Here are 100 books that Way of the Peaceful Warrior fans have personally recommended if you like
Way of the Peaceful Warrior.
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My search for meaning didn't come when I hit midlife. Ever since I was a kid, I gravitated toward books and movies that offered lessons about living, which I'd try to incorporate into admittedly limited childhood opportunities. As I grew older and gained more agency, I was able to apply what I learned to more significant decisions, which often led me down a very different path than my peers. I suppose, in hindsight, this accounts for why my first three books were released by a publisher in the personal transformation space. I'm happy to share the 5 books that have helped me on my journey toward living a better life...so far.
Siddhartha is the story of an epic journey of a man traveling through ancient India, with life lessons subtly woven through the narrative.
Ultimately, this book is about how all things are connected through nature, and more specifically, how attaching too much weight to individual events—good, bad, happy, sad—misses the totality of appreciating how those events work together to make a more joyful, meaningful life.
Here the spirituality of the East and the West have met in a novel that enfigures deep human wisdom with a rich and colorful imagination.
Written in a prose of almost biblical simplicity and beauty, it is the story of a soul's long quest in search of he ultimate answer to the enigma of man's role on this earth. As a youth, the young Indian Siddhartha meets the Buddha but cannot be content with a disciple's role: he must work out his own destiny and solve his own doubt-a tortuous road that carries him through the sensuality of a love…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I didn’t sit down to write Carried Away with a personal sermon in my back pocket. No buried lessons or hidden curriculum—it was just a story I wanted to tell. But stories have a way of outsmarting you.
So when I chose these books, I wasn’t looking for perfect comparisons—I was looking for echoes. Some of these books will drag you through POW camps or strand you on a lifeboat with a tiger; others will lean in and whisper that you’ve been running a program and calling it personality. A few say the quiet part out loud—about grit, meaning, and purpose. Others ring you up with fable, abstractions, or science, but they leave their mark just the same.
Hell, I think I actually wore the pages out, if that’s even possible. When I was younger, I went back to it like a lab rat hitting the lever for a pellet—each parable connecting another dot. To me, the mystery was life, the teacher the universe, and I was the student—albeit a lousy one.
The Alchemist is one of those rare novels that feels both timeless and uncomfortably personal. At its foundation, it’s about following your own path—trusting the itch of intuition and chasing something bigger than yourself, even when it feels a little foolhardy in the moment.
What I love is how Coelho cuts through with fable-like simplicity: those who love walking go farther than those who love the destination—and they usually learn a hell of a lot more if they’re paying attention.
A global phenomenon, The Alchemist has been read and loved by over 62 million readers, topping bestseller lists in 74 countries worldwide. Now this magical fable is beautifully repackaged in an edition that lovers of Paulo Coelho will want to treasure forever.
Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book - a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life's path and, above all, follow your dreams.
Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is…
My search for meaning didn't come when I hit midlife. Ever since I was a kid, I gravitated toward books and movies that offered lessons about living, which I'd try to incorporate into admittedly limited childhood opportunities. As I grew older and gained more agency, I was able to apply what I learned to more significant decisions, which often led me down a very different path than my peers. I suppose, in hindsight, this accounts for why my first three books were released by a publisher in the personal transformation space. I'm happy to share the 5 books that have helped me on my journey toward living a better life...so far.
This is the most recently published recommendation, and centers around the one thing we all share: mortality.
Pausch was a beloved professor who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He gave a last lecture to his class about the most important things he'd learned in life, drawn into tight focus because of his impending death—a truly powerful narrative about finding what matters.
A lot of professors give talks titled The Last Lecture. Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didnt have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
My search for meaning didn't come when I hit midlife. Ever since I was a kid, I gravitated toward books and movies that offered lessons about living, which I'd try to incorporate into admittedly limited childhood opportunities. As I grew older and gained more agency, I was able to apply what I learned to more significant decisions, which often led me down a very different path than my peers. I suppose, in hindsight, this accounts for why my first three books were released by a publisher in the personal transformation space. I'm happy to share the 5 books that have helped me on my journey toward living a better life...so far.
I read this when I was in my early twenties, living in a loft apartment in Boston that was situated directly over a brew pub, and working a job divorced from whatever good I thought I had to offer the world.
There was very little Tao about that entire situation, but this book gave me a compass to navigate that period in my life. The narrator moves through his day interacting with characters from Winnie the Pooh, with remarkable observations tied to A.A. Milne's story. I still remember phrases and passages from this book, like "Bisy Backson."
You'll have to read it to find out what that means...and don't go Googling it. The power is in the actual story.
In Plato’s Sophist, the main speaker (not Socrates in this case!) mocks those he calls “late-learners," I fall decidedly into that category. When I first read the works of Plato, I was lured into a lifelong attempt to understand and explain the figure of Socrates as he appears in Plato’s dialogues. Lately I have been reading materials by ancient Socratic sources other than Plato and have been wrestling with the uneasy recognition that this “father of Western philosophy” was not seen in the same way even by those who knew him personally. Who was Socrates??? Once upon a time, I thought I knew…
This is it. If you want to see what the other most important Socratic writer has to say about Socrates, this book is required reading. The old translations of this (Loeb Library) have been wonderfully refreshed here by one of my favorite translators, Jeffrey Henderson.
What fun to read a new translation of Socrates chatting with the courtesan, Phryne, in the Memorabilia or doling out advice on domestic issues in the Oeconomicus. Yikes! Plato’s Socrates would never say such things!
Xenophon (ca. 430 to ca. 354 BC), a member of a wealthy but politically quietist Athenian family and an admirer of Socrates, left Athens in 401 BC to serve as a mercenary commander for Cyrus the Younger of Persia, then joined the staff of King Agesilaus II of Sparta before settling in Elis and, in the aftermath of the battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, retiring to Corinth. His historical and biographical works, Socratic dialogues and reminiscences, and short treatises on hunting, horsemanship, economics, and the Spartan constitution are richly informative about his own life and times.…
In Plato’s Sophist, the main speaker (not Socrates in this case!) mocks those he calls “late-learners," I fall decidedly into that category. When I first read the works of Plato, I was lured into a lifelong attempt to understand and explain the figure of Socrates as he appears in Plato’s dialogues. Lately I have been reading materials by ancient Socratic sources other than Plato and have been wrestling with the uneasy recognition that this “father of Western philosophy” was not seen in the same way even by those who knew him personally. Who was Socrates??? Once upon a time, I thought I knew…
It really helps to read collections like this to get the broadest possible view of a historical figure who refuses to come into focus.
There is just enough work on Plato in this collection to allow me to remind myself of the comparisons possible in this very diverse literature and to see so clearly how the very idea of Socrates resonates in so many cultures and languages. Why did someone who wrote nothing inspire so many others to write about him?
How to face the Socratic riddle? This book offers some clues to address the problem of Socrates and the Socratic philosophies from different perspectives that include the problem of Socrates and the Socratic environment, Plato's Socrates, the Socratic lines, with special attention to Antisthenes, the Megarics, the Cyrenaics, Xenophon and Aeschines, and the Socratic reception in important ancient authors.
A fake date, romance, and a conniving co-worker you'd love to shut down. Fun summer reading!
Liza loves helping people and creating designer shoes that feel as good as they look. Financially overextended and recovering from a divorce, her last-ditch opportunity to pitch her firm for investment falls flat. Then…
While I am Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina and the author of ten books, I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City. My parents were from rural Missouri. I never met a professor, a writer, or an artist growing up. I never seriously considered going to college. But I loved to read. When I went to college and discovered you could major in literature and ancient languages, my life changed. I am now at work on a book entitled Truth and Enjoyment in Cicero: Rhetoric and Philosophy Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which reflects on what Cicero can teach us about living in a post-truth age.
These are Foucault’s final lectures in 1984. They are a remarkable testament to philosophical courage. In late December of 1983, Foucault fell ill. At this time he may have received a diagnosis of AIDS, but it is not sure. By March, he was regularly in and out of the hospital. At this point, he no longer sought a diagnosis but only inquired how much time he had.The editor Frédéric Gros observes that, like Socrates, whom Foucault references repeatedly in these lectures, he was more concerned with failing to complete his mission than with death. At the beginning of his final lecture, Foucault stood before his audience and said, “I am going to try to give you two hours of lecture today, but I am not absolutely sure I will make it.” He gave the full lecture.
The Courage of the Truth is the last course that Michel Foucault delivered at the College de France before his death in 1984. In this course, he continues the theme of the previous year's lectures in exploring the notion of "truth-telling" in politics to establish a number of ethically irreducible conditionsbased on courage and conviction.
I have studied the ancient world for over 50 years and have found that there are always new things to discover. Everyone thought that all that was known about Socrates had already been said, so I was excited to discover new evidence for his relationship with Aspasia - a woman of extraordinary influence and intellect - hiding in plain sight. I am a Professor of Classics at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Jesus College, Oxford.
This book provides a series of translations of ancient texts relating to the life of Socrates, raising questions about his earlier trajectory among other things. The scattered sources gathered in this volume tell a very different story about the philosopher from that normally obtained by concentrating almost exclusively on his trial and death.
Socrates (469 399 B.C.) is one of history's most enigmatic and intriguing figures. He is often considered the father of Western philosophy, yet the four most famous accounts we have of him present a contradictory, confusing picture.
Just who was Socrates? Was he Plato's brilliant philosopher, at times confounding and infuriating, morally serious and yet ironic; the ever-worldly man, sometime mystic, and uncommon martyr? Or did Plato conflate Socrates' views with his own startling genius, as Aristotle suggests? Was Socrates instead the less impressive, more mundane man whose commonsense impressed the laconic Xenophon? Or could Socrates have been the charlatan,…
I like books to grab and hold my attention. That’s what I like about music, too, which is why I co-host a heavy metal podcast when I’m not teaching Latin or writing books and articles. Having taught Latin and Classics for over thirty years from middle school through undergrad, I know what people enjoy about the Greco-Roman world and what they often missed out on in school. I love reading this stuff, too, whether prepping for class, doing research for my next publication, or while listening to head-banging greats of the ‘70s and ‘80s, so dig in and get ready to rock with the Romans and groove with the Greeks!
When people think of the great rock bands, they think of the hits, the songs that raced to #1. True fans know that there are some great, even better songs, on the flip sides of the albums, the so-called deep cuts. The same is true with writers like Plato. Few are familiar with his Theaetetus, but it is my favorite. It explores how we know what we know and proves the error of a slogan that is as popular today as it was in his time, “Man is the measure of all things.” Plato shows how logically silly that is, and in a fairly humorous way…if you like philosophical wit, that is.
— A Classic — Includes Active Table of Contents — Includes Religious Illustrations
SOME dialogues of Plato are of so various a character that their relation to the other dialogues cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. The Theaetetus, like the Parmenides, has points of similarity both with his earlier and his later writings. The perfection of style, the humour, the dramatic interest, the complexity of structure, the fertility of illustration, the shifting of the points of view, are characteristic of his best period of authorship. The vain search, the negative conclusion, the figure of the midwives, the constant…
“Rowdy” Randy Cox, a woman staring down the barrel of retirement, is a curmudgeonly blue-collar butch lesbian who has been single for twenty years and is trying to date again.
At the end of a long, exhausting shift, Randy finds her supervisor, Bryant, pinned and near death at the warehouse…
I'm an author, trainer, coach, and podcaster – a description that would have shocked my much younger self. My own journey of self-development has taken me to the privileged position, through my business, of helping others on their journey to discover their own potential. The joy of seeing this emerge is fresh with every individual and group I work with, and of course my own journey of discovery continues too. Someone once said to the Dalai Lama, "When do you get to enlightenment?"…. "When I die!" came the reply. He recognised the value of being open to ideas and change… which is just some of the fabulous gifts we get from books and each other!
“Let him who would move the world first move himself.”
This is the first book written by another fabulous Greek my late friend Eleni Sarantinou, with whom I co-authored another book on NLP. I was privileged to review a draft of her book before publication and couldn’t wait to get a hard copy and read it all again. It is a fabulous book packed with Eleni’s practical wisdom for those who want to lead others, and themselves of course, through change to success.
Eleni brings into our conscious awareness the importance as a leader and as a person to know our impact and to recognise the limitations our perceptions may place on us. She emphasises the importance of curiosity, self-reflection, and being connected to our emotions, as well as giving and receiving feedback that feeds the soul and spurs the receiver…
Are you in a position of leadership where the responsibility of a team, department or company is riding on your shoulders?
Perception Projection: 9 Principles To Empower Your Team helps you understand the underlying motivation for ALL of your actions, which in turn will unlock your power as a leader. Once you have this key, this powerful message needs to be put into action, so you will also be given strategies and tactics to turn your team, department, company into an unstoppable force for good.
