The Daily Stoic

In one of F Scott Fitzgerald's best short stories, The Four Fists, he talks about a man who is infatuated with a married woman. For the next week Samuel was in a nervous turmoil Fitzgerald writes, some persistently rational strain warned him that at the bottom he and Marjorie had little in common, but in such cases there is usually so much mud in the water that one can sell them see the bottom.

Professor Wierman has a fascinating book called The Contagion of Liberty.

I read this book several years ago called A Republic of Suffering and it was about sort of the effects on the psyche when you would go through something like the US Civil War, when just so many people died.

I read this book a couple years ago. I think it's called Storm Kings and it was talking about how things like tornadoes even until like the 1700s we didn't understand. And no one had really even seen one.

when I was reading John Embarry's book The Great Influenza you're like oh yeah this was like the defining event of the 20th century and it's not talked about in literature it's not talked about in history it's not talked about in popular culture but it was at the time it there's just this kind of like well that was really unpleasant let's move on from that

Isabella Wilkerson has this wonderful book called Caste and she's talking about how the response is the public health response to the crack epidemic which was basically these it's these people's problem it's not a true public health emergency had we responded differently then how might everyone have been benefited now that we dealt with opioids and fentanyl

which is like one of the beautiful sort of southern memoirs about you know that era

One of my favorite books about Los Angeles is This Book Ask the Dust by John Fonte.

I thought the book was really interesting

this is like it's like a nice greatest hits album or way to reread the books with a good intro and just get a bunch of stuff that you vaguely remember reading but then you're you're getting to see for a second or third time.

I know Aristotle didn't choose the title but whoever chose the title did not do a good job of titling the text itself

your title is spectacular

I think people people tend to see the philosophical works as these books written by people with unpronounceable names although Aristotle and Plato and Socrates have the three most pronounceable names but you know that it's their titles you can't pronounce written by names you can't pronounce that don't that don't necessarily give you anything in terms of the promise or the potential of the work so even ethics right a small percentage of the population unfortunately is going to sit down and go you know what I need I need to ground myself in ancient ethical thought versus I would very much like to flourish

And then his Civil War book, The Him of the Republic, also beautiful and fascinating.

It's a fantastic book

I think you're really going to like this one

the book is Surf When You Can

one of my favorite books it's by this woman named Nell Painter and it's called Old In Art School

tell me about the harder they fall by bud Schulberg that book tell you something pretty important oh yeah and if you want to think of it then I will no no it's one of my favorite novels I so he has two novels here's a novel called What Makes Sammy Run which I like a little bit more and then the the harder they fall is a sort of boxing novel that he wrote I read it when I was but it was funny so I reread that book you kind of had you you should always be very suspicious of the stories you tell yourself in your head because you're pretty good liar but I read I would have I thought that I read the harder they fall which is a novel about a corrupt boxing like organized crime infiltrating boxing and then it's like public relations guy who's like the main character and he sort of corrupted by him then he walks away from it if you would ask me my own my own story earlier this year I would have told you I read that book and that's why I left American apparel to become a writer and I reread it this year and I pulled up Amazon to see when I bought it and I worked in American girl for like five years or four more years or something like I we think that change happens in these sort of epiphanies or wake up calls and it's almost always a lot more gradual than there's a long time to yes and and I didn't leave for the same reasons that the character and the novel was reading which is that we're really good at telling ourselves that one our work is really important and then he has this line in the book he says you know I dilute I he says I I told myself the lie that you can deal and fill and not become the thing you touch and with American apparel quite literally the case no but you tell yourself like oh like thinking about all the people that you know work in this administration and that administration people that work in industries that they know or evil or corrupting or strength and they're like well I'm one of the good guys or I'm steering it in the right direction or I'm the adults in the room we are really good at lines for ourselves there's an up and some clear line it says it's very hard to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding it and so very often you have you deep down know what's true but then you have whatever your salary is that many reasons to not take it seriously or make the make the step that you obviously know you need to make

She had a much worse stroke and she literally felt all the life draining out of her body inch by inch by inch is like as death was passing through her.

I just finished Walter Lorde's book The Past That Would Not Die

the book was just unreal

there's a book called American insurrection that's also very good