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throgo3's review
4.0
34 essays on the concepts of Stoic philosophy using famous people and events to illustrate the concepts.
briano77's review
2.0
I enjoyed the "Stillness is the Key" to an extent, but felt like Holiday fell into a bit of formulaic mess here. Each chapter follows the exact same pattern of cherry-picked biographical stories which arguably support his ultimate point that stillness is a good trait and habit to cultivate(which most would agree is true). The problem is sometimes he stretches these stories quite a bit to do so, some often contradict one another in message or meaning, and he kind of hand waves any inconsistencies with vague positive sweeping statements. A few of the middle chapters on relationships and higher powers are just bizarre and miss the mark entirely for either Stoicism or Buddhist beliefs. At times he gets pretty cliche, and after the following passage I almost abandoned ship entirely,
"It's been said that the word "love" is spelled T-I-M-E. It is also spelled W-O-R-K and S-A-C-R-I-F-I-C-E and D-I-F-F-I-C-U-L-T-Y, C-O-M-M-I-T-M-E-N-T, and occasionally M-A-D-N-E-S-S"
If you have to literally spell your point out like this I think you are in trouble, and this is a far cry from the style and tone displayed in his superior work, "The Obstacle is the Way".
While many of the lessons and stories found in the book are interesting and useful in themselves, the way they are organized and presented results in a rather bland self-help book. While it does technically covers quite a bit topic wise, it ultimately says very little.
I'd give it 2.5/5 if that was an option. It's a decent light read, or if you are brand new to philosophy/psychology/history. However, if you are searching for original thought or something with more substance, look elsewhere.
"It's been said that the word "love" is spelled T-I-M-E. It is also spelled W-O-R-K and S-A-C-R-I-F-I-C-E and D-I-F-F-I-C-U-L-T-Y, C-O-M-M-I-T-M-E-N-T, and occasionally M-A-D-N-E-S-S"
If you have to literally spell your point out like this I think you are in trouble, and this is a far cry from the style and tone displayed in his superior work, "The Obstacle is the Way".
While many of the lessons and stories found in the book are interesting and useful in themselves, the way they are organized and presented results in a rather bland self-help book. While it does technically covers quite a bit topic wise, it ultimately says very little.
I'd give it 2.5/5 if that was an option. It's a decent light read, or if you are brand new to philosophy/psychology/history. However, if you are searching for original thought or something with more substance, look elsewhere.
kimball_hansen's review against another edition
3.0
I found this book during my two week Stoic challenge from the author. But I didn't pay attention to this book as much as I should have.
Notes:
All of man's problems stem from the inability to sit quietly in a room.
A wealth of information creates poverty of attention.
Tiger Woods went through a small mid life crises and wanted to go through the Special Forces.
Dang, Kennedy slept around a lot. And Michael Jordan was a jerk. Now this ruins my image of them.
People don't have enough silence in their lives because they don't have enough solitude.
Notes:
All of man's problems stem from the inability to sit quietly in a room.
A wealth of information creates poverty of attention.
Tiger Woods went through a small mid life crises and wanted to go through the Special Forces.
Dang, Kennedy slept around a lot. And Michael Jordan was a jerk. Now this ruins my image of them.
People don't have enough silence in their lives because they don't have enough solitude.