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Backstory is this well regarded Navy admiral retires, gives a commencement speech which goes viral, then writes this book with stories from his career. It's a fast read about 140 pages and a smaller form. Won't take long to read.

Does have stories from his past trainings and expeditions in the military in just about every chapter. Some of the stories he tells are pretty intense. Each demonstrate something you can start doing in your life (will take a bit to figure that part out).

The last section of the book is the commencement speech, and it does touch on several of the areas earlier in the book. You'll get a little deja vu feeling. Many of the stories won't be relatable, such as being a sugar cookie (wet and coated with sand all day), up to your armpits in mud, paddling rafts through 10 foot waves and surf, jumping out of helicopters more than a mile up.

I did like this. I read it in 2 hours

This is a great modern Stoicism book. Mark Tuitert is a former Olympian speed skater. This book has 10 chapters, each on a Stoic topic with analysis and exercises. It's about 140 pages, is very attractive in a red/black/white graphics. There are graphics to start off each chapter and within it.

The chapters: * Use Setbacks as Signposts * Judge Less, Understand More * Win by Not Focusing on Winning * What's Good for the Team is Good for You * Accept Your Fate (And Love it) * Death Makes Life Epic * Happiness Is a Side Effect * A Map Is Good, A Compass is Better * Character Is Your Most Important Project * Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Each chapter starts out with a quote from the 3 big ancient Stoics, then has 4-7 pages of text, a "Stoicism In Practice" page, and an exercise page.

The author must be a visual person, as 8 of the 10 exercises involve "Grabbing a piece of paper".

Who would this book be good for? Anyone learning about Stoicism and interested in philosophy who wants to learn and get a modern take on the ancient philosophy.

The book has no page numbers. It has 297 riffs (his term) which very from a third of a page to maybe 3 pages for the longer ones. Thus this is a good book to read in short bits. Some of the riffs may not make sense, while others are completely relatable. I found most to be at least partially relatable or covering past business news events.

As an example, a later riff talks about shipping work that isn't yet done. He compares this with shipping an incomplete boat, which isn't as functional and potentially not safe.

A earlier riff he talks of traffic that one might be stuck in. In this case, it's not about you being stuck in the traffic, as you are part of the traffic and the problem.

Other riffs cover recent business actions and news that most might be familiar with - along with his take or an angle on the situation.

Subtitle is "Make Better Plans". Back of the book says "Today is your best chance to improve tomorrow" and 14 other sub points. Purpose of the book is to make people think about how to have conversations about plans and to think about situations they are facing. Not reacting per se, but planning/plotting with the future in mind.

This is one of the better introduction to Stoicism books out there, based on the near dozen I've read. The writing style is very easy to read, and the chapters are short and to the point. It's the type of book you could read a bit of, put down, and revisit later starting on a new topic.

He assumes you know nothing, so there is a fair amount of core basics at the start, and discussion of the usual three, being Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus. He starts with Freedom being a choice, and then aspects of being free: Being Present, Free of the Past, no emotional roller coaster, no fear, no anxiety, and being festive about life.

Part 4 is titled after his website, The Stoic Gym. This part is where you work out and revisit topics, pulling them together as needed. He mentions he's on the path, and that anyone can be on it as well as it's not a fantasy and is achievable. He closes this part on Physical and Mental fitness, which complete the studies and actions, essentially the gym.

Part 5 covers reference material. There are several pages on various coping techniques, and reading recommendations.

All in all, I thought this was a very good book and would recommend it to anyone who has recently started their Stoicism journey or wants to learn more about Stoicism.

This was my second in the series, and I was looking forward to the Anthony Bourdain videos. I think I saw the Trevor Noah interview.

There are just 7 interviews in this book. The interviews are larger/longer than the previous book from this series (Joan Didion). Most of the interviews throw me back to watching his shows when they aired. You can hear the passion and character in his voice.

There was a later interview that had a portion about eating rare things that was covered one or two interviews before it. On a check, there were a couple years between them. That could have been edited out, but I suppose it makes for a whole interview as a piece.

The last interview of the book isn't much of an interview. It's prose and chapter author writing interspersed with Bourdain comments and quotes. It feels very different than the previous 6 interviews.

I did enjoy this, mostly because I loved his work. It's just the last interview that didn't fit with the others.

I had never heard of this series and spotted it on the library shelf. Glad I picked it up. It's a shorter read as the content is about 10 interviews (probably some partial and edited) over the last 40 years. As such, you kind of go sequentially through the author's life and works as they get interviewed by media.

The book has a good flow, and it's as if you are listening in on the interview which today might be a podcast. I read this in a couple hours, it's 164 pages and was a paperback.

As such, there are milestones in the authors life that come out in the interviews. For Joan, it's media runs on some of her book launches, the death of her daughter and husband, moving from California to NYC, and such. It's interesting to hear how she gets inspired and frustrated by writing. She was a legend.

Picked up this book as part of my reading about Stoicism. And I really enjoyed it! This takes a conversational yet sort of academic style to cover 12 major thought areas of Stoicism (judgement, externals, perspective, death, desire, wealth and pleasure, what others think, valuation, emotion, adversity, virtue, and learning). The author has an intro to each topic, then walked through it weaving several quotes from ancient stoics and modern philosophers to cover the topic

The last chapter is about criticisms of Stoicism, which is very healthy to see the other side and understand the thoughts against the philosophy.

I liked how the topics were presented and the quotes and analysis from the writers came together. Obviously they read each other and were influenced, and this shows that progression. Well done.

I borrowed this from my library, but I'll be on the lookout for a used or sale copy for my library. It'll be worth re-reading in a year or so.

First off, the essence of the book is available on the book web site. The book takes that information and puts dialog and stories around it.

If you know Agile or Scrum or Kanban, there isn't much here that is unique. The book takes one through a milestone based week, day by day, for a team to deliver something on this methodology.

What's missing is how to bring this culture to one's workplace - implementing this will need management and financial support. Nothing is free. Large companies can do these types of iterations. Smaller companies fighting for their life probably won't be able to.

It's well written. And a quick read. I found the heavy paper to be kind of annoying as I thought I might have turned more than 1 page. But I'm giving it a lower score given the essence is available on the book web site and the dialog in the book doesn't provide much additional value other than to demonstrate the value of the methodology. The writers do discuss several project failures - and for someone doing Agile or this methodology, you will have failures.