Wisdom Reader

In 63 BC, frustrated by his failure to be elected leader of the Roman Republic, the aristocrat Catiline tried to topple its elected government. Backed by corrupt elites and poor, alienated Romans, he fled Rome while his associates plotted to burn the city and murder its leading politicians. The attempted coup culminated with the unmasking of the conspirators in the Senate. In How to Stop a Conspiracy, Josiah Osgood presents a brisk, modern new translation of the definitive account of these events, Sallust's The War with Catiline.

Christian Theology — Catholic Thought — Medieval Philosophy — Philosophy of Religion — Faith and Reason — Natural Law — Scholastic Wisdom — Thomas Aquinas for Beginners What if one of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages could help modern readers think more deeply about truth, faith, reason, virtue, God, and the meaning of human life? Thomas Aquinas Made Easy is a complete 4-book box set created for readers who want to understand Aquinas without getting lost in academic language, technical debates, or dense medieval terminology. This collection opens the door to one of the ...

Twenty-One Lines from a Dying Swordsman. One Practice a Day. In 1645, in the final week of his life, Miyamoto Musashi took up his brush and wrote twenty-one short precepts for a student. He called them Dokkodo, the Way of Walking Alone. They are not rules for battle. They are the plain conclusions of a man taking final stock of his life: what he still carried, and what he had already set down. I do not go against the way of the world. In good fortune or bad, I envy no one. I hold no grudge. Daily Wisdom: Dokkodo turns those twenty-one lines into a year of daily practice. It is the first ...

The most famous Stoic book ever written — with a guide to every part of it. Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man on earth, and at night, in an army camp on the frontier, he wrote notes to keep himself sane. He never meant anyone to read them. That private notebook became the Meditations — the book generals, presidents, and athletes have carried for two thousand years. But readers hit the same wall every time: the Meditations has no chapters, no argument, no map. Just hundreds of short entries, in no order, that assume you already know what Marcus is doing. Most people bounce off it...

A Year Inside the Mind of a Roman Emperor. One Page a Day. Marcus Aurelius never meant for you to read this. The Meditations were private notes, written by lamplight in a campaign tent on the Danube, by a man who ruled an empire and still had to talk himself out of bed in the morning. There is no audience in them. No performance. Just the most powerful person in the world, reminding himself how to be a decent one. Daily Wisdom: Marcus Aurelius gives you a full year with that voice. Not a summary. Not a modern rewrite. One passage a day, in Marcus's own words, followed by a short reflection ...

Bhagavad Gita - Tao Te Ching - Ancient Wisdom - Comparative Religion - Eastern Philosophy - Religious History - Ancient Scriptures - World Religion Thousands of years before self-help shelves existed, humanity had already written down its best answers to how to live, how to rule, and how to face death, in texts so enduring that billions still read them today. Sacred Texts of the Ancient World Explained guides you through six of history's most influential scriptures, from a battlefield in India to a Sumerian father's advice to his son. In Bhagavad Gita and Dhammapada: The Sacred Texts of ...

Worried that old age will inevitably mean losing your libido, your health, and possibly your marbles too? Well, Cicero has some good news for you. In How to Grow Old, the great Roman orator and statesman eloquently describes how you can make the second half of life the best part of all - and why you might discover that reading and gardening are actually far more pleasurable than sex ever was.

Looking for a book your child will actually want to read? Getting kids aged 8-12 to pick up a book - and keep reading - can feel like an impossible task. But what if the book felt less like reading and more like finally understanding why life is so hilariously unfair? That’s exactly what Murphy’s Law for Kids delivers. Every parent knows the moment - your child is frustrated, convinced the world is against them, and has no idea how to make sense of it. The toast lands butter-side down. The teacher calls on them when they don’t know the answer. The project printer breaks the night ...

The ancient biographer and essayist Plutarch thought deeply about the leadership qualities of the eminent Greeks and Romans he profiled in his famous - and massive - Lives, including politicians and generals such as Pericles, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony. Luckily for us, Plutarch distilled what he learned about wise leadership in a handful of essays, which are filled with essential lessons for experienced and aspiring leaders in any field today. 

In a world where social media, online relationships, and relentless self-absorption threaten the very idea of deep and lasting friendships, the search for true friends is more important than ever. In this short book, famous Roman politician and philosopher Cicero offers a compelling guide to finding, keeping, and appreciating friends. With wit and wisdom, Cicero teaches not only how to build friendships but also why they must be a key part of our lives. For, as Cicero says, life without friends is not worth living. 

Born a slave, the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55-135 AD) taught that mental freedom is supreme, since it can liberate one anywhere, even in a prison. In How to Be Free, A. A. Long - one of the world's leading authorities on Stoicism and a pioneer in its remarkable contemporary revival - provides a superb new edition of Epictetus's celebrated guide to the Stoic philosophy of life (the Encheiridion) along with a selection of related reflections in his Discourses.

"It takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die", wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC-65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death always", and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker who speaks with a startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under certain conditions, to seek it out.

How to Say No is a delightful collection of brief ancient writings about Cynicism that captures all the outrageousness, wit, and wisdom of its remarkable cast of characters—from Diogenes in the fourth century BCE to the column-stander Symeon Stylites in late antiquity.

Marcus Cicero, Rome's greatest statesman and orator, was elected to the Roman Republic's highest office at a time when his beloved country was threatened by power-hungry politicians, dire economic troubles, foreign turmoil, and political parties that refused to work together. Sound familiar? Cicero's letters, speeches, and other writings are filled with timeless wisdom and practical insight about how to solve these and other problems of leadership and politics. How to Run a Country collects the best of these writings to provide an entertaining, common-sense guide for modern leaders and citizens

Distraction isn't a new problem. We're also not the first to complain about how hard it is to concentrate. Early Christian monks beat us to it. They had given up everything to focus on God, yet they still struggled to keep the demons of distraction at bay. But rather than surrender to the meandering of their minds, they developed powerful strategies to improve their attention and engagement. How to Focus is an inviting collection of their strikingly relatable insights and advice—frank, funny, sympathetic, and psychologically sophisticated.

The idea of sexual fluidity may seem new, but it is at least as old as the ancient Greeks, who wrote about queer experiences with remarkable frankness, wit, and insight. How to Be Queer is an infatuating collection of these writings about desire, love, and lust between men, between women, and between humans and gods, in lucid and lively new translations.

How to Win an Election is an ancient Roman guide for campaigning that is as up-to-date as tomorrow's headlines. In 64 BC when idealist Marcus Cicero, Rome's greatest orator, ran for consul (the highest office in the Republic), his practical brother Quintus decided he needed some no-nonsense advice on running a successful campaign.

Beneath the roots of an ancient oak, under the soft light of a listening moon, a curious cat named Pip discovers a hidden library that breathes. The shelves hum. The pages sigh. And a wise Great Owl teaches that curiosity itself is the first spell of learning. In The Great Owl’s Library: The Library Beneath the Moon, readers are invited into a timeless world where learning glows like candlelight and every question opens a new door. Through gentle prose and lyrical storytelling, author Devon R. Browning weaves a tale of discovery, learning, and the power of listening. ✨ Perfect for ...

If recent history has taught us anything, it's that sometimes the best guide to leadership is the negative example. But that insight is hardly new. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Suetonius wrote Lives of the Caesars, perhaps the greatest negative leadership book of all time. In How to Be a Bad Emperor, Josiah Osgood provides crisp new translations of Suetonius's briskly paced, darkly comic biographies of the Roman emperors Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. Entertaining and shocking, these ancient anti-role models show how power inflames leaders' worst tendencies.

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is one of the greatest guides to human flourishing ever written, but its length and style have left many readers languishing. How to Flourish is a colloquial new translation by Susan Sauve Meyer that makes Aristotle's timeless insights about how to lead a good life more engaging and accessible than ever before.