligence agency in 2001, and there he quickly learned how to methodize good judgment and make better decisions under pressure. He’s since dedicated his life to mastering these lessons and sharing them with others. His Mental Model Set is a series of four books on a variety of topics: general thinking, chemistry, biology, economics, art. They’re super popular at the store and we can never keep them in stock. (I had Shane on the podcast last year and we filmed a great episode, which you can check out here.)
Ghost Town Living: Mining For Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley by Brent Underwood We were just visiting Cerro Gordo last month and I have a better sense of the demographics for this book. As we stood at 8,500 ft of elevation, staring down at the vast emptiness of Owen’s Lake and across at Mount Whitney in a town that used to have 10,000 residents (and now has one), car after car of 45-70-year-old burly white dudes–fire fighters, plumbers, Marines, police officers, contractors, electricians–came up and wanted to shake Brent (the owner)’s hand. Because he was living their dream, restoring the ramshackle buildings, exploring the old mines, discovering artifacts and battling the elements. I love this book and my kids love Brent’s YouTube channel, Ghost Town Living. Your dad will probably like this book. We have signed copies at The Painted Porch here.
The Second Mountain: The Quest For A Moral Life by David Brooks and From Strength To Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur Brooks The Second Mountain is about the phase of life when we start thinking less about ourselves and more about other people. It’s a great book for someone that’s looking for their next thing. Maybe they’re approaching retirement and thinking, “What now?” This book answers that question. I loved it so much that it inspired an entire chapter in Part III of my book Right Thing, Right Now called “Climb Your Second Mountain.” This one pairs well with Arthur Brooks’ From Strength To Strength, which he wrote after his famous essay on professional decline. Arthur’s been on the podcast a handful of times, here’s a link to our most recent conversation.
Miscellaneous (from Ryan again) Since I recommended a couple of book series/sets here, I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend one that I think is pretty good…The Stoic Virtue Series. I worked on this for the last six years and just last month released the fourth and final book in the series: Wisdom Takes Work (here’s me talking about it on The Daily Show and The Breakfast Club). Nassim Taleb’s box set, Incerto, is another great one. It’s got Black Swan, Fooled By Randomness, Antifragile, The Bed of Procrustes, and Skin in the Game. Earlier this year I read Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson and have been giving it to people I know who want to solve political problems (not culture war nonsense). Cointelligence: Living and Working With AI by Ethan Mollick is a great book for young people who are trying to make sense of this new world of AI and technological disruption. And lastly, Matthew McConaughey’s Greenlights journal is great for anyone who journals or is interested in picking up the habit.
Kids Books My 9-year-old loves Greek myths, so I got him this really cool, fancy edition of Mythology by Edith Hamilton (I also loved The Greek Way) as a present. This one is great not just for kids but fun for the parents, too. Catch a Crayfish, Count The Stars is another good one for the whole family, it’s a gift I might give my in-laws and parents looking to do more outdoor activities with their kids. My six-year-old asks for us to read Cafe At The Edge of The Woods on repeat. If you have younger kids, Wind-Up Digger has a toy inside, so it’s sure to be a hit. My Big Wimmelbook - Fire Trucks! is like Where’s Waldo, but with fire trucks. Sam’s Sandwich is a good book for siblings, about a brother who puts bugs in his sister’s sandwich.
The Reading List Email For November 30, 2025
The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery by Siddharth Kara I picked this up at Word After Word Books in old town Truckee, California (a delightful store that did not exist when I used to go there as a kid). I have raved about Adam Hochschild’s Bury The Chains (an incredible and important book which inspired Part II of Right Thing, Right Now) and this is basically a deep dive into one critical section of that book, the story of The Zorg, a cursed slave ship in 1781, which dumped dozens of slaves overboard in a desperate and evil attempt to recover their value in insurance money. It was the trial and later the publicity over this disaster that helped inspire Thomas Clarkson and the abolitionist movement. Like most great narrative non-fiction, The Zorg is a riveting story first and foremost, and then a means of exploring both the darkness of the human condition and the potential in each of us (as well as a chance to explore all the intersecting themes and events, from the American Revolution to the slave trade itself). As dark and terrible as Robert Stubbs and William Gregson are, characters like Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp and Oludah Equiano give you hope (and challenge you to do more, along the lines of another great book I liked recently, Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman). I thought this book was great and hope it’s a big hit.
1929: The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History by Andrew Ross Sorkin This is the kind of book I was planning to save for later because I wanted to take my time, but I ended up reading right when it came out because Andrew was coming on the podcast (I did his show back last year). It’s really a magnificent book. The characters are great. The story is well-paced (it runs us through the crash in what feels like real time). It’s one of those books that’s both timely and timeless–or perhaps you could say it is so timely because it is rooted in timeless themes. It reminded me a lot of another book I love about this period, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, which also featured Herbert Hoover (but as the hero instead of the villain). Another great book in this genre is Bubble in the Sun about the Florida real estate bubble which significantly contributed to the Great Depression as well. Andrew signed a bunch of copies while he was in Bastrop, and you can grab those here before we run out.
Hope in the Dark: Untold Stories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit Reading about slavery or the Great Depression doesn’t exactly fill you with hope. That’s one of the problems of reading history–it’s not always fun. In fact, it’s often quite depressing. But if you look deep enough, if you push past this, you will also find much to be hopeful about. As I said, the tragedy of the Zorg is inseparable from the abolition of slavery. The market crash of 1929 led not only to essential financial reforms but it also forced America to reckon with its obligations to its fellow citizens. Anyway, if history makes you despair, you’re not doing the real work. That’s why I was excited to see this book, which, by the way, is itself a little historical. It was written in the run-up to the Iraq war, and yet it holds up. (Not all of it does, there are some NIMBY themes in here, for instance, that partly contributed to the political division and mess we’re in now.) But I found this book to be reassuring and encouraging. It’s worth a read.
History Matters by David McCullough Where did I grab this book? I honestly can’t remember. Maybe it was in New York during the press tour for Wisdom Takes Work. In any case, I had no idea that this book was coming out but as soon as I saw it, I knew I needed to read it. I love McCullough’s biographies–especially Truman and The Wright Brothers–but I’ve also gotten a lot out of his shorter books of essays, including Brave Companions: Portraits in History, which is where I learned about Louis Agassiz, a fascinating and tragic figure, who I wrote about in two chapters in Wisdom. Oh man, this book is great. We cannot forget, he reminds us, that nobody lived “in the past.” Everyone lived in the present moment, or indeed, believed they were living in the cutting-edge future. Things did not have to go the way they went. Every action and decision was a choice. We study the past because it helps us with our own choices. And because, as he quotes Truman (whose full bio you must read) as saying, “the only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” Great stuff on writing and life and craft here too.
Working by Robert Caro After I read History Matters, I knew I needed to re-read this one. Working, which I promise is much shorter than Caro’s other books, was actually the first audiobook I’d ever listened to, which I downloaded back in 2019 when it was released. After reading countless pages of his writing (all the books in the Johnson series and, of course, The Power Broker), it was lovely to hear something in Caro’s actual voice (which happens to be a thick BROOKLYN? accent). It was also, other than the ones I listen to with my kids, the last audiobook I listened to. I just can’t do it. It’s not how I retain or process information. So now that I am in the middle of writing a big biography myself, I decided to give it another go. I didn’t need to buy it, I just walked downstairs and stole a copy off the shelf at The Painted Porch. I’m glad I did because it had some wonderful reminders and lessons for anyone in the middle of a creative project (and no small amount of wisdom about political power, which remains relevant today).
Misc I very much enjoyed Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice about the friendship and heroism of Jesse Brown and Tom Hudner, the first Black pilot in the Navy and the pilot who received the Medal of Honor for trying to save his life. I told a chunk of this story at my talk in Austin a while back. I need to watch the movie (which stars Glenn Powell now). I also read Breaking the Color Barrier, which is about another Navy hero, Wes Brown (no relation) who was the first Black graduate of the Naval Academy. When I was in New York last month, I stopped by McNally Jackson in Rockefeller Center to do Bookstore Blitz (watch here), where I had to pick out five books on five themes. I chose: Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman and The Odyssey by Homer. But if you know me at all, you know I could never stop there! So I did another video where I went through and picked a bunch more. You can watch it here, and you should definitely read the books I pulled off the shelf. Some honorable mentions: A Marriage At Sea by Sophie Elmhirst, Michael Finkel’s The Art Thief and The Stranger in the Woods, Abundance by Ezra Klein, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, The Son by Phillip Meyer, John Williams’s Stoner and Augustus, The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey, and Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.
The (Very) Best Books I Read In 2025 (The Reading List Email For December 14, 2025)
Montaigne by Stefan Zweig How much did I love this book? I literally bought 1,000 copies. Like, it was going to go out of print, so I bought up all the available stock and then when I wrote this article about how timely this timeless (published in 1942) book was, we immediately sold all of them at The Painted Porch in less than a week. Thankfully, the publisher relented and gave us another run, so I’m able to rave about it some more. I’ve read it four times now and have taken something new and different each time (sometimes I’ve been calmed by it, other times terrified). In 1941, the novelist Stefan Zweig–living in exile after the Nazis condemned him, as they had all the Jews, banned his work, and burned his books in the streets—chanced upon a “dusty old edition” of Montaigne’s essays, who himself had been writing in a time of religious persecution and violence and disruption. “Certain authors,” Zweig would later write, “reveal themselves to us only at a certain age and in chosen moments.” I first read Montaigne in 2016 (Montaigne lived through divisive political times). I read it again in 2020 (Montaigne lived through the plague). I read it again about a year and a half ago (Montaigne lived through technological disruption, economic instability, and a kind of mass hysteria Zweig would refer to as “the herd’s rampancy”). And then I read it again this year. It’s a very surreal experience to read a book about a man turning inward amidst the cruelty and close-mindedness of his time, written some 350 years later by a man fleeing the brutality and persecutions of his time…as modern society continues to experience (and inflict) the same horrors on itself. He is the primary character in the final book in my series of the Stoic Virtues–Wisdom Takes Work–and this book was one of the most powerful things I read while researching it. As Montaigne says, our primary task is to remain human in inhuman times.
Augustus by John Williams and The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault One of my all-time favorite novels is Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, which is a fictional memoir of the dying Hadrian (addressed to the future emperor Marcus Aurelius). Given this fact and the fact that I have talked about how much I love this book…why didn’t anyone tell me about Augustus? What kind of algorithm failure led to it not being suggested to me? It’s basically a book designed for me (and other people whose “Roman Empire” is the Roman Empire). It’s not an obscure book either, it won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1973. I thought it was beautiful and illuminating, especially on the themes of power and ambition and happiness. It’s a novel about the rise and reign of Rome’s first emperor, with a surprise appearance of Seneca at the end, but I won’t spoil it. Another historical novel I wish I had read sooner is Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine. It’s about the coming of age of a young boy, Alexis, in Periclean Athens and touches on many of the events Herodotus experienced or wrote about. Every few pages features a delightful appearance of someone (Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Xenophon) or some place or battle you’ve heard of (Marathon, Sicily, Thrace, Battle of Munychia). Sometimes fiction can get us closer to the truth than history and I felt like this was one of those books–Socrates can be hard to get into, but this puts a face to the name and allows you, I think, to go back and understand the philosophy better. It’s a reminder too that the past was not a peaceful place but scary and uncertain and violent and cruel (as well as inspiring and creative and hopeful) just as ours is now. I will recommend again Memoirs of Hadrian as well as Gates of Fire here, as they are all similar, great historical fiction.
A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst and The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery by Siddharth Kara I don’t really like boats, but I love shipwreck books. I’ve mentioned some of my favorite must-reads through the years: In The Heart of the Sea (the real-life story that inspired Moby Dick), Dead Wake, Endurance, The Wide Wide Sea, and The Wager. I even made a whole video about it, which you can check out here. I was first introduced to A Marriage at Sea when Samantha read me a passage from her Kindle. A few days later, I saw it in a bookstore with a blurb from Patrick Radden Keefe, whose book Say Nothing I’d read and loved last year, so I didn’t need any more convincing. What a great book! And for the author’s debut, no less! The story is about a young couple shipwrecked at sea who survive for months on a tiny raft in the Pacific. And how did their boat sink? A whale! For real! It’s destined to be a classic of the shipwreck genre. More recently, I picked up The Zorg. Like most great narrative non-fiction books, this book is a riveting story first and foremost, and then a means of exploring both the darkness of the human condition and the potential in each of us. It takes a close look at the little-known true story of a slave ship in 1781 headed to Africa from the Netherlands that dumped dozens of slaves overboard in a desperate and evil attempt to recover their value in insurance money. It was the trial and later the publicity over this disaster that helped inspire Thomas Clarkson and the abolitionist movement. As dark and terrible as Robert Stubbs and William Gregson are, characters like Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp and Oludah Equiano give you hope and challenge you to do more.
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green Sometimes the perfect topic meets the perfect writer. I have long held up The Big Short as an example of this–a lifetime of financial journalism and character-driven storytelling (Michael Lewis) intersects with the global financial crisis and makes one of the most interesting and bestselling business books ever. John Green has been writing accessible and interesting fiction for many years (along with viral YouTube and social media videos about history). Then he gets obsessed with tuberculosis–a disease very few people know or care about–and produces this book, which deserves (and is finding) a huge audience. As he says in the book, we could live in a world without tuberculosis (which currently kills over 1 million people a year), but for some reason, we choose not to. Why? I remember, when I lived in New Orleans, passing an old, beautiful brick building that was closed up. I got closer and saw an old, fading sign above the entrance, “John Dibert Tuberculosis Hospital.” In 1936, it was so bad that they had to have dedicated hospitals. Yup! You don’t have to study much history (here’s a podcast we did on the Antonine Plague) to quickly realize that public health is one of our greatest inventions. You don’t have to be a data scientist or an ethicist to realize that people who undermine public health–or oppose basic public health funding or programs–have as much blood on their hands as any mass murderer. Anyway, this is a fascinating and heart-wrenching book I would love for you to read if you haven’t already. It’s short, which is good. There is one big flaw: I don’t think Doc Holliday appears once…and that’s inexcusable. Also, if you haven’t read The Great Influenza, it is also very good and you might like my interview with Dr. Katalin Kariko, who, as it happens, is also a big fan of the Stoics.
On Character: Choices that Define a Life by Stanley McChrystal This is the best new book I’ve read in some time. I actually read it as a galley last December, but I had to wait for it to come out before I could tell anyone about it. Perhaps the book struck me extra hard because I read it while I was at the White House at the end of 2024, giving a talk to departing staffers (you can listen to that here). Character obviously counts everywhere, but nowhere does it count more than in government and public life. The Stoics–who are quoted liberally in this book–believed that character was destiny. They believed that accomplishments and power mattered little if a person could not be trusted, if they did not hold themselves to high standards, if they did not work actively for the common good. McChrystal’s book is a throwback to an older style of book, a meditation on a theme in the form of short essays and stories. It is also a throwback in terms of its earnestness and vulnerability. There’s no performance here. It’s not designed to get speaking gigs or consulting opportunities. It is the thoughts of a man in the latter stages of his career and life, reflecting on what he’s learned, the mistakes he’s made, the future he hopes to leave his children and grandchildren. As I said, I just loved this book. General McChrystal was nice enough to come out to Bastrop to do the Daily Stoic podcast and I think that turned into one of the best podcasts we did this year. I was particularly interested in the stories he told about his mother (who was active in the Civil Rights movement) and his relationship with his own son, who was a rebellious punk rocker who challenged this buttoned-down general. We had a great chat as we walked through the bookstore and here are some of the titles that General McChrystal left with. I hope a lot of people read this book and more than that, I hope more people live by it.
Misc I understand it’s a tough sell (it’s a 1,040-page bio about a somewhat obscure and divisive right-wing commentator), but I started raving about Buckley by Sam Tanenhaus to my friends as soon as I first picked it up. I had dinner with my publisher last night, and he and I did the same thing–we both just could not get over how good this biography was. But as I always say, studying the past is the best way to understand the present and William F. Buckley was a brilliant, articulate, compelling thinker and organizer who–with the help of big-pocketed donors–managed to create a movement that not only galvanized a generation of young people, but helped elect (multiple) presidents and politicians…who then mostly did horrible things. The dark energy that Buckley channeled for (and at other times, purged) from his movement is not new or gone either. I also read and raved about Chloe Dalton’s Raising Hare, about an ambitious and connected political advisor who finds herself in the English countryside during the pandemic. There, she discovered a baby wild hare and nursed it back to health. What ensues is a surreal and moving friendship made up of countless quiet hours with her unnamed friend, where Dalton learned to see the world through new eyes. I loved this book and have recommended it to so many people. And finally, I about fell out of my chair earlier this year when I saw that a new book from Joan Didion was coming out (a chair that, if you follow along on The Daily Stoic Podcast or have been a subscriber to this email for a while you will know, is the same chair that Joan Didion herself once wrote in). Didion’s Notes to John is a unique read, to say the least–it is the notes that Didion took from several years of therapy (preserved for her husband John) as their daughter struggled with alcoholism. If you haven’t read A Year of Magical Thinking or Blue Nights (do it now!), you can still get a lot out of these notes, which actually function as a deeply moving insight into family dynamics and the way that we all struggle, as parents, to help our kids. It’s a tragic and terribly sad story, but I learned a lot from it. While some critics have said they don’t think these notes should be published, it is obvious to me as a Didion fan that she very much wrote them with an eye towards publication. Honestly, they’d work even as a kind of epistolary novel.