Awareness
De Mello's "Awareness" argues that most people are running on programming they never chose, and he does not offer you a method to fix it. It's a book of recorded talks that works precisely because it reads like being argued…
Tag: Philosophy
Every book argues something, even the ones that pretend not to. These articles cover philosophy as it meets writing: the ideas underneath stories, the ethics of putting words in the world, and the occasional detour into questions with no deadline.
Book ReviewsEthics for Amador
Fernando Savater wrote this book as a letter to his fifteen-year-old son about how to live deliberately, and it refuses to act like a textbook. He argues that ethics means choosing for yourself, not just following rules or doing what…
Book ReviewsStillness Is the Key
Ryan Holiday's third book in the trilogy is gentler than the first two, and the method starts to show. The body section delivers concrete advice on sleep, walking, and saying no, but the spirit section loses the specificity that made…
Book ReviewsEgo Is the Enemy
Ego isn't confidence or ambition. It's the need to be seen a certain way, and it costs you differently depending on where you are: as an aspiring person, as someone successful, and when you fail. This book examines how ego…
Book ReviewsThe Obstacle Is the Way
Marcus Aurelius wrote that obstacles advance action. Ryan Holiday spent a book proving he was right, organizing Stoic philosophy into three practical moves: how you see the problem, what you do about it, and how you survive when nothing works.…
Book ReviewsLife of Pi
A cargo ship sinks in the Pacific. A boy survives 227 days in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. Then the novel offers a second version with no animals at all, and asks you which story actually happened. The choice…
PhilosophyBehind the Book: Grim
Grim began with one scene at the crucifixion and grew into a novel about a reaper who attends death across all of history. Here is the story behind it.
Book WritingCybersecurity, Memoir and Philosophy Are the Same Job
People assume the range is a problem. What transfers between a security book and a memoir is almost everything that matters.
ConsciousnessI Got Tired of Religious Answers That Did Not Match Reality
I did not set out to write theology. I started trying to make sense of existence because the explanations I grew up with created more problems than they solved.
BiasI Have Owned a Lucky Shirt. I Have Knocked on Wood.
I am not immune to any of this. The question is never whether you think irrationally. It is whether anybody has died of it.
Business BooksHow a Book Finds Its Title
A business book's title is the first argument it makes, the concept the author attaches their name to in every conversation for as long as it is in print. Finding the right one for Joe Rockey's book took several candidates…
Book ReviewsThe Stranger
The detached Meursault is condemned as much for refusing to perform grief as for the murder he commits. Spare, cool, and philosophically charged, the literary cornerstone of absurdism. A small book of enormous influence, and one of the defining novels…