24

BOOKS
youve never heard
of but will

CHANGE
YOURLIFE
{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 When you read
the same books as
everyone else, you dont
learn anything new.
Its skating to where
the puck was.

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
by kraybon
 Reading is
about insight into
the human experience,
about understanding.
Dont follow in
well-trod footsteps.
Carve a new path.

by MarioMancuso
 For the last five years,
Ive tried to do just that
on my popular monthly
reading list email.
IVE RECOMMENDED
HUNDREDS OF AMAZING,
LIFE-CHANGING BOOKS
TO TENS OF THOUSANDS
OF PEOPLE.

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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Lets explore some of
the unexpected, under-rated, and often
UNDISCOVERED FAVORITES
Cyropaedia The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus: A Roman Slave Meditations The Man Without
a Country 12 Years A Slave Civil War Stories Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi Hunger
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son My Life and Battles Company K Babbitt
Asylum: An Alcoholic Takes the Cure Ask the Dust Why Dont We Learn from History? Strategy
The Crack Up On the Rock: Twenty Five Years in Alcatraz Death Be Not Proud The Harder They
Fall Losing the War The Measure of My Days The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ and Other Essays
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival Cyropaedia The Moral Sayings of Publius

24 BOOKS
Syrus: A Roman Slave Meditations The Man Without a Country 12 Years A Slave Civil War
Stories Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi Hunger Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to
His Son My Life and Battles Company K Babbitt Asylum: An Alcoholic Takes the Cure Ask
the Dust Why Dont We Learn from History? Strategy The Crack Up On the Rock: Twenty Five
Years in Alcatraz Death Be Not Proud The Harder They Fall Losing the War The Measure of
My Days The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ and Other Essays The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance
and Survival Cyropaedia The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus: A Roman Slave Meditations The
Man Without a Country 12 Years A Slave Civil War Stories Forty Years a Gambler on the
Mississippi Hunger Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son My Life and Battles
Company K Babbitt Asylum: An Alcoholic Takes the Cure Ask the Dust Why Dont We Learn
 Cyropaedia*
1 by X E N O P H O N

X enophon, like Plato, was a student of Socrates.

There are so many great lessons in here and
I wish more people would read it. Machiavelli
learned them, as this book inspiredThe Prince.

Buy the book on Amazon

* (a more accessible translation can be

found in Xenophons Cyrus The Great:
The Arts of Leadership and War) { RYAN HOLIDAY }
 The Moral Sayings
2 of Publius Syrus: A Roman Slave
by P U BL IU S SYR U S

T he best philosophy comes from people who

were not philosophers. Syrus was a slave and
his moral maxims are far better than perhaps the
most famous book in this category, those of
Duc de la Rochefoucauld.

Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Meditations
3 by M A R C U S AU R E L IU S
(Gregory Hays translation, do not read the others, they suck)

A t some point around 170 AD, the single most

powerful man in the world sat down and
wrote a private book of lessons and admonishments
to himself for becoming a better, kinder and
humbler person. And this text survives and you
have access to it today.

Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 The Lives of the Most Excellent
4 Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
by GIO R GIO V ASAR I

B asically a friend and peer of Michelangelo,

Da Vinci, Raphael Titian and all the other
great minds of the Renaissance sat down in 1550
and wrote biographical sketches of the people he
knew or had influenced him. There are so many
great lessons about craft and psychology within this
book. The best part? It was written by someone
who actually knew what he was talking about, not
some art snob or critic, but an actual artist and
architect of equal stature to the people he was
documenting.
Buy the book on Amazon
{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 The Man Without A Country
5 by E D W AR D E . H AL E

P atriotism is not a concept that gets a lot of

love today. But this essay/book makes you
think a little. Released in 1863 during the height
of the Civil War, the plots simple: an innocent man
caught up in Aaron Burrs treasonous conspiracy
stands trial for his actions. For those with some
understanding of historical, youll enjoy the
meta-fiction of it, for those that havent it is still a
very good look into early America.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Twelve Years a Slave
6 by SO L O M O N N O R T H U P

I f there is one book you read about slavery in

America, read this one. Its the real story of a
born freedman in the North who, as a traveling
musician, was brought out of his home state on
false pretenses in order to be captured, kidnapped,
and transported South to be sold as a slave.
This book is just as good as Frederick Douglass
memoirand I think illustrates the horrors of slavery
in a much more undeniable way.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Civil War Stories
7 by AMBR O SE BIE R C E

M ark Twain, for all his bitterness and sarcasm,

was just more fun for average people to read
than Ambrose Bierce. But Bierce is the one who
truly captured the Civil Wara terrible and awful
conflict in which death and destruction and
stupidity were far more prevalent than strategy or
heroism.
Too many books about the Civil War are
inaccessible, with their flanking movements and
war vocabulary. This book is all people. Must read.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Forty Years a Gambler
8 on the Mississippi
by GE O R GE DE V O L

T he memoir of a professional gambler, fighter

and criminal who rode the riverboats of the
Mississippi and Red Rivers. Its a true and vibrant
snapshot of a period of American life that you cant
get anywhere else. Gun fights, brawls, consits all
here. Fascinating, peculiar and very easy to read.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Hunger
9 by K N U T H AM SU N

A dark and moving first-person narrative, about

the conflicting drives for self-preservation and
self-immolation inside all of us. Hunger is about a
writer who is starving himself. He cannot write
because he is starving and cannot eat because
writing is how he makes his living. Its a vicious
cycle and the book is a first-person descent into it.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Letters from a Self-Made
10 Merchant to His Son
by GE O R GE HO R AC E L O R IME R

T his book is the preserved correspondence

between Old Gorgon Graham, a self-made
millionaire in Chicago, and his son who is coming
of age and entering the family business. The letters
date back to the 1890s but feel like they could
have been written in any era. Honest. Genuine.
Packed with good advice.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 My Life and Battles
11 by JAC K JO HNSO N

T his is the lost and translated book that came

out of a series of pieces Johnsonperhaps the
greatest boxer who ever livedwrote for a French
newspaper in 1911. Its not very long but it is full of
really interesting strategies and anecdotes.
As Jack London put it after Johnsons most
famous fight: No one understands him, this man
who smiles. Well, the story of the fight is the story
of a smile. If ever a man won by nothing more
fatiguing than a smile, Johnson won today.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Company K
12 by WILLIAM MAR CH

F ar and away the best book ever written about

WWI. But thats the problemWWI was
awful, perhaps the most awful thing of the 20th
century. And this book is forgotten precisely
because it portrays the war and its pointlessness too
realistically. We want to know, but we dont really
want to know.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Babbitt
13 by SIN C L AIR L E WIS

I dont think there was anyone in the 1920s who

would have believed that this book would be
completely forgotten.
Yet, here we are 8090 years later: youve
probably never heard of the term or the book.
Perhaps its because the biting satire of American
suburban middle class life cuts deeper now than it
did then. It doesnt matter if the book is old, its still
very funny and at its core, a critique of conformity
and what Thoreau called the life of quiet
desperation.
Buy the book on Amazon
{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Asylum:
14 An Alcoholic Takes the Cure
by WILLIAM SEABR OOK

I n 1934, William Seabrook was one of the

most famous journalists in the world. He was also an
alcoholic. But there was no treatment for his disease. So he
checked himself into an insane asylum. There, from the
perspective of a travel writer, he described his own journey
through this strange and foreign place. Today, you cant
read a page in the book without seeing him bump,
unknowingly, into the basic principles of 12-step groups
and then thwarted by well meaning doctors (like the one
who decides hes cured and can start drinking again).
It breaks your heart to know that just a few years or decades
later, his options (and outcome) would have been so very
different (he eventually died of an opium overdose).
Buy the book on Amazon { RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Ask the Dust
15 by JO HN F ANT E

T his is the west coasts Great Gatsby. Fante has

benefited from some recognitionmostly thanks
to Bukowski championing him in his later yearsbut
because the book is about Los Angeles and not New York
City, it is mostly forgotten.
Bandini, the subject of the series, is a wonderful
example of someone whose actual life is ruined by the
fantasies in his headevery second he spends stuck up there
is one he wastes and spoils in real life. Hes too caught up and
delusional to see that his problems are his fault, that hes
vicious because he cant live up to the impossible expec-
tations they create, and that he could have everything he
wants if he calmed down and lived in reality for a second.
Buy the book on Amazon
{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Strategy and
16 Why Dont We Learn from History?
by B.H. L IDDE L L HAR T

T hese are two very short books but will help you
understand the topics more than thousands of
pages on the same topic by countless other writers.
In my view, Hart is unquestionably the best writer
on military strategy and history.
His theories on the indirect approach is life
changing, whether youre struggling with a business
or just office politics. I cant say much more than
read these books. Its a must.
Buy Strategy and Why Dont We Learn from History? on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 The Crack Up
17 by F . SC O T T F I T Z G E R A L D

I f you likeAsylum, readThe Crack Up, a book

put together by Fitzgeralds friend Edmund
Wilson after his death. It is such an honest and
self-aware compilation of someone hell-bent on
their own destruction. At the same time,
Fitzgeralds notes and story ideas within the book
make it undeniably clear what a genius he truly was.
Its a sad and moving but necessary read.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 On the Rock:
18 Twenty Five Years in Alcatraz
by AL V IN K AR P IS

J ohn Dillinger was played by Johnny Depp.

Most people know who he wasmostly
because he died in a hail of bullets. But they forget
that the other Public Enemy #1 at the time was
Alvin Karpis and he didnt die. In fact, he lived up
until the 1980s. Just enough time to do a couple
decades at Alcatraz with guys like Al Capone.
During a temporary transfer to an alternate prison,
Karpis met a young weirdo named Charlie Manson
and taught him how to play guitar.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Death Be Not Proud
19 by JO HN GU NT HE R

W ritten in 1949 by the famous journalist

John Gunther about his death of his son
a geniusat 17 from a brain tumor, this book is
deeply moving and profound. Every young person
will be awed by this young boy who knows he will
die too soon and struggles to do it with dignity
and purpose.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 The Harder They Fall
20 by BU DD SC HU L BE R G

B udd Schulbergs (who wroteOn the Waterfront)

whole trilogy is amazing and each captures a
different historical era. All you need to know about
Schulbergs writing is captured in this quote from
his obituary: Its the writers responsibility to
stand up against that power. The writers are really
almost the only ones, except for very honest
politicians, who can make any dent on that
system. I tried to do that. And thats affected me
my whole life.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 Losing the War
21 by L E E SAN D L IN

T his is an essay, not a book, but if you

have to read one thing about WWII, this
is it. Sandlin is a master and the essay is free,
read it.
Read the essay here

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 The Measure of My Days
22 by F L O R I D A SC O T T M A X W E L L

T he daily notes of a strong but dying woman

(born 1883, written in 1968) watching her life
slowly leave her and wind to a close. The wisdom in
this thing is amazing and the fact that most people
have no idea existsand basically wait until the end
of their life to start thinking about all this is very
sad to me.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ
23 and Other Essays
by JAY HAL E Y

T he title essay in this book is peerless and

amazing. The rest of the essays, which talk
about Haleys unusual approach to psychotherapy
are also quite good. If youve gone to therapy, are
thinking about going to therapy, or know someone
going to therapy, this book is a must-read.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 The Tiger: A True Story
24 of Vengeance and Survival
by JO HN V AIL L ANT

I ll end with this book because its the most

recent. The (true) story is simple: man in Siberia
wounds tiger while hunting to feed his family.
Tiger goes on killing spree while hunting the man
down, and is stopped only when the Russian
government dispatches a special SWAT team to
track and kill it. This is probably the single best
piece of nonfiction journalism Ive ever read.
Buy the book on Amazon

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
N o one is saying you should
skip your high school
reading list.
The problem is thinking that
thats enough. In order to work
for everyone, those books had
to be safe. Dont read safe.

READ DANGEROUSLY.

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }
 For more book
recommendations
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