Ryan Holiday
179.6 /Holiday
Classics, Self Help
"From Ryan Holiday, the New York Times bestselling author of Stillness Is the Key, The Obstacle Is the Way, and Ego Is the Enemy, comes the first book in a four-book series about Stoic virtues: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. As Ryan Holiday wrote in his previous books, Stoicism is a philosophy for the people. Stoicism isn't fraught with complexities, contradictions, or circular arguments about the meaning of life. Rather, Stoicism offers practical, rich guidance about how to achieve imperturbability, strength, perspective, and goodness. At the heart of Stoicism are four simple virtues: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. The whole philosophy can be condensed into those four bullet points. Everything else, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, and countless other Stoics believed, flows from these virtues. In Courage Is Calling, Ryan Holiday breaks down the most foundational virtue of all -- courage. Through engaging stories about historic and contemporary leaders, including Winston Churchill, Barack Obama, and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as some lesser known but equally as remarkable people, Holiday shows you how to practice courage in your daily life."
I love this series, and this might be my favorite one so far. The basic premise is ongoing, ie, Anthony Horowitz is an author who follows and documents a private detective, Daniel Hawthorne, in order to give his books a insight and some pizazz. The setting is great in this book--a small island off the coast of England, where they are there for a book festival. This series isn't exactly a cozy by any means--the violence can be graphic, the characters can be pretty awful--but there is a humor and hard-won camaraderie between author and investigator that is kind of heartwarming, in a murder-y sort of way. -Candice