Books and Me

by Anders Hansen (2017) This is the book I'd been waiting for:  all that walking and running and jumping up and down, which yes, you know it is good for the body, but what about the soul?  There have been hints before, snippets garnered here and there, but sometimes when you don't feel like donning the trainers, you need a veritable peon to the merits of getting out there in the rain and doing that little bit more.  And here it is:  a smorgasbord of reasons to get off the sofa. It really isn't just about endorphins or even endo-cannabinoids either.  There's all the other stuff you will have heard of like dopamine and BDNF and the effects on cortisol, but there's much more, like kynurenine and CCK, that meant absolutely nothing to me, but which only pile on the reasons to get out there. And it works.  It really does.  We should all be doing this.  It is good for the soul. Rating 10/10

Miguel Barclay (2019) Extensive offerings of creatively constructed, original, cheap, tasty meals. 8/10

by Joe Wicks (2018) Great, simple, manageable workouts and great, simple, manageable veggie food.  7/10

By Gary Klein (2017) For reasons that now completely escape me, I started out skeptically with this book  but somewhere in the course of it, I have been completely persuaded and have just finished it in a flurry of committed appreciation.  This is probably partially because it is a less depressing read than many of the behavioural economics books I have been reading lately, but more constructively it is also because I now feel I have a bit more of a handle on how to generate new ideas more easily and often. The author approaches the matter of how insights are generated through naturalistic research - taking 120 examples of moments where insights have occurred in real life rather than from experiments in a laboratory, and as a result, he generates a richness of understanding that more controlled testing would and has missed. In the process, Klein provides a very welcome corrective to the heuristics and biases movement which is often lab based and which is often terr...

Dr Vee Freir (2016) It seems I am becoming a complete sucker for secondary sources.  They often come just so much more neatly packaged than the primary sources which can be a labour of love in comparison. And so it is with this offering.  There is almost nothing here that you won't have encountered before, but it is presented so succinctly and clearly and yet with such a profusion of useful suggestions that then get rammed into memory through such repeated exposure, that really you can't complain. The author advises picking and choosing from the fifty suggestions on offer as some will work better than others for different people. Most of strategies I do already, but I did highlight twelve others that seem easy to incorporate without completely devoting one's time to stress management. These included leveling the chin in order to improve breathing and improving posture and shoulder pain by picturing removing a vividly imagined rucksack. Rating 6/10

By Jonathan A. Levi (2019) One minor quibble I have about "The Only Skill That Matters" is that the title only accurately describes the contents if you take it as meaning, "How to Learn Efficiently", even though this overarching skill is subsequently broken down into quite a few distinct sub-skills that need to be acquired in different ways.   Having said that, all of what the author says makes a huge amount of sense, even if you will have seen most of it somewhere else already.  He rehashes the inspirational work of Harry Lorayne  on how to use visual mnemonics, discusses the various applications of the Pareto Principle, (that 80% of the benefits accrue for 20% of the input), about how to manage motivation, speed reading, pre-reading, the inter-related nature of knowledge, aka cross-pollination, the benefits of the brute force approach, self-quizzing and teaching, all of which we have come across before elsewhere but it is all condensed very neatly and a...

by Mihaly Csikzentmihaly (2002) This is a book of two halves: the first a classic description of a how to live well in more or less any situation; the second, a rather protracted description of how to apply the lessons of the first half to every other possible scenario.  During this second half, I felt rather like a dinner guest trapped by a loquacious guest who, whilst they may be extremely clever, has had one too many and simply didn't know when to stop.  Ironically, I simply couldn't get into the flow of reading this second half however hard I tried, but that shouldn't stop one taking heed of the very important messages of the first half. Rating 6/10 Related links:  https://positivepsychology.com/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-father-of-flow/

by Sarah Knight (2015) Oh my, this was truly dreadful - a muddled message, poorly communicated and then endlessly repeated to absolutely no particular gain.  The only half-useful message in the entire book could be summed up as "If you are caring about something that it is not worth caring about, stop it" though it did mean I stopped caring about the contents of this book very quickly, though in truth, I still vaguely resent the 99p I spent on it.  On which point, Sarah doesn't help with this conflict between reason and emotion because she doesn't bother to explain how one should actually stop giving a f**k. I think she implies that this congruence just happens when you reason that you shouldn't care, which as I have just demonstrated with my outstanding annoyance for my 99p, just doesn't necessarily happen.  That's not the only problem - the impracticality of quite a chunk of the rest of the content is truly impressive, eg: the mantra "prio...

by James Wong (2019) In this follow up to his excellent "How to Eat Better" , James eases one into the idea that 10-a-day is not only desirable, given that the reduction in mortality from eating a lot of fruit and vegetables is dose dependent, but also that it is very manageable.  His strategy basically involves throwing fruit or veg at absolutely everything, from pizza bases to pumpkin dressing.  If you've been a vegetarian for a bit, you've probably been doing  quite a lot of this already.  However, James may push you that little extra bit further, and whilst some of his dishes are meat laden, these would be easily adapted by vegetarians. He also introduced me to some ingredients with which I wasn't familiar and which I will try out, orange blossom water, tinned mango puree and vanilla bean paste, for example. I was slightly concerned about how many calories this enterprise would involve.  10-a-day when added to pizzas and custard might be fine for a 6 f...

by Jamil Zaki (2019) This is a clarion call for maximisation of the very best of human qualities, and given the increasing alienation, unhappiness and general antipathy that ail us, along with the global problems we face, this call doesn't come a moment too soon. It is an essential read - important for everyone - parents, policy makers and leaders of all sorts. Rating 10/10. 

By James Clear (2018) The author really does live up to his name with this superbly clear book .  The secret is in the structure.  He creates an unforgettable scaffold upon which to hang the ideas, so that they are not only beautifully signalled, obvious and graspable, but are also memorable and actionable. I can see why he garners so many 5 star ratings on Amazon.   Get this book!  Rating 10/10

by Katie Hurley (2019) With news that 9/10 teens are worried about their mental health, and that a third state that they feel helpless, sad and or fearful frequently and this problem far outstripping any help that is offered by others, these sorts of work books would seem to have a big and important function. This one does the job efficiently enough. There isn't anything you won't already have read before in other places, but it puts all the strategies in one neat place succinctly and clearly, and even if you don't have any mood disorder, often seems to offer very sensible strategies for life. Whether a teen would actually engage with it in the first place, let alone actually benefit from it, is another matter altogether. Rating 6/10

by Simon Sinek  (2011) Oh blimey, thank heaven that's over.   It was dire!  The repetition was so all engulfing that it felt as if I'd fallen into a roiling sea of nearly identical sentences which burbled around, sapping me of my last ounce of energy and breath. To tell the truth, after the millionth time of being told that Apple (whom I dislike) are amazing because they have a great big WHY (in capitals), I started skipping and dipping to see if new sections of the book had by chance got any new sentences that I hadn't seen before.  The really annoying thing was that just occasionally a new idea would be introduced, which did mean that I felt I couldn't just fling the whole thing in the nearest canal, fire, cesspit. (Sorry, imagining what to do with the thing has been the only entertainment I've had in a while.) Whether these new ideas were worth having is a moot point, however.  The central theme - that it is productive to have an ins...

By Jason Fox (2018) This  is a gripping, convincing read for which the actual writer, Matt Allen, should take a lot of  credit, not least because until I got to the acknowledgements right at the end, I had managed to persuade myself that Jason's voice was largely authentically his.   OK, so you could see that the book was beautifully structured and that this sort of level of writing skill isn't something people normally acquire when they've spent their entire adult life busting through doors and shooting the threats that lie behind it, so I guess I should have just got on and accepted this fact - but in some regards, it still sounded like the Jason you hear on  Who Dares Wins,  so I just wanted to believe.  But really, duh, in retrospect what was I thinking! One regular feature of PTSD, to which Jason bravely admits, is that it closes down Broca's area - the part of the brain that is responsible for speech.  It is quite possibl...

by Jennie Marie Battistin (2019) One of the biggest problems with selling mindfulness to teens, in my experience, is that it just sounds hokey.  Why should they bother with it? It doesn't sound as if it would work and there are better things to be doing with one's time.  Plus, don't try to whitewash problems.  If there is an issue, solve it directly.  Don't try to make the poor victim just accept that this is how things are whilst deluding themselves that everything is hunky dory.   And the awful thing is, they may have a point.  I mean, there are quite a few recent studies out there which suggest that mindfulness is not all it's been cracked up to be.  And yes, perhaps mindfulness is occasionally used coercively as a cover for appallingly stressful situations. I remember an example of this in the NHS a while back: nurses who were working on desperately understaffed wards being taught mindfulness in nursing school in order to manage their a...

by Meik Wiking  (2016) The author of this book attributes the fact that the Danes regularly top world happiness charts to the fact that they take Hygge or Danish cosiness of the soul seriously in many areas of life.  It is not just that cosy feeling when you sit around a roaring fire with friends and candles as a storm rages outside, you can apply hygge to meals, Christmas, skiing, pretty much any social occasion.   Of course, the Danes also do have generous government support, pretty reasonable GDP, a generally trusting population, and a great work/life balance.  These things probably help, but hygge does sound like a lovely idea and I've gone out and bought candles as a result. Rating 6/10

by John Connelly (2014) This was indeed a speed read. Took about ten minutes in fact.  That might have had something to do with the fact that I had just read another book on exactly the same subject, and knew what was coming next, but it is also very short, succinct and to the point.  As with "Essential Speed Reading", we are told how to overcome word fixation and subvocalisation and there are suggestions about margin restriction and prohibitions against rereading.  Some things in the first book are omitted here but, on the other hand, it also contained a few ideas the other didn't, so all in all, it was ten minutes well spent.   The latter section of the book is all about study skills, which was a bit of a surprise, as it isn't announced on the cover and I had no idea that was coming, quite frankly, but hey ho. Most of these suggestions seemed sensible too.  The only real gripe is that writer and his editor were clearly reading too quickly to no...

by Thibaut Meurisse (2019) This is yet another of those books that takes a lot of its material from primary sources and reworks them into a succinct package so that it is pretty straightforward to extract and retain the take home messages whilst not worrying about the history of the explanations or the intricacies of the arguments, and really, for that we should be grateful - it's a quick and punchy read with a bundle of good ideas on the issue of motivation, even if it didn't solve the problem of how to magic motivation out of thin air, recommending instead that one act on whatever minute morsel of motivation one already has.  The only other quibble: the author consistently addresses the reader directly as "you" and as I personally don't have any issues with a lack of motivation just now at least, I kept feeling the urge to shout "Hey look, not a problem mate!".  However,  if the reader is stuck in a rut, this probably wouldn't be a probl...

By Katya Seberson (2019) Well, the proof is in the pudding.  I started reading this book at my usual pace, and ended up reading at nearly twice the speed.   Unlike a lot of speed reading apps which flash the word at you one at a time in a completely unrealistic fashion, this explains how to read proper lumps of text as quickly as is humanly possible.   There's talk of saccades, fixations and parafoveal vision, along with physical exercises and practice tests. All in all, if my faster reading speeds are anything to go by, the science behind it must be sound. Rating 6/10

by George S. Glass and David Tabatsky (2014) This was happily a very quick read: happily because it was mostly pretty depressing, and quick because it was both banal and repetitive by turns.   You could get a broad idea of where the argument was going as soon as you saw the subtitle on each page, and there wasn't much to be gained by doing more than scanning the rest.  On top of this, a lot of the references that supported the major arguments weren't to research papers, which whilst being admittedly pretty unreliable in themselves, are nonetheless probably better resources than the "How To" website or NBC News upon which much of this book relied. The authors seemed hell-bent on haranguing parents for all manner of perceived crimes of over-parenting, from being too anxious about injury to doing a child's homework.  As a parent, one is likely to spend the whole book thinking "Is this me?  Perhaps, I dunno.  I think I might have done that once or tw...

by Chip and Dan Heath (2011) You have to love this  simply because it proffers such a plethora of sensible sounding solutions to the problem of how to implement change and it does this with so many vivid examples, and within such well organised framework that you really won't forget the broad outline of the ideas, from which is it possible to recall the finer details and therefore will be able to actually use what you've read.  It is, as with the "Asshole Survival Guide", a must read in that it would make the world a better place. OK, at some points, you may begin to wonder if some of the research might not have survived the replication crisis .  Carol Dweck is quoted with reverence and questions were hanging over her "Growth Mindset" argument, but I see that as of August 2019, a large study has confirmed that it does work, and even if the effects were small, were still significant.  Research aside (!), intuitively, every change-facilitating method i...

by Robert I. Sutton (2017) This i s, just as Daniel Pink says on the cover, a contemporary classic. If everyone were to read it, take it to heart and act on it, our planet would be an infinitely better place.  Sutton explains not only how to identify an "asshole", (sorry, there is no other satisfactory word -believe me, I've dug around in thesauri and the darkest reaches of the minds of friends and relatives, and have not yet come up with a satisfactory replacement), he also provides numerous ideas about how to deal with them, some of which strike me as inspired, (the Benjamin Franklin effect being one of these), but for the icing on the cake, he also requires that the reader look in the mirror in order to make sure they are not the asshole in the room! So it works for everyone, the asshole as well as the victim.  And of course, most of us have our moments.  It takes a masterful saint not to lapse at some point, though we might as well aim high, I guess. A must rea...

by Martin Meadows (2015) There is nothing startlingly new here.  If you've read around a bit in the self-help category, you will recognise most of the ideas in here, but it is nonetheless helpful to have them all bunched neatly and succinctly into one place and almost all of what he says makes very good sense.  A useful precis. Rating 6/10

by Tom Wainwright (2017) This is proving tricky to review!  I loved the writing style and the presentation of the numerous arguments, and indeed I was completely convinced, in the end, that specific forms of legalisation of drugs would be the best way to go, but I kept being struck by a terrible ennui.  The thing is, I just am not terribly interested in either illicit drugs or economics. This is wrong of me. I should be more concerned, not least as what we do with drugs in this country has implications for people all over the world. If you do happen to be interested in these subjects, and want a very slick exposition as to why the war of drugs is bound to fail, and what we should do instead, this is very much the book for you. Rating 8/10

by Walter Mischel (2015) It's hard to take Mischel's  argument  for nurture terribly seriously immediately after reading Plomin's  "Blueprint" .  It isn't as if Plomin's  book isn't flawed , but it nonetheless did make a pretty convincing case that we are largely determined by our genes.   Mischel, on the other hand, whilst also giving a nod to the importance of genetic determinism, remains far more optimistic than Plomin that we can choose to alter ourselves in a way that can change outcomes in a meaningful sort of a way.  He argues that it doesn't all come down to whether we were able to resist the marshmallow aged three and a half.  According to him, we can learn optimism, a growth mindset and various  other strategies for resisting temptation.  The problem is that the marshmallow test and their ilk, including Dweck's Growth Mindset theory have been subject to the replication problem from which it seems possible to conc...

by Robert Plomin (2018) Oh boy is it a relief to get this one done!  It isn't so much the message - I can't possibly offer a reasonable take on that, given my very tenuous grasp of genetics, though plenty of others have been critical . Rather it is the seemingly endless repetition of the same or (at least very similar) argument, ie: that we are largely a product of a massive number of genes that add tiny but multiple effects.  OK, this seems like a big theme, but believe me, you have got the message pretty early on, and the rest of the book is a series of iterations of this central idea.  It hardly ever lets go.  Admittedly there is a chapter towards the end where Plomin discusses the ethical and practical implications of this evidence, for which one is phenomenally grateful as it does offer a bit of variety, but just as you limp over the finishing line of what you may reasonably assume is the last chapter, up pops an epilogue to tell you the whole thing all ov...

by Bessel Van Der Kolk (2015) Where to start?  This book is monumental, being vast in scope, beautifully argued and hugely significant all at once.  It is also deeply humane and potentially healing.  It would have been very easy for Bessel to have turned out an angry diatribe but instead he quietly makes his case, and you only gradually begin to clock, whilst reading between the lines, that his argument represents a huge challenge to current psychiatric, schooling and social services. His argument is that the epidemic of unhappiness which is currently so often attributed to snowflakery/lack of resilience is actually, often as not, a response to deeply traumatic events which for whatever reason, we do not really want to acknowledge or confront. So instead of blaming the victim or imposing deeply cruel methods of treatment (he gently explains why CBT so often fails),  Bessel gets about delineating the effects of trauma upon the mind, brain and body, an...

by Katherine Andler (2013) This is a twenty minute read at most, but extremely helpful nonetheless.  As it happens, I am simultaneously reading three other  books  on related subjects, one of which mentioned EMDR therapy for PTSD and anxiety in early chapter, and frankly, I couldn't wait to know more about the technique that seemed to promise so much and so went in search of something that could explain it a bit more. Andler's short tract didn't let me down.  She explains EMDR succinctly and memorably and provides useful links to youtube and further reading at the back.  I tried the technique on myself using a minor source of anxiety along with  this video , and OK, so I am hardly terribly traumatised and have worked on my stuff with various tools over the years, (CBT, mindfulness, yoga, attachment theory etc) but, let's face it, sources of at least some level of trauma are ever present, so it wasn't terribly difficult to think something up....

by Patrick King (2018) The wonderful thing about reading widely is that you end up reading books you otherwise wouldn't on the basis that it is only one book among many and nothing much hangs on it being a bad 'un, but then, joy of joys, finding that it is a total gem!  This worked for The Little Book of Stoicism , and it has worked for this one too.  Thankfully for both books, the messages are compatible - essentially - control what you can control, don't make your self assessment dependent upon factors that are outside of your control, be good enough for yourself and don't attempt to manipulate others for your own purposes.  Both books bulge with rational, life-improving, relatively easily actionable advice. Both leave you with clear messages that you won't forget in a hurry.  Highly recommended. Rating 9/10

By Tabatha Chansard (2019) There is nothing new here, but the book is nonetheless an efficient, well-written summary of evidenced-based approaches for tackling teen anxiety, along with exercises designed to encourage the reader to implement the theory.  I'm sure these approaches work, but the teen has to believe it possible and to engage with the suggestions fully.  This might be difficult.  You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Rating 6/10

by Yanis Varoufakis (2017) I see from the reviews on Amazon that I am very much in the minority in finding this book a bit of a chore.  Perhaps I'm not sufficiently interested in economics, but I also think it might have had something to do with thinking that if this were my father talking to me like this at the dinner table, however delicious the food, I would have run upstairs, slammed the door shut as loudly as I could, and stayed there until he'd learned to quit mansplaining.  There were a few ideas that were neat enough, but broadly it was such a partial view of the state of affairs that the book can never be said to have been entirely honest.  We all know capitalism is far from perfect so it would seem fair that Yanis should spend most of the book detailing the history of the emergence of its faults, but he does this all the while apparently hinting at some vastly better, if never described, system which is presumably, given a few deferential reference...

by Ant Middleton (2019) This is far less of a description of military tactics or history and far more a refreshingly different take on the self-help genre.  Channelling your demons and putting them to good aggressive use is not the sort of thing you come across in your average self-improvement read, but actually, if you try hard, the two approaches often aren't completely inconsistent. "First Man In" simply broadens the scope of available solutions and behaviours. Take timing, for example:  when you've read a whole bundle of books on how to avoid procrastinating, it is interesting to come across the concept of "intelligent waiting". "First Man In" is pacily written, an easy read, and is, or at least you hope it is, an insight into the minds of elite soldiers.  Not that you ever feel certain of the veracity of this insight, mind you!  Nothing is ever quite what it seems in this world and the skirting over the tours in Afghanistan makes...

by Daniel Pink (2018) For someone utterly terrified by the concept of selling, I was, by the end of the book , brought into the idea that, one way or another, we are all selling pretty much all the time, so I had better bite the bullet and get better at it.   Given that my previous knowledge is next to zero, I was completely sold on 100% of the suggestions which came neatly chunked and presented with persuasive anecdotes in a way that clearly suggests that Pink has imbibed his own messages.  Reviews elsewhere suggest that the research (which is amply referenced) may either be stretched for the purposes of the argument or may not be rigorous in the first place, but frankly I didn't care.  Any suggestions are welcome and all seem broadly sensible.  The sheer volume of ideas, even though they are clearly sorted in a well constructed system, does mean that unless one has a pretty good memory, one will have to revisit the book to mug up on the finer de...

by Lionel Shriver (2017) I have a low tolerance for boredom when it comes to fiction.  I need to read something that is either startlingly new or seeringly right within the first couple of sentences or the book is consigned to the darker recesses of my kindle library.  Shriver doesn't disappoint .  She had me within the first couple of sentences.  It's all skewer and no fluff.  She, for example, leaves the reader to flesh out extraneous things like the setting - which will most likely be the last tennis court you ever used, and gets on with the business of dissecting male/female and female/female interactions with an eviscerating accuracy.  The story borders on extremely painful not least because it is so believable, but thankfully, being a novella, one can get through it without becoming terminally depressed. As a final point - albeit a trivial one, I can't help envying Lionel her androgenous name.  Aside from the observant writing, I am sure it pr...

Daniel Goleman (2014) The subject of this book - focus - really is the launch pad for emotional intelligence and a successfully Stoic way of being.   Get this right and you have the foundations for building that essential freedom between stimulus and response , which means that you can choose how you react.  Other forms of focus are described too, but of course, once that initial self focus, along with self insight are triggered, one can much more easily actively choose to focus in these ways too.  Methods for increasing ones powers of focus are described.  With even only a little practice, if coupled with an understanding of what to aim for,  one can radically improve emotional and attentional outcomes. These skills should be taught to all children everywhere.  Lessons in attentional control, self awareness and relaxation are taught in classes in Singapore and look what happens to their PISA scores !   I will have to go back to Lucy Cr...

by Amy Morin (2019) While most of this makes great good sense, is well researched and referenced, the format made reading it sequentially a teensy bit tedious and unmemorable.  It is probably best to dip into it, and finding the chapter that is relevant for the moment as it is otherwise pretty difficult to retain all 13 things one must do in order to stay mentally strong. Rating 6/10. 

by Zoe Wybrant (2015) I've been dreading writing a review of this book  for the reason that I really, really don't want to say anything harsh about it.  The author dares to expose her inner soul and in doing so,  provides an abundance of source material that will be very revealing to anyone who encounters the problem of profound and persistent dissatisfaction with appearance.  She also describes the solutions that worked for her in overcoming the problem.  You don't feel right to say anything critical in the face of such honesty and bravery and really most of the problems are just carping.  Zoe isn't really a writer which means that the profundity of some of her assertions may easily be missed which could be a huge shame.  I had to reread the book to pick up on and ram in the take-home messages.  A good editor would have been handy as the content in raw form is all there. Rating 4/10

by Peter Hollins (2019) Well this turned out to be unexpectedly useful.  It's difficult not to assume that you might not get much out of a book if it starts off with the omnipresent Phineas Gage ,  but actually in this instance, after Phineas, there was plenty of information that was completely new to me, most of which was constructive and what's more, most of which chimed very well with my go-to books on how to improve one's mental health, ie: "The Little Book of Stoicism" and "The Chimp Paradox ".  So now we have the complete package, the philosophical take (Stoicism), the psychiatric approach (The Chimp/human paradigm) and now the layman's guide to the neuroscientific angle. It is, for example, satisfying to marry up the powerful chimp versus feeble human paradigm (from the Chimp Paradox) with the neuroscience as described by Hollins when he describes huge proportions of the brain as being swamped with powerful reward-seeking dopamine, wi...

by  Prof Steve Peters (2012) This book on its own could well be a life-changing read, but when read in conjunction with "The Little Book of Stoicism" , you really do have the whole package - ie: both the psychiatric and the philosophical take on how to live well.    "The Little Book of Stoicism" will give you the broad view, ramming the key messages home through the force of rigorously convincing argument, so you really can't forget what to do, even in the heat of the moment and the ethical heft it adds makes the whole exercise seem worth doing. "The Chimp Paradox" describes exactly the same mental model but approaches the subject from a psychiatric point of view.  It is underpinned by the same Stoic idea that one should be realistic about the limits of ones control, and that one should learn to accept the things one cannot control. All the methods for dealing with the chimp brain are prefaced by this knowledge. It is not in the least sur...

by Matt Haig (2015) This is a brave, honest, utterly engaging, at times searingly painful and finally uplifting account of one man's struggle with anxiety and depression.  He manages to make the experience very real at times, which is often a hard thing to convey to those who are broadly happy.  Despite some uncomfortable reading, it is worth the effort to engage with it as there are useful lessons to be learned even for those who have never had a tinge of the black dog, since Matt not only comes up with some very sensible suggestions as to how to get well again but also describes the unexpected value of the experience.  My only quibble: he doesn't prescribe a Stoic philosophy, veering instead towards Buddhist doctrine, yoga and a more classic version of mindfulness than The Little Book of Stoicism prescribed, but this is easily rectifiable as there is nothing that cannot easily be tweaked to bring it in line with the healing nature of stoicism.  Read the...