Winston's Blues

Everyone read this book

Revisado: 08-27-21

It takes just over two hours of your life to consume a book dense with value, brimming with the seeds of realization and actualization, accessible to anyone.

You each owe it too yourself to read/listen to this at least once.

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Needed more depth

Revisado: 06-14-21

Ryan does succeed in separating and presenting various ideas, I assume related to stoicism. Stoicism, he purports, is a practical philosophy l for the ages, and it may be, but many of his examples are individuals who did great harm to others with their power. How closely do these villains represent stoicism?

It's possible for complex humans to embody positive and negative qualities simultaneously, but to heap praise on war hawks like Abraham Lincoln and John McCain shows either a lack of historical context or moral concern.

So in short, more depth to reconcile some of these men's faults with their supposed stoic strengths would have gone far in adding to the persuasive nature of Ryan's points. Robert Greene's 33 Strategies for War is an example of a book that uses mixed bag examples but offsets their shortcomings with enough context to explain their admirable qualities.

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Quick and vital

Revisado: 05-29-21

For so succinct a manuscript it brings a lot of value in the way of historical context. Even though other slaves had it worse, he includes enough of what he witnessed to give you an idea of what that was like for those slaves too. most importantly, he shares the experience of a man raised in chains who transformed into a free man on the inside before attaining said freedom on the outside.

Chris Cornell wrote a song that parallels the meme embedded in this book, called "Exploder."

"If you're free you'll never see the walls.
If your head is clear you'll never free fall.
If you're right you'll never fear the wrong.
If your head is high you'll never fear at all."

Sun Tzu, among other wise ones, made the point that victory can be won before the battle. Our mindset grants us power or leaves us impotent. Frederick did the extraordinary and won before going to war.

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Great revolutionary context

Revisado: 05-26-21

I'm very glad I listened to this one. There's a lot of misinformation surrounding our revolution as it's taught in government schools, so if you really want to know how our nation came to be, you gotta keep digging.

The author presents useful context from many angles as the story progresses. My only criticism might be that, in audio form, it would be nice to have inline references throughout to underpin the tale as it unfolds, since it is revisionist.

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The Complete Art of War

Revisado: 05-05-21

After enjoying Art of War several times I decided to give another strategy manual a chance. I was quite surprised to find so thorough and useful a tome written by a modern author. Greene's ability to synthesize many strategic masterpieces into one is amazing.

It's a huge book at 33 hours, and worth every minute. I will be listening to other works by Robert Greene.

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Niche but good

Revisado: 04-03-21

I read this directly after Scott Horton's 'Enough Already' it was way more interesting with some context. Enough Already told the metaplot of our nation's foreign policy in the Middle East, while Burn Pitts filled a gap in that overarching story by detailing a single, though vital, issue.

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Poorly named title

Revisado: 03-31-21

It should have been called "Why Christianity is Behind All the Good Stuff, and Why the Rest of Them Aren't".

I agreed with some things Sunshine said, but most of the book was bold, broad conjecture about the causality of history back to Rome, lacking the persuasion of substance.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

The Reddest Pill

Revisado: 03-20-21

It's just such a great articulation of the argument for freedom. Super concise and logical. Anyone on the fence of minarchy should give this a listen, and everyone else should too.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

A bit promotional of established industry

Revisado: 03-14-21

With the enormous shift towards digital and self promoted content, a book about book publishing should have at least as much to say about that as about traditional publishing. This book had 23ish chapters, and three of them were about self publishing or other new trends.

The author has some helpful info for every potential author, but it's mostly about traditional publishing. Very bias.

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Round the world

Revisado: 02-22-21

Christakis takes you across the gamut with his observations and worldview. The book is full of interesting stories, studies, and experiences that round out a point that could almost get lost in this lengthy tome. If you haven't consumed much on human nature and culture, this will offer you a complete additional lens with which to view your world and experiences.

He does a great job sharing his own work too.

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