The Daily Stoic

I wrote this book called Aristotle's Way because I have been trying to put into practice Aristotle's program for trying to find what he calls happiness, which is a very particular kind of happiness.

I've been trying to do that for about 40 years and have been very frustrated as a classical scholar with how little general public seem to have access to Aristotle's ethics.

I think they've been gate kept by the academy and I think that they are remarkably applicable to 21st century anxieties and remarkably practicable.

this is actually one of the laws of marketing and the book The 22 Immutable Laws Of Marketing which I very much recommend say it's better to be first than it is to be better

i would venture to guess though that this book has sold much better than a book he wrote after called what the plus Google Plus for the rest of us when you try to capture a trend or a moment in time it often doesn't work

And then her journal edition of that book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone the journal was released in November 2022.

I've gone on to have a great life. I think I'm walking proof that you can win in life without winning.

I think it's a story that will change you.

It's got a quote on the cover from Phil Knight who's basically saying that was one of the most extraordinary things I saw in person and he's like all these years later it remains one of the most extraordinary moments in sports.

runners in a race ought to compete and strive to win as hard as they can but by no means should they trip their competitors or give them a shove so too in life it is not wrong to seek after the things useful in life but to do so while depriving someone else is not just.

And yeah, I think the obstacles the way was was probably one of my first initial books to read and yeah, just been taken taken some notes from from all of them and it's been really helpful for me.

There's a story about Roseanne Cash uh Johnny Cash's daughter I think I heard about it from Stephen Pressfield first but it's it's in her memoir which is which is really really good but she was you know sort of coasting she's obviously naturally talented her fathers like sort of music royalty so she's just sort of doing her thing and she'd put out a couple albums and they'd done okay and she has this dream one night and you know dreams are like sort of weird and she's so she's in this dream and she's at this party and she sees the singer Linda Ronsett talking to this man and the man has like a name tag on it says art right these are symbolizing like her craft what she does and uh she goes up to them she's this huge Linda Ronsett fan and and she um she tries to talk to her and the man art looks at her and he says we don't respect dilatants and then they both turn her back their back on her and uh she sort of has this wake up call that yeah she hasn't she's been doing okay but she had she's been a bit of a dilatant like she wasn't all in on the thing and then you know she ends up hiring better a collaborator she demands more of herself as a lyricist and as a musician you know um hires teachers etc and I think about that moment it's like are you being serious about this thing or are you just enjoying the fact that you're pretty good at it or that you're getting rewards for it or you know that it doesn't ask that much from you um because life doesn't let ultimately the craft or the profession or the thing it doesn't have much time for dilatants you're not going to get very far no and you're not going to be handed it and and I think that was the biggest the biggest lesson is you know I don't know that I necessarily even had the the most belief in myself that I could do it so maybe there was a sense of a fear that crept in you know what if I start running what if I start working hard and then what if I don't make it right um but I committed to it from that point on I was like you said I was all in and and just consistently living a lifestyle you know throughout that journey of taking care of my body getting enough sleep eating well training as much as I can double triple the amount of other other players um and just committing to that and you don't know what the the journey is going to be like and you don't know how it's going to play out but just a big believer in just being consistent with everything that you do and and give it it all you have and the journey will write itself

The book is called Plato Goes to China, the Greek classics in Chinese nationalism.

And you can check out her new book Plato Goes to China, the Greek classics in Chinese nationalism and do read her translation of Virgil's The Ineid.

You haven't read Louis the Moore's education of a Warner. I'm one of the most beautiful celebrations of reading that I've ever read. I read all of his books

This is my copy of Tom Rex, a great Austin author and I think he spends about half the time half the year here. This is his new book. It's a military history of the Civil Rights Movement called To Wage of Good War.

This is one of the reasons I don't check out books from the library is that I insist on folding the pages and writing in the margins.

I'm sure you're familiar with all of them. But Forget the Alamo. I think it's a really important book. You should not just understand the history of the place that you live, but the unpleasant history of the place that you live, right? Not the mythology or the propaganda, but the true facts.

I heard a great expression of if the history you're reading is comfortable, you're probably not reading history, right? You're reading your reading is propaganda in myth.

Another one that I know, a very courageous librarian in Texas says has gone basically to the mattresses to fight for it and I believe lost her job over her, is I need a new box which my kids absolutely love. I don't know what has to be going through your mind that you have a problem with this book.

he wrote this fascinating book about the fall of Bear Stearns that I read called House of Cards, a tale of hubris and wretched excess on Wall Street in 2009.

There's something very Shakespearean about these characters that get so big, so successful and then life kind of brings them back down to life like in the bear stern's book.

But that process for me was in part spurred by a book that I read a few years ago called Life of a Clansman about a white man whose family was from New Orleans even told this certain, inspiring story about his Confederate ancestors who fought at least of the war, who were sort of old like sort of old-time New Orleans family.

his book Four Friends, Promising Lives Cut Short has some real memento more themes in it.

And he also wrote a book about the Duke lacrosse scandal which you can check out. It's called The Price of Silence.