“I cannot live without books.”
—Thomas Jefferson

Disclosure: Most of the links below are affiliate links, which means that, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

2020

Spellberg’s Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an 

13. The Song of Roland (Hackett Classics) by John Duval (Author) and David Skaines (Introduction)

The Song of Roland 

12. If the Oceans Were Ink by Carla Power

Carla Power’s If the Oceans Were Ink 

11. Two Lives of Charlemagne (Penguin Classics) by Einhard (Author), Notker the Stammerer (Author), David Ganz (Editor, Translator, Introduction)

Two Lives of Charlemagne 

10. The Chronicle of Theophanes: Anni Mundi 6095-6305 (A.D. 602-813) (The Middle Ages Series) by Harry Turtledove

Theophanes’s Chronicle 

9. God in the Qur’an (God in Three Classic Scriptures) by Jack Miles

Jack Miles’s God in the Qur’an 

8. The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran by Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer’s The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran 

7. The Koran: A Very Short Introduction by Michael A. Cook

Michael Cook’s The Koran: A Very Short Introduction 

6. The History of al-Tabari, Volume 6: Muhammad at Mecca by محمد بن جائر الطبري (Translation), William Montgomery Watt (translator), Muhammad Ibn Jarir Al-Tabari

Al-Tabari’s History 

5. Understanding the Koran: A Quick Christian Guide to the Muslim Holy Book by Mafsen Elass

Mafsen Elass’s Understanding the Koran 

4. What the Qur’an Meant: And Why It Matters by Garry Wills

Garry Will’s What the Qur’an Meant 

3. A Two-Hour Koran (A Taste of Islam) by Bill Warner

Bill Warner’s A Two-Hour Koran 

2. The Crucifixion and the Qur’an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought by Todd Lawson

Todd Lawson’s The Crucifixion and Qur’an 

1. The Koran in English: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books) by Bruce B. Lawrence

Bruce B. Lawrence’s The Koran in English 

2019

105. Medea (Hackett Classics) by Euripides (Author), Diane Arnson Svarlien (Translator), Robin Mitchell-Boyask

Euripides’s Medea 

104. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Robert F. Kennedy and Arhur Meier Schlesinger

Robert F. Kennedy’s Thirteen Days 

103. Zen and the Birds of Appetite by Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton’s Zen and the Birds of Appetite 

102. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders is good. Really good. I first read it in ninth grade. It was good then. It’s good now. I was fifteen then. I’m 50 now. It’s that good.

101. Breathing Under Water by Richard Rohr

Richard Rohr’s Breathing Under Water 

100. Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation by Alan Watts

Alan Watt’s Still the Mind 

99. Medea by Euripides by Medea

Euripides’s Medea was recommended to me by an actor as the one Greek tragedy to read. I actually read Sophocles’s Oedipus trilogy first. And that more than once. But I’ve not ready any other Greek tragedy as much as I have Medea. And I’d read it again.

98. Focus: A Simplicity Manifesto in the Age of Distraction by Leo Babauta

Leo Babauta’s Focus 

97. The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino

Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World 

96. Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition by Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton’s Conservatism 

95. The Essential Augustine by Saint Augustine of Hippo and Vernon J. Bourke

The Essential Augustine 

94. A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life by Brian Grazer

Brian Grazer’s A Curious Mind 

93. The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion by Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade’s The Quest 

92. Face to Face: The Art of Human Connection by Brian Grazer

Brian Grazer’s Face to Face 

91. The King Within: Accessing the King in the Male Psyche by Robert Moore Douglas Gillette, et al.

Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s The King Within is one of four books written by this pair of Jungian practitioners after King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, covering each for the four archetypes in greater detail its own book and the one still in print. The Warrior Within, The Magician Within and The Lover Within are all still available, but only used, and some sometimes only at a hefty price.

90. Psychotherapy East & West by Alan Watts

Alan Watt’s Pscyhotherapy East & West 

89. John F. Kennedy by Robert Dallek

Robert Dallek’s John F. Kennedy is a short biographical sketch of JFK by the author of what is probably the best biography of the JFK: An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963.

88. Julius Caesar (Dover Thrift Editions) by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar isn’t very good actually. I recommend reading Shakespeare’s source on Julius Caesar: Plutarch’s Lives and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice instead.

87. How to Think About God : An Ancient Guide for Believer and Nonbelievers (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers) by Marcus Tullius Cicero and Philip Freeman

How to Think About God is a translation of Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods (De Natura Deorum), a thought-provoking work on the nature of the gods. It is only in keeping with the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series if you use it as suggested as a manual on how to think about God. Because it is so thought-provoking, it is a fine manual on it’s subject. I’ve always found a comparative religious approach to religion to be helpful.

86. Eusebius: The Church History by Eusebius and Paul L. Maier

Eusebius’s The Church History (Historia Ecclesiastica) 

85. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Marina Zhigalova

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince 

84. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life and Death by Jean-Dominique Bauby and Jeremy Leggatt

Jean-Dominique Bagby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is astonishingly well-written (and that’s without taking into account how Bauby wrote it: blinking his left eyelid when his scribe reached the letter he wanted upon reciting the alphabet to him).

83. The Wisdom of the Desert (New Directions) by Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton’s The Wisdom of the Desert 

82. The Essential Plotinus (Hackett Classics) by Plotinus and Elmer O’Brien S.J.

Plotinus’s Enneads are some of the most difficult reading I’ve ever done. I did this reading in one “sitting” (go) and did it standing to keep me alert. I should have taken more time. I’ll have to go back and read over it again. I may go with The Heart of Plotinus next time, though the selections vary. I’ll tackle all of the Enneads eventually. More background in Plato might help.

81. King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette

Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s King, Warrior, Magician, Lover (KWML) was recommended to me while in grad school working on my MA by my primary care physician, who in addition to being an MD was also a Jungian psychologist. I still have the prescription paper with the title written on it tucked in the book. I finished grad school at 43. It took me until 50 to read it.

80. Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

Héctor García and Francesc Miralles’s Ikigai 

79. The Bhagavad Gita (Oxford World’s Classics) by W. J. Johnson

The Bhagavad Gita 

78. Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung, James Cameron Stuart, et al.

Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections was recommended to me by my friend, Joseph Wheeler. It captivated my imagination. It was my second book by Jung. My first was The Undiscovered Self, which, if memory serves me, was recommended to me by my Latin professor (and Hebrew and Ancient Greek tutor), Ed Firmage. Ed also introduced me to James Hillman.

77. Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals by Michael Hyatt

Michael Hyatt’s Your Best Year Ever 

76. Medea (Masters of Latin Literature) by Seneca and Fredrick Ahl

Euripides’s Medea was recommended to me by an actor as the one Greek tragedy to read. I actually read Sophocles’s Oedipus trilogy first. And that more than once. But I’ve not ready any other Greek tragedy as much as I have Medea. And I’d read it again.

75. Medea (Greek Tragedy in New Translations) by Euripides, Michael Collier, et al.

Euripides’s Medea was recommended to me by an actor as the one Greek tragedy to read. I actually read Sophocles’s Oedipus trilogy first. And that more than once. But I’ve not ready any other Greek tragedy as much as I have Medea. And I’d read it again.

74. Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation by Stephen Mitchell

Stephen Mitchell’s Bhagavad Gita 

73. The Life and Ideas of James Hillman, Volume 1: The Making of a Psychologist by Dick Russell

Dick Russell’s The Life and Ideas of James Hillman left me wanting for more. 

72. Ancient Rhetoric: From Aristotle to Philostratus (Penguin Classics) by Thomas Habinek (Editor)

Thomas Habinek’s Ancient Rhetoric 

71. A Confession (Dover Books on Western Philosophy) by Leo Tolstoy and Aylmer Maude

Leo Tolstoy’s A Confession 

70. The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher’s Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient by William B. Irvine

William B. Irvine’s The Stoic Challenge is his third book on Stoicism I’ve read, the other two being A Guide to the Good Life and A Slap in the Face.

69. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo

Carmine Gallo’s The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs had been sitting on my shelf unread for years. It was only after I read Gallo’s latest book, Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great that I knew I had to read this one, as well as The Storyteller’s Secret and Talk Like TED.

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs delivers on its title’s promise as Jobs’ secrets to being as “insanely great in front of any audience” as anyone who saw one of his keynote presentations (especially his later ones) or his 2005 Stanford commencement address knows. The fact that Jobs’s later speeches were even better than his earlier ones points to his greatest secret of all—practice. Jobs is widely believed to be “a natural” who needed no practice. Not so! The book is also a nice reminder of some of the greatest Apple ads.

68. No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life by Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh’s No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life was my eighth book by Hanh and every one of them has been enlightening. This one, in particular, helped me finally to understand a few key Zen Buddhist principles that had previously at least somewhat alluded me, even after reading seven other books by Hanh. At the same time, parts of this book read slower for me than had any other of the seven books by Hanh I had read. Still, it was worth the effort to gain a deeper understanding of Zen Buddhism. Hanh remains my favorite Zen Buddhist monk. I’ve learned more about Buddhism from him than I even could have from an outsider.

67. Outer Order, Inner Calm: Declutter and Organize to Make Room for Happiness by Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin’s Outer Order, Inner Calm: Declutter and Organized to Make Room for Happiness, like her other books, is full of various ideas on how to achieve a happiness-related goal. I would recommend this book over Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up as at least one of Konmari’s core ideas is included in it: holding objects and asking whether they “spark joy” (Rubin also includes an alternative question if Konmari’s doesn’t do it for you as it doesn’t do it for Rubin). That said, Konmari’s other core idea of gathering all like things Together before decluttering isn’t. Komari’s book is only really useful if one wants to find out whether her one-and-only-way of decluttering is the way one wants to go, or how to go about it if one has. I’d also recommend watching the Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo if implementing her method. If you’d like to explore more than just Konmari’s one way of decluttering—lots more (is there anything Rubin didn’t think of)—and would enjoy Rubin’s references to great literature, then read Rubin.

66. Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise by Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh’s Silence: The Power of Quite in a World Full of Noise was my seventh book by Hanh and just the right one to read after reading Ryan Holiday’s Stillness is the Key. While the seven other books (among others) I had read by Hanh had already brought to my attention the need for silence in a noisy world, it was René Guénon’s The Crisis of the Modern World that so deeply resonated with me and had me begin insatiably to crave not only silence, but darkness. Both are hard to come by in today’s world. When I say silence, I mean not even the sound of the refrigerator or A/C unit; and when I say darkness, I mean not even the little light from the surge protector or the power adapter plugged into it, yet alone the street lamp or neighbor’s light outside one’s window. “Progress” comes at a cost. Hahn, Holiday, and Guénon speak to this cost with varying levels of intensity, in the order I’ve listed them. While we may not be able to turn back the tide of “progress,” as Guénon laments,—and the cost may be higher than even Hanh discusses—we are still, thankfully, able to escape from it, if only temporarily in nature (its sounds count as silence) or, even in the midst of our noisy world, in still meditation. As for darkness, I use, and recommend using, a sleeping mask.

65. Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday’s Stillness Is the Key is Holiday’s (age 32 years) ninth book and his fifth Stoicism-themed book, and is sure to be a bestseller like all the rest. Reading one of Holiday’s four books written after the manner of his mentor, Robert Greene, is, like reading Greene’s own books, like reading a couple of hundred books at one time, or, at least, like gleaning the lessons from them. Stillness Is the Key is one of these four books and is no exception to the rule.

64. Annals and Histories (Everyman’s Library) by Tacitus (Author), Eleanor Cowan (Editor), Alfred Church (Translator), William Brodribb (Translator), Lane Fox, Robin (Introduction)

Tacitus’s Annals cover the reigns of Tiberius (AD 14-37), Claudius (AD 41-54), and Nero (AD 54-68) and his Histories cover the “year of the four emperors” (AD 69). The emperors covered by Tacitus are fewer than those covered by Suetonius in his Lives of the Caesars, which includes Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero among others—the preceding two Julio-Claudians, Julius Caesar and Augustus, Caligula, whose reign falls in between Tiberius’s and Claudius’s (AD 37-41), as well as the first six successors to the Julio-Claudians, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian)—but Tacitus’s Annals go into deeper detail than Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars on Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero and his Histories cover the “year of the four emperors,” Suetonius also doesn’t cover. If you’re interested in the lives of the Caesars, start with Suetonius, and then read Tacitus. For the later Caesars, read Marcellinus.

63. Living Buddha, Living Christ: 20th Anniversary Edition by Thich Nhat Hanh (Author), Elaine Pagels (Introduction)

Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ does two things and does both well: (1) It takes a comparative religion approach to Buddhism and Christianity, giving both Buddhists and Christians a better sense of each other’s religion, and (2) invites Buddhists and Christians to embrace the common ground they share with each other—and other believers—and peace. The former is done with great awareness and sensitivity; the latter with the wisdom of both the Buddha and the Christ that cuts to the core of inner peace and the outer peace that can only come from that inner peace.

62. Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living by Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh’s Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living was my fifth book by my favorite Zen Buddhist monk. A long-time peace activist (Hanh, a native of Vietnam, advocated for peace during the Vietnam War alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., who nominated Hanh for a Nobel Peace Prize), Hanh shares his knowledge and experience of how to create inner peace that radiates outward to the levels of society and the environment.

61. The 33 Strategies of War (Joost Elffers Books) by Robert Greene (Author)

Robert Greene’s The 33 Strategies of War was the third out of six books he wrote and the last I read. All of the other one’s were more appealing to me as a peace activist. Nevertheless, the lessons Greene culls from history with his usual keenness of insight go beyond war to the everyday, including an excellent exposition of Machiavelli’s (and Greene’s) rhetorical strategies.

60. The King of the World (The Collected Works of Rene Guenon) by Rene Guenon (Author), James R. Wetmore (Author), Henry Fohr (Author)

René Guénon’s The King of the World is a fascinating read. Guénon draws connections between all of the revealed religious traditions (that for him all stem from a primordial one) to explicate the idea of the king of the world.

59. The Crisis of the Modern World (The Collected Works of Rene Guenon) by René Guénon Guénon (Author), James R. Wetmore (Editor), Arthur Osborne (Translator)

René Guénon’s The Crisis of the Modern World is a scathing critique of modernity that, regardless of whether you agree with his Perennialist / Traditionalist diagnosis, is is difficult to dispute. Guénon, a metaphysician, laid the foundation for the Perennialist / Traditionalist school. Today, the Dark Enlightenment / Neoreactionary movement is arguably founded on a misunderstanding of Guénon’s work, if not on his work itself. Too, modern “spirituality” without religion is  arguably founded on a misunderstanding of Guénon’s work, if not on his work. His work is hugely controversial.

58. Al-Shariah, Ijtihad and Civilisational Renewal (Occasional Paper) by Mohammed Hashim Kamali (Author), Dr. Anas S. Al Shaikh-Ali (Editor), Shiraz Khan (Editor)

Hashim Kamali’s Al-Shariah, Ijtihad and Civilisational Renewal 

Euripides’s Medea was recommended to me as the best Greek tragedy with which to begin a reading Greek tragedy. So far, I haven’t read one I didn’t like, though I find some more compelling than others—Medea most of all. It haunts me. I first read it a few weeks earlier in the Robinson translation and felt compelled to reread it a few weeks later. Just a few weeks later and I’m already looking for another translation to reread it. It’s that compelling! Like Robinson’s, the poetry of Taplin’s new translation sings like Euripides’s.

48. Beowulf by Stephen Mitchell (Translator)

 

46. Lying by Sam Harris and Annaka Harris

 

Bill Irvine’s A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt–And Why They Shouldn’t is one of a number of books on philosophy as a way of life (specifically Stoicism) by Dr. Irvine and it’s just as good as all the others. Dr. Irvine does in this book what philosophers do best in asking lots of questions one untrained in the philosophical method would not think to ask and what the average philosopher today doesn’t do well at all today in asking useful questions and offering relevant answers—answers that lead to the good life.

42. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy is the book in which the idea of God existing outside of time was first introduced, as far as I can tell (If it turns out I’m wrong, please let me know!) Read it to find out why and see whether it is a satisfactory answer to the “problem” it purports to solve!

35. Theogony and Works and Days: A New Bilingual Edition (Northwestern World Classics) by Hesiod (Author), Kimberly Johnson (Translator)

Kimberly Johnson’s translation of Hesiod’s Theogeny and Works and Days is my translation of choice for these two works. My criteria for choosing it, as is usual for me when choosing a translation of a poem is its poetry. If you’re looking for a more literal translation, buy the Loeb Classical Library edition.

34. This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace

 

33. How to Think Like a Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson

Donald Robertson’s How to Think Like a Roman Emperor tells Robertson’s own story as well as Marcus Aurelius’s to teach the reader how to be Stoic. Robertson knows his Stoicism in general and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations in particular, as well as the source on Marcus’s life and invents, what isn’t known when necessary to tell a tale to teach his reader Stoicism. If you are interested in Stoicism and like learning from stories, this book is for you.

32. Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope by Mark Manson

 

31. Working by Robert Caro

Robert Caro’s Working was written by Caro while writing the fifth of five planned volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, and those who do not,  what he has been up to since he started working on The Power Broker in 1964. If you are one of the ones who does not, then you owe it to yourself immediately to find out. If you are one of the one who knows, then Caro wrote this so you would have something to read while you wait for that above-mentioned fifth volume he’s painstakingly working on right now. Caro is a consummate researcher and writer. Even if you don’t read any other book Caro wrote (and you surely will after you read this one), you owe it to yourself to read this one if nothing else to learn of the craft of writing that is the antithesis of the sound-byte of news or the SNS post.

30. The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov and Dmitri Nabokov

 

29. The Writing Life by Annie Dilliard

 

28. Medea by Euripides and Robin Robertson

 

27. Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse by David Ferry

 

26. Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness (Mind/brain/behavior Initiative) by Nicholas Humphrey

 

25. Stop Doing That Sh*t: End Self-Sabotage and Demand Your Life Back by Gary John Bishop

 

24. TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson

 

23. Augustus: The Life of Rome’s First Emperor by Anthony Everitt

 

22. The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene

 

21. Propaganda by Edward Bernays

 

20. Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great by Carmine Gallo

 

19. On Truth and Untruth: Selected Writings (Harper Perennial Modern Thought) by Friedrich Nietzsche

 

18. Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life by Edith Hall

 

17. Mein Kampf (The Ford Translation) by Adolf Hitler (Author) and Michael Ford (Editor)

 

16. The Age of Caesar: Five Roman Lives by Plutarch (Author), James Romm (Editor), Pamela Mensch (Translator), Mary Beard (Foreword)

 

15. Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt

 

14. The Civil War (Oxford World’s Classics) by Julius Caesar (Author), J. M. Carter (Translator)

 

13. Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport

 

12. The Second Book of the Tao by Stephen Mitchell

 

11. The Gallic War: Seven Commentaries on The Gallic War with an Eighth Commentary by Aulus Hirtius (Oxford World’s Classics) by Julius Caesar (Author), Carolyn Hammond (Translator)

 

10. Inadvertent (Why I Write) by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Author), Ingvild Burkey (Translator)

 

9. How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers) by Seneca (Author), James S. Romm (Translator, Introduction)

 

8. Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions by Alberto Manguel (Author)

 

7. Fall of the Roman Republic (Penguin Classics) by Plutarch (Author), Robin Seager (Editor, Introduction), Rex Warner (Translator)

 

6. The Rise of the Roman Empire (Penguin Classics) Reprint Edition by Polybius (Author), Ian Scott-Kilvert (Translator), F. W. Walbank (Introduction)

This is required reading for my Models of Excellence program with my kids.

5. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

There’s not much here that isn’t covered by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, though that’s philosophy and this is social science. We’re so enamored with science and so ignorant of the philosophical Classics.

4. Al-Ghazzali’s Mishkat al-Anwar (“The Niche for Lights”) by W. H. T. Gairdner

I’m centireading this. That said, I’m not centireading this edition, but this one: The Niche of Lights (Brigham Young University – Islamic Translation Series) by Al-Ghazali (Author), David Buchman. I read this edition to once read the introduction and translation of Gairdner just for good measure.

3. The History of Rome, Volume 2, Books 6-10 by Titus Livy by William Mafsen Roberts

This is required reading for my Models of Excellence program with my kids.

2. The History of Rome, Volume 1, Books 1-5 by Titus Livy, William Mafsen Roberts

This is required reading for my Models of Excellence program with my kids.

1. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

This book was recommended to me by my friend, Gus Hartman, who reads a lot too. It was one of his top two recommendations from among the books he read in 2018.

2018

97. The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition by Grant Hardy (Editor)

740 pages | 25 hrs and 19 mins | Read

96. How to Be a Friend: An Ancient Guide to True Friendship (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers) by Marcus Tullius Cicero and Philip Freeman

208 pages | 1 hr and 36 mins | Read

Marcus Tullius Cicero’s and Philip Freeman’s How to Be a Friend

95. The Essential Marcus Aurelius (Tarcher Cornerstone Editions) by Jacob Needleman and John Piazza

144 pages |  | Read

Jacob Needleman’s  and John Piazza’s The Essential Marcus Aurelius

94. How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers) by Epictetus and Anthony Long

232 pages | 1 hr and 55 mins | Read

Anthony Long’s How to Be Free

93. The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma of the Individual in Modern Society by C. G. Jung

128 pages |  | Read

C. G. Jung’s The Undiscovered Self

92. The Road to Serfdom – Special Abridged Edition by Friedrick A. Hayek and Edwin J Feulner

48 pages |  | Read

Edwin J Feulner special abridged edtion of The Road to Serfdom

91. Islamic History: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Adam J. Silverstein

176 pages | 4 hrs and 31 mins | Lied

Adam J. Silverstein’s Islamic History: A Very Short Introduction

90. Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions Book 77) by Kevin Passmore

184 pages | 6 hrs and 4 mins | Lied

Kevin Passmore’s Fascism: A Very Short Introduction

89. The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need To Write…The Ultimate PhD Proposal by Thomas M. Saunders

37 pages |  | Read

Thomas M. Saunders’ The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need To Write…The Ultimate PhD Proposal

88. Freud: A Very Short Introduction by Anthony Storr

176 pages | 3 hrs and 55 mins | Lied

Anthony Storr’s Freud: A Very Short Introduction

87. Darwin’s Origin of Species: Books That Changed the World by Janet Browne

192 pages | 4 hrs and 23 mins | Lied

Janet Brown’s Darwin’s Origin of Species

86. Marx’s Das Kapital: A Biography (Books That Changed the World) by Francis Wheen

144 pages | 3 hrs and 16 mins | Lied

Francis Wheen’s Marx’s Das Kapital

85. Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (Books That Changed the World) by Christopher Hitchens

320 pages | 3 hrs and 36 mins | Lied

Christopher Hitchen’s Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man

84. You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh and Melvin McLeod

160 pages | 3 hrs and 54 mins | Lied

Thich Nhat Hanh’s You Are Here

83. Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising by Ryan Holiday

176 pages | 2 hrs and 17 mins | Lied

82. Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

288 pages | 2 hrs and 50 mins | Lied

Jason Fried’s and David Heinemeier Hansson’s Rework

81. The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future by Ryder Carroll

320 pages | 5 hrs and 43 mins | Lied

Ryder Carrols’ The Bullet Journal Method

80. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

320 pages | 5 hrs and 35 mins | Lied

James Clear’s Atomic Habits

79. The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene

304 pages | 8 hrs and 16 mins | Lied

Robert Greene’s and 50 Cent’s The 50th Law

78. An Unlikely Prince: The Life and Times of Machiavelli by Niccolo Capponi

360 pages | 12 hrs and 12 mins |Lied

Niccolo Capponi’s An Unlikely Prince

77. The Campaigns of Alexander (Penguin Classics) by Arrian and J. R. Hamilton

432 pages | 11 hrs and 55 mins |Lied

Arrian’s The Campaigns of Alexander 

76. Abraham or Aristotle? First Millennium Empires and Exegetical Traditions: An Inaugural Lecture by the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths Given in the University of Cambridge by Garth Fowden

48 pages |  | Read

Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths Garth Fowden’s inaugural lecture “Abraham or Aristotle? First Millennium Empires and Exegetical Traditions”

75. Civil Disobedience and Other Essays (Dover Thrift Editions) by Henry David Thoreau

159 pages | 4 hrs | 1 hr | Read

Henry David Thoreau’s On Civil Disobedience

74. Plutarch Lives, VII, Demosthenes and Cicero. Alexander and Caesar (Loeb Classical Library) (Volume VII) by Plutarch and Bernadotte Perrin

640 pages |  | Read

Plutarch Lives, VII, Demosthenes and Cicero. Alexander and Caesar. covers two of the most celebrated speakers and two of the most memorable military men in history. Demosthenes was perhaps the most celebrated speaker of Ancient Greece and Cicero of Ancient Rome. Alexander was perhaps the most memorable military man of Ancient Greece and Caesar of Ancient Rome. Cicero and Caesar were ruthless rivals at the Roman Republic’s end. Demosthenes and Cicero both rapidly rose in the ranks of their respective societies by their speaking skills. Alexander extended the empire of Greece, Caesar that of Rome. Demosthenes’s and Cicero’s speeches are scrupulously studied to this day as models of excellence.

73. The Book of Knowledge: Book 1 of The Revival of the Religious Sciences (The Fons Vitae Al-Ghazali Series) by Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali (Author), Kenneth Honerkamp (Translator)

336 pages |  | 21 hrs and 34 mins | Lied

Al-Ghazali’s The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iḥiyāʾ ʿulūm ad-dīn) is al-Ghazali’s magnum opus. The opening book of Al-Ghazali’s Iḥiyāʾ, The Book of Knowledge (Kitab al-‘Ilm) deals with knowledge

72. Jung: A Very Short Introduction by Anthony Stevens

196 pages | 3 hrs and 52 mins | Lied

Anthony Stevens’ Jung: A Very Short Introduction didn’t disappoint. It was as thorough as all the other books in the series I’ve read (which is always surprising considering they’re all “Very Short Introduction[s]”). I’m ready to tackle some of Jung’s own writings now. I think I’ll start with Judith Harris’ The Quotable Jung to continue to get the broadest exposure to his ideas in a single book.

71. True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart by Thich Nhat Hanh

120 pages | 1 hr and 28 mins | Lied

Thich Nhat Hanh’s True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart ties mantras and meditation to meaningfully meeting your own heart’s and your sweetheart’s most deepest desire for true love.

70. Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers

96 pages | 1 hr and 30 mins | Lied

Derek Sivers’ Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneuer is an unusual book by an unusual entrepreneur: one who ddin’t want his company to grow — one who understood that the key to a successful company is to focus first on keeping the customer satisfied, not on making more money at the cost of customer satisfaction. I’ve found in my own experience by making the mistake of putting profit above customer satisfaction that it paradoxically doesn’t pay as much as the inverse.

69. Tao Te Ching: A New English Version (Perennial Classics) by Lao Tzu and Stephen Mitchell

144 pages | 1 hr and 41 mins |Lied

Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching translated by Stephen Mitchell is a gem like all of Mitcell’s translations or versions of classics I’ve read: Genesis, Job, selections from the Psalms, the Gilgamesh, The Iliad, and The Odyssey. Mitchell is a prodigious poet whose prose is even poetic. After reading Mithcell’s version, I’m looking forward to The Essential Tao by Thomas Cleary and the version of the Tao Te Ching by Stanley Lombardo. All three translators are consummate poets and translators and all are well-versed in Zen.

68. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

304 pages | 7 hrs and 44 mins | Lied

Cal Newport’s Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by first broke through the social-media-induced distraction that made it hard for me to finish 52 books last year and came to my attention via The Art of Manliness blog, if I remember correctly. The author’s two TED Talks, “Quit Social Media” and “‘Follow Your Passion’ is Bad Advice” on also came to my attention around the same time. This book lays out a compelling case for quitting social media and more and doing deep work that matters and makes a difference in delivering value in one’s career and in the wider world.

67. Concise Art of Seduction by Robert Greene

224 pages | 5 hrs and 9 mins | Lied

Robert Greene’s Concise Art of Seduction served me as an introduction to and preparation for The Art of Seduction, of which it is an abridgment. After finishing The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery by the same author, I couldn’t decide whether to start The Art of Seduction or The 33 Strategies of War next, so I decided to start with the abridgments of each to help me  make the decision. Whichever I go with, I will be glad to have gone through the abridged and unabridged edition of both in the end since Greene’s subject matter and writing are always compelling enough to read and reread again.

66. The Niche of Lights (Brigham Young University – Islamic Translation Series) by Al-Ghazali (Author), David Buchman

80 pages |  | Read

I’m centireading this. As esoteric as it is, it is necessary to centiread it to successfully psyche it. It’s a Sufi exegesis of the Qurʾanic Light Verse and Prophetic Veils Hadith, both of which are mysteriously mystical and scintillatingly seductive — especially to an orientalist scholar interested in Sufi exegesis, especially that of a philosopher-theologian who has sworn off Neoplatonism then seemingly used it.

65. Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life by Gary John Bishop

224 pages | 3 hrs and 23 mins | Lied

Gary John Bishop’s Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life goes over seven assertions guaranteed to “get you out of your head and into your life” if you will live by them:

I am willing
I am wired to win
I got this
I embrace the uncertainty
I am relentless
I expect nothing and accept everything

64. Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli in His World by Erica Benner

384 pages | 13 hrs and 30 mins | Lied

Erica Benner’s Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli in His World is an intimate portrait of Machiavelli, who is assumed by those who ignore the context of his well-known but not well-understood The Prince to be Machiavellian when he is not. Benner contextualizes The Prince, revealing a master of rhetoric. I look forward to reading her Machiavelli’s Prince: A New Reading and Machiavelli’s Ethics. Benner’s work first came to my attention when search YouTube for lectures on Machiavelli, where I found her panel discussion “Is Machiavelli a Moralist or a Realist.” I also found Maurizio Viroli, whose How to Read Machiavelli I’ve also reviewed here. I look forward to reading his Niccolo’s Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli, as well as his Machiavelli (Modern Social & Political Philosophies). Both Benner and Viroli paint a picture of a sly-as-fox un-Machiavellian Machiavelli who is up to something other than what he appears to be up to in writing The Prince. I recommend reading both scholars to learn what.

63. The March Up Country: A Translation of Xenophon’s Anabasis (Ann Arbor Paperbacks) by Xenophon and W.H.D. Rouse

224 pages | 7 hrs and 32 mins | Lied

Xenophon’s The March Up Country or Anabasis is the tale of the march up country of the Ancient Greek general Xenophon and his 10,000 mercenaries in the despearate attempt to flee from their employer Cyrus’ brother Ataxerxes after they fail in their attempt to assist the former in dethroning the latter. My favorite line comes when those left (not all then thousand make it) first see the sea: “Thalatta! Thalatta!” (“The sea! The Sea!). It is only then that they knew they were escaping Persia.

62. Mastery by Robert Greene

352 pages | 16 hrs and 9 mins | Lied

Robert Greene’s Mastery is a consummate work on what it takes to become a master at one’s craft. Full of the usual illustrations from the illustrious lives of masters past and present, it delights while it informs. Success leaves clues and Greene is a Sherlock when it comes to picking up on them. As I understand it, he reads approximately 200 books per year to write the books he writes. In this one, he brings to bear that restless research (Greene really does wrestle restlessly when writing a book), delivering detailed step-by-step instructions on how to follow the masters to become one yourself.

61. The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

452 pages | 23 hrs and 6 mins | Lied

Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power has been sitting on my bookshelf mostly unread since 1998, the year it was published. I read a few chapters in it back in 1998; in fact, I remember reading in it at Starbucks at a Barnes & Noble store in Houston before buying it from Amazon and shipping it to my grandmother’s in Baltimore while living in Houston. I don’t even remember what I was doing in at my grandmother’s! The author, Robert Greene, recently came to my attention again via his protégé, Ryan Holiday. Greene’s books, have all been international bestsellers:  The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law (with rapper 50 Cent) and Mastery. Holiday has followed in his footsteps.

The 48 Laws of Power is a Machiavellian book in the popular sense and has given its author a similar reputation for writing it, but Machiavelli wasn’t Machiavellian in the popular sense, and neither is Greene. That said, Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power is a lot like Machiavelli’s The Prince. Greene follows a simple formula in writing his books: He chooses a topic to write on, reads 200-300 biographies looking for examples, takes notes on them, and weaves his notes into a book. Holiday has done the same and found the same success. The result, generally speaking, in the case of both authors, has been internationals bestsellers for each author every time he writes a book. In the case of The 48 Laws of Power in particular, the result is 48 principles exemplified by famous people in history who have kept or violated those principles and the results in terms of power gained or lost.

60. A Blue Fire by James Hillman and Thomas Moore

336 pages | 5 hrs and 53 mins | Lied

James Hillman and Thomas Moore’s A Blue Fire

59. The Soul’s Code by James Hillman

352 pages |  | Lied

James Hillman’s The Soul’s Code

58. The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life by Thomas Moore

416 pages |  | 2 hrs and 49 mins | Lied

Thomas Moore’s The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life

57. The Artist’s Way: 25th Anniversary Edition by Julia Cameron

272 pages | 3 hrs and 6 mins | Lied

Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way

56. Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics) by Peter F. Drucker

72 pages | 44 mins | Lied

Peter F. Drucker’s Managing Oneself

55. Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship by Thomas Moore

304 pages | 10 hrs and 37 mins | 2 hrs and 55 mins | Lied

Thomas Moore’s Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship

54. Care of the Soul, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Ed: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life by Thomas Moore

352 pages | 12 hrs and 17 mins | Lied

Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul

53. A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine

336 pages | 8 hrs and 3 mins | Read

William B. Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy 

52. A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change by John Glassie

352 pages |  | Read

John Glassie’s A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change 

51. How to Read Machiavelli by Maurizio Viroli

128 pages |  | Read

Maurizio Viroli’s How to Read Machiavelli

50. Filone, l’eredità del Tardo Antico e la formazione dell’Islam (Italian Edition) by Massimo Campanini

32 pages |  | Read

Massimo Campani’s Filone, l’eredità del Tardo Antico e la formazione dell’Islam came to my attention while searching for Campanini’s translation of al-Ghazali’s Mizan al-‘Amal, La bilancia dell’azione e altri scritti (Italian Edition) and immediately piqued my interest as its topic is the formation of Islam in the context of late antiquity, a topic on which I’ve read, watched lectures on YouTube, and thought a lot over the course of this year, and its author known and trusted by me. As soon as I saw it, I bought it without a second thought and without noticing its length was only 28 pages. Now that I’ve read it, I’m once again reminded that page counts don’t tell much as all pages are not created equal. This book/lecture (I should have noticed “Lectures on Philo” emblazoned on the title in plain English when I was buying it, but I didn’t) packs a punch in its paltry 28 pages. Campanini cites almost all of the sources I’ve either read or seen cited in my research on of the formation of Islam in the context of late antiquity over the course of this year. Campanini dismisses any direct influence of Philo on the formation of Islam, but considers the possibility of indirect influence. As for the sources he cites on the formation of Islam in the context of late antiquity with skepticism toward traditional Islamic sources on the formation of Islam, he is skeptical and points out that we have no more reason to trust Christian or Jewish sources than Islamic.

49. The Education of Cyrus (Agora Editions) by Xenophon (Author) and Wayne Ambler (Translator)

336 pages |  | Read

Wayne Ambler’s translation of Xenophon’s The Education of Cyrus

48. Giordano Bruno: Philosopher / Heretic by Ingrid D. Rowland

352 pages |  | Read

Ingrid D. Rowland’s Giordano Bruno: Philosopher / Heretic

47. How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers) by Seneca (Author), James S. Romm (Editor, Introduction)

245 pages | 2 hrs and 29 mins | Lied

How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life

46. Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour

272 pages |  | Read

Louis L’Amour’s Education of a Wandering Man cam to my attention thanks to The Art of Manliness. I don’t remember whether I first read “How and Why to Become a Lifelong Learner” and clicked through to “The Libraries of Famous Men: Louis L’Amour,” or whether I first read another in the “The Libraries of Famous Men” series. Regardless, I recommend reading all of the above and L’Amour’s book. It is one of my favorite books.

45. How to Win an Argument: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Persuasion (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers) by Marcus Cicero and James May

288 pages | 3 hrs and 3 mins | Lied

How to Win an Argument

44. L’ignoto ignoto (Italian Edition) by Mark Forsyth

28 pages |  | Read

I picked up this book at the cash wrap at La Feltrinelli bookshop in Messina, Sicily last June when I was buying an Italian translation of a Greek or Roman Classic in an inexpensive paperback edition with the original Greek or Latin facing the translation. I bought a few while touring Italy last June as there is no such thing as an inexpensive edition of a Greek or Roman Classic (whether paperback or hardcover) including the original Greek or Latin text in the US. The title (actually, the subtitle) caught my attention. I also bought a copy for my friend, Travis, thinking he’d like it. He said he did. I don’t recall whether I noticed at the time I bought it whether I took notice of the Anglo name of the author. It turned out to be a translation of an essay originally written in English: The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the delight of not getting what you wanted. At any rate, I must either not have noticed, I wanted to read it in Italian, or I wanted the delight of not getting what I wanted (or, at least) of getting what I wanted and a little something extra. I love the serendipity of finding something I wasn’t looking for while shopping at a bookshop, the subject of this essay. I guess I couldn’t resist. I’m glad I bought it. Travis wasn’t the only one who like it. I liked it too. And I love La Feltrinelli bookshops!

43. The Unknown Unknown by Mark Forsyth

27 pages |  | Read

Mark Forsyth’s The Unknown Unknown

42. A Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property by Butler Shaffer

60 pages |  | Read

Butler Shaffer’s A Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property

41. From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy: A Tale of Moral and Economic Folly and Decay by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

70 pages |  | Read

Hans Hermann-Hoppe’s From Aristocracy to Democracy: A Tale of Moral and Economic Folly and Decay

40. Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger

304 pages | 4 hrs and 52 mins | Lied

Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger’s Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History is amateurish.

39. Jefferson and the Rights of Man (Jefferson and His Time, Vol. 2) by Dumas Malone

523 pages | 18 hrs and 56 mins | Lied

Dumas Malone’s Jefferson and the Rights of Man (Jefferson and His Time, Vol. 2)

38. Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher by Jon Meacham

336 pages | 4 hrs and 55 mins | Lied

Jon Meacham’s Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher

37. How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness by Russ Roberts

272 pages | 5 hrs and 29 mins | Lied

Russ Roberts’ How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness 

36. Hadrian’s Wall by Adrian Goldsworthy

192 pages | 3 hrs and 14 mins | Lied

Adrian Goldsworthy’s Hadrian’s Wall

35. How to Run a Country: An Ancient Guide for Modern Leaders by Marcus Tullius Cicero and Philip Freeman

152 pages | 1 hr and 17 mins | Lied

Phillip Freeman’s How to Run a Country consists of carefully selected excerpts from and illustrative of Marcus Tullius Cicero’s political writings.

34. How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians by Quintus Cicero and Philip Freeman

128 pages | 1 hr and 5 mins | Lied

Phillip Freeman’s How to Win an Election is a translation of Marcus Tullius Cicero’s brother Quintus Cicero’s letter to Marcus, a little-known text called the Commentariolum Petitionis, on the occasion of Marcus running for the Roman consulship (the highest office in the Roman Republic).

33. A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around by Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell

336 pages | 9 hrs and 10 mins | Lied

Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell’s A Mind at Home with Itself is a translation of and commentary on the Diamond Sūtra, a Mahāyāna (Buddhist) sūtra from the Prajñāpāramitā genre of sutras, meaning “Perfection of Wisdom.”

32. The Aeneid (Penguin Classics) by Virgil (Author), Bernard Knox (Editor, Introduction), Robert Fagles (Translator)

496 pages | 12 hrs and 26 mins | Lied

Virgil’s Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas who, after fleeing the fall of Troy, founded Rome.

31. Aristotle: Problems, Volume II: Books 20-38. Rhetoric to Alexander (Loeb Classical Library) by Aristotle (Author), Robert Mayhew (Translator), David C. Mirhady (Translator)

672 pages |  | Read

The Rhetorica ad Alexandrum is a Pseudo-Aristotelian treatise on rhetoric now generally believed to be the work of Anaximenes of Lampsacus but still included in the traditional corpus of Aristotle’s work. It is shorter and more practical than Aristotle’s longer, more theoretical Rhetoric.

30. An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn

320 pages | 10 hrs and 37 mins | Lied

Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic is a memoir of the odyssey of the author’s eighty-one-year-old father attending the undergraduate Odyssey seminar he teaches at Bard and of the two traveling together on a cruise retracing Odysseus’s trip home from Troy.

29. The Persian Wars, Volume IV: Books 8-9 (Loeb Classical Library)

432 pages | 27 hrs and 58 mins | Lied/Read

Books 8-9 of Herodotus’s The Persian Wars

28. Herodotus, Books V-VII: The Persian Wars (Loeb Classical Library) (Volume III)

592 pages |  | Lied/Read

Books V-VII of Herodotus’s The Persian Wars

27. The Persian Wars, Volume II: Books 3-4 (Loeb Classical Library)

448 pages |  | Lied/Read

Books 3-4 of Herodotus’s The Persian Wars

26. The Persian Wars, Volume I: Books 1-2 (Loeb Classical Library)

528 pages |  | Lied/Read

Books 1-2 of Herodotus’s The Persian Wars

25. The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance by Paul Strathern

464 pages | 16 hrs and 21 mins | Lied

Paul Strathern’s The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance covers not only the Medici, but the figures surrounding them—figures like Leonardo DaVinci, Marsilio Ficino, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Girolamo Savonarola—and the interactions between them that make up the story of the Italian Renaissance. One of the most interesting among the interactions among these figures Strathern covers is the collaboration between DaVinci and Machiavelli to divert the Arno river from its course to leave Florence’s rival city Pisa high and dry. This quite quixotic project ultimately failed leaving both men in pubic disfavor, resulting in the self-imposed exile of DaVinci from Florence, leading him ultimately to broader horizons elsewhere, and Machiavelli’s self-imposed absence from public life during which he wrote his most famous political treatise, The Prince.

24. How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life by Massimo Pigliucci

288 pages | 6 hrs and 35 mins | Lied

Massimo Pigliucci’s How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life first came to my attention right before my last trip to Europe to lead the Leisure Learning Italy 2017 Educational Tour. The book was scheduled to be released while I was in Italy. I was browsing the Feltrinelli book store at the Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence when I saw an Italian translation of the book for sale a couple of days before the release date for the original in the US. Pigliucci is Italian, raised in Rome, but lives and teaches in the US. I bought the translation at a new arrival discount and started reading it. I read in it while training around Italy and cruising the Mediterranean with ports of call in Italy, France, Spain, Sardinia, and Malta.

Though I had read more than half of the Italian translation, Como Essere Stoici: Riscoprire La Spirutalità dei Classici per Vivere una Vita Moderna, before returning home, once I got home, I got caught up in my day-to-day life and didn’t finish it. Meanwhile, I had bought the English translation online from Amazon.com the day it was released, while still in Italy and it was waiting for me when I got home. I started over from the beginning in the original English and finished it in two days. It was okay, but I’d rather read Epictetus’ Enchiridion than Pigliucci’s commentary on it. Especially when all he had to add to Epictetus’ Stoicism was atheism, Darwinism, “modern psychology,” and “modern science.” Epictetus knew more about ultimate reality and human psychology than Pigliucci. Nevertheless, I’ll probably finish reading the Italian translation before I lead the Leisure Learning Italy 2018 Educational Tour this spring.

23. Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by Tom Holland

464 pages | 14 hrs 51 mins | Lied

Tom Holland’s Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West was brought to my attention by my good friend and mentor and fellow bibliophile, Jabra Ghneim. He mentioned it to me when I told him I was reading Holland’s In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, which first came to my attention when I came across Holland’s Rancho Mirage Writer’s Festival lecture, “The Origins of Islam” on YouTube in the course of my research into revisionist Islamic history contradicting traditional Islamic history, which I’ve also been researching. I’ve since read Holland’s Rubicon: The Last Days of the Republic and Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar. Jabra also recommended Holland’s The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West and Athelstan: The Making of England. I also intend to read Holland’s translation of Herodotus’ The Histories after learning about it recently from Holland’s Hay Festival lecture, “Tom Holland on Hertodotus’ Histories” on YouTube. I’m torn between The Forge of Christendom and Herodotus!

Like Herodotus in The Histories, it takes Holland half of Persian Fire to get to the Persian wars. He first covers the Khorasan Highway, Babylon, Sparta, and Athens in chapters by the same names to give the background necessary for understanding the Persian wars like Herodotus spent half of The Histories telling stories of his travels inquiring into the cause of the same himself. Holland comprehends all of Herodotus and more.

22. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

224 pages | 4 hrs and 50 mins | Lied

Peter Thiel and Blake Master’s Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future is more than just another startup book. For Thiel, startups are about the kind of innovation that leads to transcendent technological advancement, ultimately transcending life on earth and death itself. Thiel wants to revive the spirit of his and my youth when we expected our futures to include flying cars. He laments we’ve settled for smartphones.

21. Rhetoric by Aristotle

192 pages | 13 hrs 28 mins | Lied/Read

Aristotle’s Rhetoric ranks among the earliest extant writings on the art of persuasion, preceded only by those of Gorgias (not extant), Plato’s Gorgias (ca. 425 BCE) and those of Isocrates (fl. 390-338 ) (also not extant) on the subject, and is the first systematic treatment of it. In it, Aristotle lays out three steps or “offices” of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, and style. These will later be codified, with three more, as “the five canons of rhetoric:” inventio (invention), dispositio (arrangement), elocutio (style), memoria (memorization), and pronuntiatio (delivery) in Roman rhetoric. He also lays out three modes of persuasion: ethos (character), logos (reasoning) and pathos (appeal to emotions). He emphasizes enthymematic reasoning, whereby the rhetorician uses syllogisms sans major or minor premise to be easily filled in by his audience, who by easily filling in the missing premise is thereby persuaded. Finally, he identifies three genres of rhetoric: Forensic or judicial (dealing with the past), deliberative or political (dealing with the future), and epideictic or ceremonial (dealing with the present). Prosecuting, lawmaking, and toasting or eulogizing, respectively, are examples of each genre.

20. Poetics by Aristotle

64 pages |  | Lied/Read

Aristotle’s Poetics is the playbook for storytelling and the playbook hasn’t changed since he wrote it, so if you’re a storyteller or want to be and you haven’t read it, it could make a significant impact on your storytelling. Anything written on the subject after it, is a mere shadow of Aristotle.

19. The Jefferson Bible by Thomas Jefferson

160 pages | 2 hrs 38 mins | Lied

Jefferson’s The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, the title Jefferson gave “The Jefferson Bible” is the result of a cut-and-paste job whereby Jefferson, a self-avowed Epicurean (read deist, not atheist), “an Abstract from the Evangelists of whatever has the stamp of the eloquence and fine imagination of Jesus.” and “abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by it’s lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dung hill,” to get at “the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man: outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up.”

18. Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday

336 pages | 11 hrs and 39 mins | Lied

Ryan Holiday’s Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue

17. Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City by Paul Strathern

448 pages | 14 hrs and 28 mins | Lied

Paul Strathern’s Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City showed up in my Amazon search for books on the Medici along with Strathern’s other book on the Medici, The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance by Paul Srathern. After watching PBS’ “The Medici: Godfather’s of the Renaissance,” and reading Christopher Hibbert’s The House of Medici: It’s Rise and Fall, I wanted to know more about the Medici and Savonarola. I was delighted to learn that the focus of this book is Savonarola and I was equally delighted to learn that Strathern’s other book on the Medici I also intend to read may have been the basis of the above-mentioned PBS documentary. I’d also like to read Lauro Martines’ Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence as my interest in Savonarola was perhaps only deepened by my close contact with him through Paul Strathern’s Death in Florence. I look forward to it!

Part of what makes Savonarola such an intriguing character is the company he kept. He was in close contact with Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, two of the greatest minds of his time. Also of interest are his own ideas and writings, including democratic ideals and a treatise on political science, 15 years before Machiavelli wrote what is considered the first treatise on political science. Also intriguing is how his ideas went so wrong. On the one hand, he is said to have freed Florence from tyrannical Medici rule instituting a republican utopia; on the other hand, this eventually transformed into a religious fundamentalist dystopia banning and burning the art of Botticelli among others. In addition to being a political scientist ahead of Machiavelli, who is considered the first, Savonarola was also a reformer ahead of Luther, who acknowledged this. It’s never as easy as you’d think to label good guys and bad in the story of Savonarola’s struggle for power with the Medici and the Catholic Church.

16. Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar by Tom Hollland

512 pages | 16 hrs and 5 mins | Lied

Tom Holland’s Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar was the obvious next book to read after finishing his Rubicon: The Last Days of the Republic. Rubicon was recommended to me by my good friend and business partner, Travis Patten. As is indicated in its subtitle, Dynasty covers the Julio-Claudian Dynasty: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero (27 BCE to 68 CE). As usual, Holland’s account reads like a novel yet is well-researched and documented. His sources are authoritative and he is an authority in his own right. As for the Dynasty itself, it goes from bad to worse, starting with Augustus’s excesses and ending with Nero’s neuroses. I’m not sure why Gibbon’s Decline and Fall doesn’t begin with Augustus.

15. Rubicon: The Last Days of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland

464 pages | 16 hrs and 5 mins | Lied

Tom Holland’s Rubicon: The Last Days of the Roman Republic was recommended to me by my good friend and business partner, Travis Patten. He told me it was the best book on the end of the Roman Republic. At the time, I had read Rome’s Last Citizen, another book on the subject, though technically a biography of Stoic Sage Cato the Younger, and Travis hadn’t. I recommended Rome’s Last Citizen to him. Unsurprisingly, given Rome’s Last Citizen‘s focus, though the dramatis personae of both books are the same, Cato included, Rubicon covers the period in more depth and detail.

14. The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall by Christopher Hibbert

364 pages | 11 hrs and 16 mins | Lied

Christopher Hibbert’s The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall was one of a few books on the Medici I found in a search for books on the Renaissance Florence banking family after watching PBS’ “The Medici: Godfather’s of the Renaissance,” including the book the PBS documentary was based on, The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance by Paul Srathern. I recognized the author from his biography Queen Victoria: A Personal History, which is on my to-read list along with A.N. Wilson’s Victoria: A Life and Julia Baird’s Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire. Hibbert’s one-volume The House of Medici was an excellent introduction to the Medici. I look forward to reading Paul Stathern’s Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City and The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance, one of which (probably the latter) I suspect is the same book as The Medici: Godfather’s of the Renaissance under a different title.

13. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard

608 pages | 18 hrs and 30 mins | Lied/Read

Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome was recommended to my by my good friend and Positive Forces Project co-founder, Shiloh Logan; as well as by my good friend and Leisure Learning co-founder, Travis Patten. It is an excellent one-volume history of Rome covering Rome from its founding myths to Caracalla’s 212 CE edict granting of citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire, which Beard considers Rome’s end, or at least the beginning of it. Beard spends half the book from the founding myths to Julius Caesar, beginning at the time of Catiline’s conspiracy and looking backward to the founding, and the other half from Augustus to Caracalla. As is characteristic of Beard, she covers not only the Roman patricians, but also the plebs, giving her reader a sense of a street-level view of everyday Roman life the way she does in her BBC Two documentary, Meet the Romans.

12. Concise 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

208 pages | 9 hrs and 52 mins | Lied

Robert Greene’s Concise 48 Laws of Power jumped out at me at Heathrow Airport in London where I had a layover on my way home from a tour of Italy, France, Spain, Sardinia, and Malta due to it’s familiar cover design and title (The “The Concise” part was so small I didn’t even notice it). Greene’s 48 Laws of Power had been sitting on my one of my bookshelves mostly unread since I purchased it from Amazon after starting to read it at the Starbucks in the Barnes & Noble across from The Galleria in my then uptown Houston neighborhood. Once I had figured out what it was I was holding in my hands (The Concise 48 Laws of Power), I had to have it. I could read it first, I told myself, then finish The 48 Laws of Power. I searched Amazon for concise editions of all the rest of Robert Greene’s books upon my return home and found and purchased all of them. They are a great way to taste Robert Greene’s masterful art of book writing and Joost Elffers’s masterful art of book design. The Concise 48 Laws of Power served me of a reminder of why I was attracted to Greene’s writing and Elffers’s design in the first place. Both are aesthetically pleasing.

11. Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power by Ross King

256 pages | 7 hrs and 11 mins | Lied

Ross King’s Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power packs a punch. Machiavelli’s multifaceted milieu and multifarious mischief made me marvel. King covers this stormy, controversial Renaissance-Italy purveyor of power politics with aplomb despite the sometimes confusing contradictions of a man equally at home in Florentine palaces and brothels, machinating and moralizing, weak and strong. King’s Machiavelli delivers in short-order.

10. In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire by Tom Holland

560 pages | 18 hrs and 11 mins | Lied

Tom Holland’s In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire covers the rise of Islam and its rapid expansion from a historical perspective that questions traditional Islamic history while drawing on the best late antique history available. In covering the subject of this book, Holland contextualizes his revisionist Arab-Islamic history in late-antique Roman and Persian history, two civilizations he has covered in his other books, Persian Fire, Rubicon, and Dynasty. In the Shadow of the Sword first came to my attention through Holland’s Rancho Mirage Writer’s Festival lecture, “The Origins of Islam” on YouTube. The lecture is controversial, as is the book.

9. Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts and Timothy Ferriss

240 pages | 4 hrs and 9 mins | Lied

Vagabonding is a great book and vagabonding is a great lifestyle. I’ve had the opportunity twice to live this lifestyle while studying Arabic in at the University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan in the summer of 2008 and at Damascus University (briefly) and with private tutors (mostly) in Damascus, Syria in the summer of 2010. My 2008 three-month stay in Jordan included a ten-day tour of Egypt on my way to Jordan, a ten-day tour of Israel and Palestine during a break from my studies in Jordan, and an overnight layover in Cairo, Egypt on my way back home. My 2010 three-month stay in Syria included a tour of sites in Jordan I hadn’t seen while living there in 2008 on my way to Syria and a tour of Syria before heading back home. I toured Syria again in January of 2011 with my wife. We saw the Arab Spring erupt in Tunisia from Hama and in Egypt from JFK on TV.

8. Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts by Ryan Holiday

256 pages | 7 hrs | Lied

Ryan Holiday’s sixth book, Perennial Seller, is a book on books, as well as other crafts, that sell perennially and how to create and market them.

7. Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

304 pages | 6 hrs and 13 mins | Lied

Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals covers the daily rituals of 161 of the world’s most famous architects, choreographers, composers, filmmakers, painters, philosophers, playwrights, poets, scientists, sculptors, and writers in approximately one and a half pages each with an aim toward capturing the commonalities of creatives. Easy to pick up and put down, Daily Rituals was a fun read. The one story that stood out most in Currey’s collection of creatives’ daily rituals and eccentricities was Frank Lloyd Wright’s. Wright, writes Currey, never sketched anything till completely conceived in his psyche. He didn’t begin sketching his architectural masterwork, Fallingwater, until his client called to say he’d

6. The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin

288 pages | 7 hrs and 55 mins | Lied

Josh Waitzkin honed The Art of Learning first as an eight-time national chess champion child prodigy subject of Searching for Bobby Fisher, then as a thirteen-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands national champion and two-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands world champion. The art of learning can be learned and taught and Waitzkin not only teaches it, but teaches how to learn it. He guides his reader step by step through the process telling his story along the way. The Art of Learning is a Tim Ferriss Book Club selection, which isn’t surprising considering it’s about mastering learning. Josh Waitzkin is not only a master of The Art of Learning, but also a master storyteller. His book was as entertaining as it was enlightening. As a college writing instructor, I’ll be using the story Waitzkin tells at the beginning of Chapter 15: The Power of Presence as an example of the art of storytelling. Whether you’re interested in learning chess or Tai Chi Chuan in particular, or learning in general, Waitzkin’s book will not disappoint.

5. Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar by Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni

384 pages | 13 hrs and 9 mins | Lied

Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni’s Rome’s Last Citizen is the first full-length biography of Cato the Younger and covers many important events in late Roman Republic history all occurring in Cato’s lifetime and in all of which Cato was involved: The rise of Pompey, the rise of Cicero, the rise of Caesar, the fall of Cicero, the fall of the Roman Republic, and the rise of the Roman Empire. Also covered is the legacy of Cato down through the centuries from the Roman Stoics to the American Revolutionaries who saw him as a Sage.

4. The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and Life by Leo Babauta

192 pages | 3 hrs and 54 mins | Read

Leo Babauta’s The Power of Less contains clutter-cutting counsel, habit-honing help, and power-producing principles for living life with less.

3. The Niche Of Lights (Brigham Young University – Islamic Translation Series) by Al-Ghazali and David Buchman

80 pages |  | Read

Al-Ghazali’s The Niche of Lights is a book-length Sufi exegesis on the Light Verse, one of the Qur’an’s most enigmatic, and the Veils Hadith. The Light Verse reads in Cleary’s translation:

God is the light
of the heavens and the earth.
The simile of God’s light
is like a niche in which is a lamp,
the lamp in a globe of glass,
the globe of glass as if it were a shining star,
lit from a blessed olive tree
neither of the East nor of the West,
its light nearly luminous
even if fire did not touch it.
Light upon light
whomever God will:
and God gives people examples;
and God knows all things.

The Veils Hadith reads in David Buchman’s traslation: “God has seventy veils of light and darkness; where he to lift them, the august glories of His face would burn up everyone whose eysight perceived Him.”

The author of this exegesis is the second most important figure in the Islamic tradition after the Prophet Muhammad, and one of the mot important figures in all of intellectual history, being known in the Islamic tradition as Hujjat al-Islam (The Proof of Islam) and being in the Western tradition an acknowledged intellectual influence on St. Thomas Aquinas, who knew him by his Latinized name, Algazel. Interestingly, while al-Ghazali seems to have rejected Neoplatonism in his The Incoherence of the Philosophers, this work seems to be Neoplatonic.

2. The Alchemy of Happiness (Sources and Studies in World History) by Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali

160 pages |  | Read

Al-Ghazali’s The Alchemy of Happiness is n Sufi work on religious ethics by the second most important figure in the Islamic tradition after the Prophet Muhammad himself, and an acknowledged intellectual influence on St. Thomas Aquinas. Known in the Latin tradition as Algazel, al-Ghazali, in turn, shows clear Aristotelian influence in The Alchemy of Happiness, as well as in his philosophical ethics, his Mizan al-‘Amal (The Criterion of Action). This edition is an abridged English translation made by Claude Field from the original Persian. Al-Ghazali wrote this work in Persian for the uneducated masses. Arabic was the language of scholarship in al-Ghazali’s milieu and and that of most of his other works, his Mizan al-‘Amal included. This abridged translation of The Alchemy of Happiness is one of the books I cover in online Great Books discussions for Leisure Learning.

1. The Flowering of Muslim Theology by Josef van Ess and Jane Marie Todd

240 pages |  | Read

The Flowering of Muslim Theology by Josef Van Ess consists of a series of four lectures given by Professor van Ess at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris in 1998 with a fifth chapter and introduction added. It was originally published in French a Prémices de la théologie Musulmane in 2002. This English translation by Jane Marie Todd was published in 2006. This remarkable little book serves as an introduction to Professor van Ess’s masterwork Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. un 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra (Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra). I bought my copy of The Flowering of Muslim Theology in 2015 for $20.05 and hadn’t gotten around to reading it until now that I’m waiting for my copy of the English translation of Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. un 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra (Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra Volume 1) translated by John O’Kane and published in 2016 to arrive. I read it with interest in a couple of days.

Chapter 1: Theology in Its Own Eyes: Division and Heresy in Islam. Chapter 2: Theology and the Koran: The Mi’raj and the Debate on Anthropomorphism. Chapter 3: Theology and Science: Mu’tazilite Atomism. Chapter 4: Theology and Human Reality: Historical Images and Political Ideas. Chapter 5: Theology and Its Principles: Hermeneutics and Epistemology.

2017

45. Lucretius: On the Nature of Things (Loeb Classical Library No. 181) (Bks. 1-6) by Titus Lucretius Carus (Author), W.H.D. Rouse (Author), M.F. Smith (Author)

Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things is one of my favorite poems. This year, I started and ended the year reading it. I read the verse translation of Ian Johnston at the beginning of the year and this, the prose translation of W.H.D. Rouse at the end. The poetry of Lucretius’s original Latin comes through the English prose translation of Rouse. Johnston’s is my favorite verse translation and Rouse’s is my favorite prose translation. This Loeb Classical Library edition afforded me the opportunity to read the Latin whenever a particular passage tickled my fancy. I included passages that did in my commonplace blog, where you can read them, along with commonplaces from other translations. Lucretius is one of three philosophical poets, along with Dante and Goethe, as Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana pointed out in his book, Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe, Lucretius being the poet of the natural, Dante the supernatural, and Goethe the romantic.

44. After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton

Lesley Hazleton’s After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam is epic indeed! She begins with a brief biographical sketch of Muhammad familiar to anyone who has read her earlier book The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad. As in the story of Muhammad, Aisha, the Prophet’s second and most controversial wife, figures prominently in the epic story of the Shia-Sunni split, almost as prominently as Ali, the Prophet’s cousin, son-in-law, and adopted son, from whom the Shi’a derive their name, Shi’at Ali (the party of Ali), or Shi’a for short. Hazleton recounts the passing over of Ali as Caliph or successor (khalifa) to Muhammad as political leader of the Islamic community (Umma), first in favor of Abu Bakr, then Umar, then Uthman, before becoming the fourth of the Rightly Guided Caliphs (Rashidun) only to be assasinated like Umar and Uthman before him. Along the way, Hazleton describes in detail the Battle of the Camel, the first Fitna or Muslim civil war. After the assasination of Ali, Hazleton covers the martyrdom of his son, Hussein and the subsequent significance of both and of the entire ordeal of the passing-over of Ali in terms of the tension that tore and continues to tear apart an erstwhile united community and the politicization of succeeding the Prophet to this day. The Shia-Sunni split was the beginning of civil strife among Muslims that continues to this day and is exacerbated by the same political jockeying that brought it about 1,400 years ago, political jockeying that now involves Wahabbis and Washington, in addition to Shias and Sunnis.

43. Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy by Jonathan A.C. Brown

Jonathan A.C. Brown’s Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy is a tour de force! It is erudite and accesssible. It has breadth and depth. It is for the most part a treatment of the Hadith, or reports of the Prophets sayings and doings, and his Sunna, or practice. It covers the controversial nature of both, given the difficulty of the epistemology involved, as well as the penchant under political pressure for the forgery of Hadith. While, on the one hand, Brown is a believing Muslim, on the other hand, he is an objective scholar. He covers all of the most controversial topics in Hadith scholarship from flagrant forgery to pious pretension and everything in between. Brown gives us a sweeping sense of the turbulent tradition of Hadith scholarship while at the same time defending its soundness, without failing to admit its pitfalls and follies. Through his handling of the historiography and hagiography of Hadith scholarship and prophetic biography respectively, Brown adeptly demonstrates the development of orthodoxy through “the challenge and choices of interpreting the Prophet’s legacy” from the passing of the Prophet to the present. Among the most controversial issues in the Islamic tradition dealt with are child brides and wife beating. Brown’s handling of these and other controversial issues is even-handed and erudite, while evincing evidence of an ever-unfolding tradition.

42. The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) by Homer (Author) and Stephen Mitchell (Translator)

I didn’t like The Odyssey as much as The Iliad, but I did like Stephen Mitchell’s poetry, as I always do. I’ve read his translations of Gilgamesh, The Iliad, Genesis, Job, some of his Psalms, and some of his Rilke, and all of it has been good. He is one of my two favorite translators, the other being Thomas Cleary, who’s translation of the Qurʾan is one of the two best experiences of the poetry of the Qurʾan in English, the other being Shawkat Toorawa’s. Although I didn’t like The Odyssey as much as The Iliad, I am very much looking forward to the first translation of The Odyssey by a woman, Emily Wilson, but not until after I enjoy the first translation of the Virgil’s Aeneid by a woman, Sarah Ruden, first.

For those unfamiliar with The Odyssey, it is an account of the adventures of Odysseus, the hero of the Trojan War and artificer of the Trojan horse stratagem, on his way home from Troy and of his overcoming the many suitors seeking his wife’s hand to win her and his home back. The Trojan horse incident as well as the famous death of Achilles by an arrow to his heal is not found in The Odyssey, nor in The Iliad, but in The Trojan Epic or Posthomerica by Quintus Smyrnaeus. The Iliad covers the siege of Troy to win back Helen, who was taken there by Paris, a prince of Troy. As for whether Helen was taken by Paris to Troy by force or whether she went willingly, the story is variously told in other works of ancient literature.

While The Iliad is all about war, and includes serial scenes of slaughter, each warrior cut down in battle is given a human face and so the poem is more mournful than merely magnifying of martial virtue. In other words, The Iliad, contrary to popular belief, is best read an anti-war poem. The Odyssey, on the other hand glorifies the violence Odysseus commits in the end against his wife’s faceless suitors to win her back from them.

41. Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence by Gregory A. Boyd

Greg Boyd’s Cross Vision was recommended to me by my Positive Forces Project cofounder, Shiloh Logan. I will never read scripture the same way again after reading this book. Boyd’s “cruciform hermeneutic” attributes to man the biblical violence man attributes to God as it is not fitting Him who willingly gave up his life to overcome his enemies, rather than taking theirs. All the while, Boyd upholds the “God-breathed” (1 Tim 3:16) nature of the Bible, sidestepping the issue of its historicity, while arguing that we mistake in meting out moral judgment on God for the violence He does not commit, but that is imputed to him by prophets who, in their ancient context, don’t know any better, but only follow in the tradition of fathers. In their ancient contexts, the ancient Israelite prophets believed YHWH (usually translated “the Lord”) was their warrior god, just as neighboring tribes believed Baal (an honorific title meaning “Lord”) was theirs. God allows this injustice just as he allows His Son to be unjustly crucified, showing his true nonviolent nature in both cases. If you’re not sure how to reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New, this book is for you. Boyd also published The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Volumes 1 & 2, a more scholarly treatment, in the same year.

40. The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad by Lesley Hazleton

I discovered this book via the author’s excellent June 2013 TEDGlobal Talk, “The Doubt Essential to Faith.” Also excellent is her October 2010 TEDxRainier talk, “On Reading the Koran.” Her biography of the Prophet of Islam did not disappoint. I’m looking forward to her second book, After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam. Hazleton follows traditional Muslim biographer Ibn Ishaq closely, while giving her own analysis of the Prophet’s life. Hazleton is deft at handling all of the most sensitive subjects in the seerah (traditional Muslim biography of the Prophet), such as the Prophet’s marriage to his companion Abu Bakr’s daughter, Aisha, who was widely believed to have been only nine years old when her marriage to the Prophet was consummated, largely on her own account. Hazleton points out that Aisha giving this account is typical of her flair for frivolous flamboyance, by which she sought to distinguish herself from the Prophet’s other wives. The Prophets other wives is another subject Hazleton deals with deftly in defiance of age-old Western stereotypes of the Prophet’s plural marriages as profligacy, by pointing out that each of the Prophet’s marriages was to seal some alliance or another, not for personal pleasure. Overall, Hazleton’s biography of the Prophet was adroitly authored and accessible. I also recommend Daniel Peterson’s Muhammad, Prophet of God.

39. The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims by Mustafa Akyol

I came across this book at Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library while in the process of applying for a PhD program in Arabic and Islamic Studies at The Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, a study and research center in Rome. One of my mentors, Dr. Glen Cooper, who was in the process of writing me a letter of recommendation and helping me write my CV and Statement of Purpose had also recommended it to me. It sat on my desk throughout the application process and I only picked it up after I saw that the International Qur’anic Studies Association had just met for its annual conference and discussed the book with the author. I read it over the course of a weekend.

The subject of this book, the Islamic Jesus, is little-known by Muslims and less-known by non-Muslims. It has been the source of Christian-Muslim polemics for centuries. When Reza Aslan wrote Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, many wondered why he didn’t write a book on the Islamic Jesus. Mustafa Akyol has and it is well-written, well-researched, and well-documented. The book deals not only with the Islamic Jesus but, as hinted by its subtitle, with the Jewish and Christian Jesus as well. Akyol introduces Jacobite Christianity in James (James’ Aramaic name was Ya’acov), also known as Jewish Christianity, as opposed to Pauline Christianity in the epistles of Paul and traces Jewish Christianity to its apparent demise in the fifth century. He then argues for its rebirth through Islam in the seventh century and its rebirth in the West in the 1600’s in the Socianianism of the English Renaissance. Finally, based on the current situation of Muslims, which Akyol compares to the situation of the Jews at the time of the advent of Jesus, Akyol calls for Muslims to turn to Jesus’ example to solve Islam’s present problems.

38. Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk

While Gary Vee’s first book is quite outdated in terms of its specific recommendations, it is very much up-to-date in terms of the general principles it teaches. And while some say Gary Vee doesn’t know what he’s talking about, some of what he predicted about social media in his first book has come true and I find his message motivational as much as informational so that while it may fail correctly to inform, it never fails to motivate. I am a regular listener of Gary Vee’s podcast, which while often crude is highly motivational if not informational. I recommend this book to any aspiring entrepreneur who, like Gary Vee, wants to put family first and business second and “cash in on your passion.” Some find Gary Vee’s message of putting in insane hours off-putting, but I find it only realistic and consistent with the true meaning of passion (to suffer).

37. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable

Malcolm X is one of my greatest heroes. What I admire most about him is his tenacious spirit of kaizen (i.e. continuous improvement) and his adherence to truth as he knows it and openness to further truth and willingness to embrace it despite having invested so much of himself in what he may have believed to be true, but later discarded in favor of investing all of himself in newly embraced truth. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley by Malcolm X and Alex Haley is one of my favorite books. I’ve read and reread it with profit, especially Chapter 11: Saved, which details Malcolm X’s conversion to the Nation of Islam and his education; and Chapters 17-19, which detail his conversion to Sunni Islam.

Marable’s book is meant to add to and correct The Autobiography of Malcolm X, though it does more to add to it than to correct it and only often only offers speculation as a corrective. One way in which it simultaneously adds and corrects is by critically analyzing the construction of the narrative Malcolm X presents in The Autobiography. While I do not in any way object to this analysis, I do not take it as certain either. If anything, Marable’s thesis only further proves the genius of Malcolm the master rhetorician. The most significant way in which Marable’s book adds to The Autobiography is by providing context missing in (and extraneous to) it. Marable’s book is as much about the Civil Rights Movement and African-American Muslims in general as it is about Malcolm X in particular. One way in which Marable’s book attempts to correct The Autobiography is by pointing out apparent inconsistencies between the facts of Malcolm’s life as Marable sees them and as Malcolm tells them. In the end, even if Marable is right, Malcolm was not disingenuous in crafting The Autobiography, but was only a master rhetorician. Marable was only a historian.

36. Parmenides and Empedocles: The Fragments in Verse Translation by Stanley Lombardo

It is difficult to put into words how moving the poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles as rendered in verse by Stanley Lombardo is. Parmenides  gives an account of the nature of things that is an antithesis to Heraclitus‘ flux: “It is not possible to step twice into the same river according to Heraclitus, or to come into contact twice with a mortal being in the same state” (Plutarch). Parmenides presents an unchanging, wholistic view of the cosmos that explicitly mentions the opposite view as a false perception. Empedocles presents a synthesis of Heraclitus and Parmenides in which he relates the one to the many and the many to the one. Lombardo’s verse translation renders these two oft-misunderstood mystical poet-philosophers into English in their original poetic form so that they move the reader with their complementary if contradictory cosmic world views.

35. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondō

I was surprised by the depth and breadth of the insights I gained from Marie Kondō’s book. I’m pretty tidy, decluttered, and organized. Still, I found insights into the nature of the relationship in which I stand to the things I own such that I was able to gain a better appreciation for the few things I have (in addition to my books, of course) and a path to minimize and simplify more while appreciating what little I have or am left with.

34. Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World by Charles J. Chaput

This is the third book of its kind I’ve read this year, all three of them published this year, about a month apart from each other The other two are Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture by Anthony Esolen (published about a month earlier) and The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher (published about a month later). All three were intellectually stimulating in pointing out the corruption of Christian culture in America and in presenting solutions to the decay. Chaput’s was, perhaps, the most well-thought-out of the three for being less alarmist and most pragmatic. Still, I found value in reading all three and recommend all three for each author’s unique insights into and approach to the subject. I knew Esolen from his translations of Lucretius and Dante and Dreher from How Dante Can Save Your Life. I didn’t know Chaput but am glad to. I may read his Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life.

33. The Qur’an: A Biography (Books That Changed the World) by Bruce Lawrence

Lawrence begins with a brief biographical sketch of the prophet of Islam and the revelation of the Qur’an. That I expected from the title of his book. The rest was a pleasant surprise. Lawrence took me chapter by chapter through several classical, medieval, and modern metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political, and aesthetic interpretations of the Qur’an. If you’re not familiar with Qur’anic exegesis, you may be surprised to learn how wide and varied the interpretations of the Qur’an over the last 1,400 years have been. The interpretations included in Lawrence’s book range from Sufi mystics Ibn ‘Arabi and Rumi to Salafi jihadi Osama bin Laden. The aesthetical aspects of the Qur’an include Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, India’s Taj Mahal, and faith healing. The Qur’an has meant many different things to many different people in many different places.

32. Aeneid Book VI: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney

The English poetry of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid is superb! I read it aloud as I always do poetry and thoroughly enjoyed it! If you are unfamiliar with Book VI of the Aeneid, it is the story of Aeneas’ descent into the underworld. It compares to Odysseus’ descent into the underworld in Book XI of Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s in Canto X of Dante’s Inferno. In fact, Book VI of the Aeneid could be called “Virgil’s Inferno.” Would that Seamus Heaney had translated all of the Aeneid! Alas, he did not and since he passed in 2013, he cannot.

31. The Trial and Death of Socrates: Four Dialogues (Dover Thrift Editions) by Plato and Benjamin Jowett

Plato’s Socratic dialogues Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and the death scene from Phaedo are a great introduction to philosophy in general and Socrates (or at least Plato) in particular. The Jowett translation has been the standard translation for a century and is still readable despite its age. These four dialogues recount the last days of Socrates. In the Euthyphro, we meet Socrates on his way to his trial. In the Apology, we hear Socrates’ defense at his trial. In the Crito, Socrates, awaiting the execution of his death sentence in prison, turns down his friends’ offers of help escaping out of respect for the law, despite his unjust sentence. In the Phaedo, Socrates discusses the immortality of the soul with his friends and, in the end, calmly drinks the poison appointed him and dies. The questions Socrates raises and his martyrdom immortalized him.

30. The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher and Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture by Anthony Esolen both came to my attention around the same time before they were published. I knew I wanted to read them as soon as they were published. I knewDreher as the author of How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem, a memoir on Dante’s influence on Dreher and Esolen as a translator of and lecturer on (Catholic Courses) Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradise, as well as a translator of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things: De rerum natura. In The Benedict Option, Dreher dreadfully diagnoses the malady that ails America today, including it’s intellectual history, gives a poignant prognosis of it, and prescribes a contrarian cure to counter our current cultural carelessness. If you read only one of the two books (Dreher’s or Esolen’s), read Dreher’s. It describes in detail the problem and the solution.

29. Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture by Anthony Esolen

Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture by Anthony Esolen and The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher both came to my attention around the same time before they were published. I knew I wanted to read them as soon as they were published. I knew Esolen as a translator of and lecturer on (Catholic Courses) Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradise, as well as a translator of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things: De rerum natura, and Dreher as the author of How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem, a memoir on Dante’s influence on Dreher. In Out of the Ashes, Esolen issues a scathing critique of American culture or, rather, lack thereof since, Esolen argues, America has no culture, only mass habits and calls for a return to apple pie, baseball, and church. Esolen is not as detailed as Dreher in his diagnosis or treatment of the malady that ails America today, but is worth reading along with Dreher.

28. The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy by Heinrich A. Rommen

First published in German in 1936 and in English translation in 1947, Rommen’s book is a excellent primer on the natural law. This edition is a 1998 reprint published by Liberty Fund. In Part I, Rommen covers the history of the idea of natural law from Ancient Greece and Rome through the Age of Scholasticism, the turning point in Hugo Grotius, and the Age of Individualism and Rationalism to a turning away from natural law in favor of positivism. In Part II, Rommen argues that the idea of natural law is nevertheless perennial and is the only way positivism is legitimated. Rommen argues against the positivist view that will makes law in favor of the natural law view that truth makes law, while arguing against the rationalist individualist natural law of the Skeptics and Stoics in favor of the metaphysical natural law of St. Thomas Aquinas. It’s a tour de force.

27. I Need Your Love – Is That True?: How to Stop Seeking Love, Approval, and Appreciation and Start Finding Them Instead by Byron Katie

I love Byron Katie! And I love her husband, Stephen Mitchell! Her work is Buddhist. His is Taoist. They make a great couple! Like Loving What Is, I listened to the abridged edition of this book because it is narrated by Katie herself. Since the book is dialogue-based, and features Katie doing “The Work,” it has to be experienced in her own sweet voice. “The Work” is deceptively simple: “Judge your neigbor. Write it down. Ask four questions. Turn it around.” Yet it is powerful. Like Roman Stoicism, Katie’s Buddhism offers freedom in assenting only to truth and loving what is.

26. Genesis: A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell

Stephen Mitchell is one of my favorite translators of classic biblical literature, Robert Alter being the other. Mitchell’s translation of Job was the first in verse (The Hebrew original is in verse.) Alter’s translation of Job was the second in verse. As is the case in Mitchell’s translation of Job, his introduction alone is worth the price of the book. In Genesis, Mitchell is erudite and poetic as always. As usual, he does not hesitate to make emendations to the text whenever he deems them necessary and, as always, he makes note of them, giving ample justification, when he does.

25. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John H. Walton

The thesis of Walton’s book is that Genesis 1 is not about material origins, but rather functional origins. He argues persuasively that Genesis 1 is a temple text in the context of ancient cosmology. A four-page summary of the argument of the book can be found in Genesis 1 as Temple Text in the Context of Ancient Cosmology Summary Description by the author. Walton provides Biblical and ancient Near Eastern evidence to back up his thesis. Walton demonstrates that a correct interpretation of Genesis 1 depends on a correct understanding of the worldview of its author(s).

24. The Love Poems of Rumi by Rumi and Nader Khalili

Thanks in large part to Coleman Barks, Rumi is the bestselling poet in America today. But the Persian poet has been perennial worldwide for centuries. Born in modern-day Afghanistan, Rumi met his Sufi master, Shams al-Tabrizi while studying Islamic jurisprudence in Syria. From there he went to Konya in modern-day Turkey where he wrote his Masnavi, one of the most important pieces of Persian literature. Like Barks, Iranian-American architect and Cal-Earth Institute founder, Nader Khalili, translates Rumi with the sensitivity of a poet, but from the original Persian.

23. Caesarean Moon Births: Calculations, Moon Sighting, and the Prophetic Way by Hamza Yusuf

This book is an excellent example of Islamic scholarship by an erudite scholar who is one of The Muslim 500. Notwithstanding, it is written for the lay person. While its intended audience is Muslim American, it is of interest to anyone who would like to get inside the mind of a Muslim scholar and learn how the 1,400-year-old tradition of Islamic scholarship works. Since the sources the author draws upon are the Qur’an and the Sunnah, this is technically a legal treatise. So, if you’re intestested in sharia and how it is interpreted, this book will give you a sense of that.

22. The Life and Times of a Remarkable Misfit: A Collection of Essays About Changing the World by AJ Leon

I first saw AJ Leon interviewed on Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. Next I watched AJ’s TED Talk, This Is Not Your Practice Life and some interviews of him and his wife, Melissa on YouTube. One of the things that really struck me about AJ was his relationship with his wife. I decided to read his book. My key takeaway from AJ’s book was that “Confidence is not nearly as important as courage” and “acting like you can.” I recommend AJ’s book to anyone who hates their job and, like AJ was before he quit his, is living for the weekend.

21. Lit: How to Get Your Soul Back by Bryan Ward

Lit: How to Get Your Soul Back by Bryan Ward is only available on the author’s website. I stumbled upon an article by the author online and ended up on his website where I read through one of those long sales pitches and wasn’t about to buy. Certainly not for $9.99. But the copy was so well-written, I sent a link to my friend Shiloh Logan. Shiloh bought the book and shared it with me. I’m glad I read it. My key takeaway from it was not to expect my wife to be my muse but to make her my masterpiece instead and to cultivate my art to cultivate my marriage and family.

20. On the Shortness of Life: Life is Long if You Know How to use It by Seneca and C. D. N. Costa

This book contains three of Seneca’s Moral Essays: “On the Shortness of Life,” “Consolation to Helvia,” and “On Tranquility of Mind.” As in the first of the Letters from a Stoic, in “On the Shortness on Life,” written to his friend Paulinus, Seneca will wake you up from your slumber and call on you to live your life fully. In “Consolation to Helvia,” written to his mother upon his being exiled to Corsica after being accused of adultery with the Emperor Caligula’s sister Julia Livilla, Seneca will call into question the value you place on national identity and material possessions and remind you things can always be worse. In “On Tranquility of Mind,” written to his friend Serenus, Seneca will make you question your priorities.

19. The Divine Comedy: Volume 1: Inferno (Pt. 1) (English and Italian Edition) by Dante Alighieri and Robin Kirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick’s is one of the two best English verse translations of Dante’s Inferno. Robert Pinsky’s is the other, but he only translated the Inferno. Merwin’s translation of the Purgatorio only a perfect companion to Pinsky’s Inferno, but there’s no translation of the Paradiso only to complete the Comedy. Though not in terza rima like Dante’s original or even some English verse translations like Dorothy Sayers’ or, Robert Pinsky’s, Kirkpatrick’s poetry sings, and it sings in tune with Dante’s original. Kirkpatrick’s translation moves along with Dante’s and matches his tone and diction, and even his highs and lows of register, throughout. Kirkpatrick also translated the Purgatorio and Paradiso.

18. The Essential Koran: The Heart of Islam by Thomas Cleary

Cleary is one of the best translators of the Qur’an. While his translation of the entire Qur’an, The Qur’an: A New Translation, is out of print and costly, this “rosary of readings and recitations” is in print and economical. The selected chapters and verses represent “the heart of Islam” inasmuch as they demonstrate what preeminent Islamic theologian al-Ghazali (d. 1111) called “the six aims of the Qur’an.” The selections portray “the essential wisdom, beauty, and majesty” of the Qur’an. In addition to Cleary’s translation in verse, which captures some of the aesthetic value of the Qur’an, especially when read aloud, Cleary’s copious linguistic notes expand on his translation, elucidating key Qur’anic terms.

17. Martial’s Epigrams: A Selection by Garry Wills

Martial ranges from bold to bawdy, from irreverant to iredeemable and from racy to raunchy in his poetry and Garry Wills captures the whole gamut in rhyming verse. Martial deals with baldness, banqueting, and body odor; marital fidelity, marital infidelity, and misogyny; tributes to emperors, tributes to friends, and tributes to the dead, but the best of the best of his epigrams are on the simple life and on the writing profession. His epigrams on the simple life are as fresh as Marie Kondo’s or The Minimalists’ and his epigrams on the the writing profession are as incisive, insightful, and inspiring as Ann Lamott’s or Steven Pressfield’s. Martial mockingly rhymes like a rapper in denigrating his detractors.

16. The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield and Shawn Clayne

The War of Art is a tour de force on overcoming Resistance and doing the work you were born to do. As Ryan Holiday learned from Robert Greene, there’s alive time (the time you are “passive and biding,” or “Resistance” in Pressfield’s terms) and dead time (the time you are “learning and acting and leveraging every second,” or “work” in Pressfield’s terms. “Which are you in?,” asks Holiday. Pressfield walks you through identifying the work you were born to do and recognizing and the Resistance you have to it (he points out that Resistance actually points to the work) before walking you through how to overcome Resistance and do your life’s work. If you’re stuck in Resistance, read this and overcome it!

15. Meditations: A New Translation by Marcus Aurelius and Gregory Hays

Originally untitled, what we now know as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius were once known as To Himself (Greek: τον αυτόν), both fitting titles for what were meditations of Stoic Emperor-philosopher written to himself. While Hays’ translation is easy to read, he doesn’t do as well as other translators when it comes to handling the technical terms of Stoicism. The reader who prefers “to study texts with precision, without being content just to skim over them in a general, approximate way” would do well to read Robin Hard’s translation (Oxford) or Martin Hammond’s (Penguin). For comparisons of passages with key technical terms of Stoicism see my commonplaces from The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot.

14. Dante’s Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri and Mark Musa

Dante’s Vita Nuova is a strange, but beautiful book. Dante fell hard for Beatrice Portinari when he and she were both only nine years old and never got over her. She married someone else and so did he. She died young, and he was exiled from Florence. He wrote the Vita Nuova to showcase poems and sonnets he wrote about her. He then wrote the Divine Comedy to be led by her up through the nine circles of Heaven after being led down through the nine circles of Hell and up the seven terraces of Purgatory to the Earthly Paradise, or Garden of Eden, atop Mount Purgatory by the poet Virgil (the author of the Aeneid) at her bidding to be defied with her in Heaven.

13. Dante: A Life (Penguin Lives) by R. W. B. Lewis

Lewis’ brief biography of Dante is an excellent introduction to the Sommo Poeta and his works. It deals with both in chronological fashion, treating each of Dante’s works in turn as it is written, including the texture of Dante’s life and times surrounding the writing of each work. Includied in this treatment is a picture of the places and politics influencing Dante. The treatment of each of Dante’s works is detailed enough to give the reader a good sense of the overall content and structure of the works. Lewis ends with a brief overview of Dante’s influence on the later poets. A even more brief biography of Dante without the detailed treatment of each of his works is A Life of Dante by Benedict Flynn.

12. College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be by Andrew Delbanco

This book contains a useful concise history of higher education in America from colonial times to the present. This history is helpful in contextualizing the current state of higher education in America. Additionally, this book raises challenging questions about the nature of education in a democratic society and offers answers. You may not agree with the author’s assessment of the challenges facing higher education in American today, or with his answers to those challenges, but you will be challenged yourself. The author knows his history and has a good handle on the current situation, if not the exact causes of it.

11. Make Her Chase You: The Guide to Attracting Girls Who Are “Out of Your League” Even If You’re Not Rich or Handsome by Tynan

This book, as indicated by its title and vulgar cover image, contains helpful advice for attracting women, but is not vulgar as its cover image suggests and isn’t limited in its usefulness to the subject of its title alone. In fact, It is cleverly marketed to attract men lacking confidence in themselves when it comes to striking up conversation with the fairer sex, but contains principles for How to Win Friends and Influence People in general, to borrow Dale Carnegie’s title. Tynan developed these principles fully in his later book, Superhuman Social Skills. His insights into human nature in both books are invaluable.

10. Around the World in Fifteen Friends: Fifteen Short Stories of Love, Crime, and Kindness by Tynan

This book was better than I thought it would be. Tynan is a master storyteller and his meditations on travel and friendship demonstrates it while giving insight into human nature and the nature of friendship. The stories exemplify the author’s mastery of the art of storytelling detailed in his earlier books, Superhuman Social Skills and Make Her Chase You. It is a tour de force. In addition to its keen observations on human nature, it contains insights into the kinds of experiences that make long-term travel worthwhile.

9. Superhuman Social Skills: A Guide to Becoming Likeable, Winning Friends, and Building Your Social Circle by Tynan

This book is a contemporary How to Win Friends and Influence People. Tynan, like Dale Carnegie before him, has keen insights into human nature and knows how to apply them to building relationships. In this book, Tynan fully develops the ideas he earlier exposed in Make Her Chase You, demonstrating that the same skills used by pick-up artists apply to building relationships with people in general. Tynan brings to bear his own experience of stepping outside his comfort zone to talk to strangers and convert to friends when it didn’t come naturally to him and teaches his reader how to do the same.

8. Life Nomadic by Tynan

If you’ve always wanted to travel the world and think can’t afford to, think again: you can. In fact, it costs less than staying put. Tynan’s book is your passport. In it, he details his own experience of living the dream and walks his reader through how to do it step by step. Even if you’re not interested in vagabonding, you’ll find tips and tricks to buying cheaper fares and saving money on all kinds of other travel expenses as well. You’ll also learn how to have the best experience traveling abroad. As an experienced world traveler and sometimes vagabond I can tell you, “[n]ot all those who wander are lost” (Tolkien), and the experience of long-term travel is unbeatable when it comes to getting an education.

7. The Tiniest Mansion – How to Live in Luxury On the Side of the Road in an RV by Tynan

This is one of those books that stretches your imagination and calls convention into question. Would I live in an RV? Maye, maybe not. Regardless, I found value in the provocative ideas in Tynan’s book and know better what it would take to do it in style. Tynan recounts his years-long experience of living a minimalist lifestyle in an RV that can fit in any parking spot anywhere and the modifications in his lifestyle and the RV itself it took to make it possible. I’ve lived aboard a 26-foot sloop and have considered living in what is sometimes aptly called a land yacht. After reading this book, I’m considering the possibility of living in two smaller RVs instead of one large one when my son is old enough to drive one.

6. Superhuman by Habit: A Guide to Becoming the Best Possible Version of Yourself, One Tiny Habit at a Time by Tynan

This book contains the secrets to successful habit building. If you like Leo Babauta, you’ll love Tynan, whom Leo has turned to support him in building habits. I know of no better book on the subject than Tynans. This book was mentioned in Charles Chu’s Quartz article, “In the time you spend on social media each year, you could read 200 books.” After reading Chu’s article, I shared it on Facebook where I found it, deleted the app and read all of Tynans’ books, starting with this one, in one weekend.

5. The Inferno of Dante Alighieri (The Temple Classics) by Dante Alighieri and John Carlyle

The Temple Classics edition of the Carlyle-Oakey-Wicksteed translation of Dante’s Commedia is out of print, so I’ve linked to this Vintage Classics edition instead. This is the best public domain prose translation of the Commedia. Dante is one of the three philosophical poets detailed in Three Philosophical Poets by Santayana. Dante’s Inferno, the first of three Canticas in the Commedia, details Dante’s descent through the nine circles of Hell to reach the center of the Earth before emerging in the Southern Hemisphere to climb the seven terraces of Purgatory to the Earthly Paradise, or Garden of Eden, in his Purgatorio, then to fly through the nine spheres of Heaven to be deified in his Paradiso.

4. Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings by Cynthia King and William B. Irvine

Musonius Rufus is the least well-known Roman Stoic philosopher, his student, the Roman slave philosopher Epictetus, and his student, the Roman Emperor philosopher Marcus Aurelius, being better known. Yet Musonius Rufus, my favorite Stoic philosopher, has a lot to offer. He was avant-garde in so many ways and very much a product of his time in others. Reading Musonius Rufus can give you a sense not only of Roman Stoicism and it’s applicability to life today, but of Roman life and it’s surprising parallels with life today. This volume is the best English edictionary of Musonius Rufus’ writings in print.

3. The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimony (Hackett Classics) by Epicurus and Lloyd P. Gerson

Epicureanism is less read and even lesser understood than Stoicism. Although I recommend reading Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura for a fuller exposition of Epicureanism, I also recommend reading this, one of the few English language renditions of the few extant writings of Epicurus himself. Less popular than Stoicism, Epicureanism had proponents as luminary as Thomas Jefferson. Additionally, in its exposition in Lucretius, Epicureanism was pivotal in fueling  Renaissance after a thousand years of neglect, as compellingly exposed in Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt.

2. The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness by Epictetus and Sharon Lebell

This interpretation of Epictetus’ Enchiridion is sublime! I highly recommend it as an introduction to Stoicism. I recommend following up the reading of this with the writings of Epictetus himself, those of his little-known teacher, Musonius Rufus, and those of his well-known student, Marcus Aurelius. Stoicism has much to offer today as witnessed by the recent publications of The Tao of Seneca: Practical Letters from a Stoic Master, Volumes 1, 2, and 3 by Tim Ferrris, The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings by Cynthia King and William B. Irvine and A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine.

1. On the Nature of Things by Lucretius and Ian Johnston

This book, a translation of De Rerum Natura, contains the fullest exposition of Epicureanism and is written in verse. The author, Lucretius, one of the three philosophical poets subject of Santayana’s book, Three Philosophical Poets, was influential on Virgil, who in turn was influential on Dante, another of the three philosophical poets covered by Santayana. Johnston’s is one of my two favorite contemporary English verse renditions of Lucretius, the other being Alicia Stallings’. Johnston’s translation is also available in audiobook from Naxos and can be sampled or even read in its entirety on Johnston’s personal Web page, Johnstonia.

2016

51. Why Read? by Mark Edmundson

 

50. The Mainspring of Human Progress by Henry Grady Weaver

 

49. Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life by Byron Katie

 

48. Enchiridion (Dover Thrift Editions) by Epictetus and George Long

 

47. In a Dark Wood: A Memoir by Joseph Luzzi

 

46. Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe by George Santayana

 

45. The Beginning of Guidance by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf

 

44. The Islamic Vision of Development in Light of Maqasid al-Shariah by Muhammad Chapra

 

43. The Christians and the Fall of Rome (Penguin Great Ideas) by Edward Gibbon

 

42. Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther

 

41. The Paradiso (Signet Classics) by Dante Alighieri and John Ciardi

 

40. The Purgatorio (Signet Classics) by Dante Alighieri and John Ciardi

 

39. The Inferno (Signet Classics) by Dante Alighieri and John Ciardi

 

38. A Life of Dante by Benedict Flynn

 

37. Maqasid al-Shariah: A Beginner’s Guide by Jasser Auda

 

36. Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life by Nick Vujicic

 

35. A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century by Oliver DeMille

 

34. Ibn Rajab’s Refutation of Those Who Do Not Follow the Four Schools by Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali and Musa Furber

 

33. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri and Clive James

 

32. Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

 

31. The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph by Ryan Holiday

 

30. The Aleppo Codex: In Pursuit of One of the World’s Most Coveted, Sacred, and Mysterious Books by Matti Friedman

 

29. Lucretius: The Way Things Are: The Way Things Are: The De Rerum Natura of Titus Lucretius Carus by Lucretius (Author), Rolfe Humphries (Translator)

 

28. Cicero: De re Publica (On the Republic) , De Legibus (On the Laws) (Loeb Classical Library No. 213) by Cicero (Author), Clinton W. Keyes (Translator)

 

27. Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds by Joel L. Kraemer

 

26. Plato’s Republic by Plato and Benjamin Jowett

 

25. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 1 by Edward Gibbom and J. B. Bury

 

24. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

 

23. Joseph Spider and the Fallacy Farm by David Grant

 

22. Politics (Dover Thrift Editions) by Aristotle and Benjamin Jowett

 

21. The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle and David Ross

 

20. The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life’s Journey by Muhammad Ali and Hana Yasmeen Ali

 

19. Meditations (Dover Thrift Editions) by Marcus Aurelius and George Long

 

18. The Law by Frederic Bastiat

 

17. The Inferno of Dante by Dante Alighieri and Robert Pinsky

 

16. The Communist Manifesto: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Karl Marx (Author), Friedrich Engels (Author), Killoffer (Illustrator), Marshall Berman (Introduction), Samuel Moore (Translator)

 

15. Two Treatises of Government (Everyman’s Library) by John Locke

 

14. The Prince (Dover Thrift Editions) by Machiavelli and N. H. Thompson

 

13. The Trojan Epic: Posthomerica (Johns Hopkins New Translations from Antiquity) by Quintus of Smyrna (Author), Alan James (Editor)

 

12. How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem by Rod Dreher

 

11. The Alchemy of Happiness by Al-Ghazzali and Claude Field

 

10. Gilgamesh: A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell

 

9. Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto and Thomas Moore

 

8. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley by Malcolm X and Alex Haley

 

7. Educating Your Child in Modern Times: How to Raise an Intelligent, Sovereign & Ethical Human Being by John Taylor Gatto (Author), Hamza Yusuf Hanson (Author), Nabila Hanson (Author), Dorothy Sayers (Author)

 

6. The Book of Job by Stephen Mitchell

 

5. Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want by Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy

 

4. We Hold These Truths to Be Self Evident: 12 Natural Laws of Freedom, Progress, and Success by Oliver DeMille

 

3. Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus’s Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior (Hoover Essays) by James B. Stockdale

 

2. Zen to Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System by Leo Babauta

 

1. Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue by Sam Harris