24 BOOKS youve never heard

YOUR!LIFE
{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

CHANGE

of but will

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.

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UNDISCOVERED FAVORITES

Lets explore some of the unexpected, under-rated, and often

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 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

24 BOOKS

by X E N O P H O N

Cyropaedia*
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.
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* (a more accessible translation can be

found in Xenophons Cyrus The Great: The Arts of Leadership and War)

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

by P U BL IU S SYR U S

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus: A Roman Slave

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.
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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

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

Meditations

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.
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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

by GIO R GIO V ASAR I

The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects

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.
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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

by E D W AR D E . H AL E

The Man Without A Country

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.
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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

by SO L O M O N N O R T H U P

Twelve Years a Slave

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.
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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

by AMBR O SE BIE R C E

Civil War Stories

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 }

by GE O R GE DE V O L

Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi

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 }

by K N U T H AM SU N

Hunger

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.
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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

10

by GE O R GE HO R AC E L O R IME R

Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son

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 }

11

by JAC K JO HNSO N

My Life and Battles

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.
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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

12

by WILLIAM MAR CH

Company K
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.
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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

13

by SIN C L AIR L E WIS

Babbitt

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 }

14

by WILLIAM SEABR OOK

Asylum: An Alcoholic Takes the Cure

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).
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n 1934, William Seabrook was one of the

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

15

by JO HN F ANT E

Ask the Dust

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 expectations they create, and that he could have everything he wants if he calmed down and lived in reality for a second.
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his is the west coasts Great Gatsby. Fante has

{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

16

by B.H. L IDDE L L HAR T

Strategy and Why Dont We Learn from History?

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 }

17

by F . SC O T T F I T Z G E R A L D

The Crack Up

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.
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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

18

by AL V IN K AR P IS

On the Rock: Twenty Five Years in Alcatraz

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.
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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

19

by JO HN GU NT HE R

Death Be Not Proud

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.
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{ RYAN HOLIDAY }

20

by BU DD SC HU L BE R G

The Harder They Fall

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 }

21

by L E E SAN D L IN

Losing the War

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 }

22

by F L O R I D A SC O T T M A X W E L L

The Measure of My Days

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 }

23

by JAY HAL E Y

The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ and Other Essays

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 }

24

by JO HN V AIL L ANT

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

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 }

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 }

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