I think the ideal reader of this book should have some acquaintance with philosophy. Having never taken a course in the subject (which I now believe was a very smart move), I was not the ideal reader by a long shot. Based on the description of the book, I understood that I was going to be exposed to different takes on what a “good life” consists of and guidance about how one might live one. Hmm. . . to some extent I was, yes. While I followed most of the material in the first half of the book and acknowledge learning quite a bit, I eventually ran into trouble. By the two-thirds or three-quarters point, when the authors launched into a summary of Bayesian probability, I had simply had it. I could not continue.

Overall, this text reads like one that might be set for a university introductory/survey credit course on living a satisfying or meaningful life (according to the Ancients)—a night school or elective class, perhaps, for those not majoring in the discipline—complete with exercises. A great many of these reflective tasks demanded too much effort to be enjoyable, and I’m doubtful that most readers would wrestle with them. Performing Socratic questioning of one’s own assumptions, I found, is excruciatingly difficult. Believe me, I tried.

To be clear: this is not a bad book, but it didn’t provide me with what I’d hoped for. The rating reflects the emotional response of a less-than-ideal (and a now burned-out) reader. A pleasure this book was not.

I found this book to be a comprehensive and accessible guide for those being introduced to stoicism for the first time; it is important that the concepts, and thinkers, introduced are done so in an approachable way to not scare anyone off that has never majored in philosophy (me!), so I found this book to be better than the others I've read that touch upon stoicism.