Episode · Honestly with Bari Weiss · 2025-10-30
Books mentioned on Men Are Struggling. Reading Can Help.
Shilo Brooks recommended The Republic, Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche, Emma by Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Middlemarch by George Eliot, and The Symposium, and discussed The prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, Night by Elie Wiesel, Karl Marx on the Jewish Question by Karl Marx and others, The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The prince
Discussed“I chose Machiavelli because he wrote the greatest book on leadership ever written, The Prince which advises you to lie, cheat, steal, and murder to get ahead.”
Where to get it
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Night
Discussed“One was Karl Marx's The Jewish Question and I had coupled that with Elie Wiesel's Night. And we were going to read them together that week and it was the week it just happened to be that week.”
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Karl Marx on the Jewish Question
Discussed“And our reading for that week was two books. One was Karl Marx's The Jewish Question and I had coupled that with Elie Wiesel's Night.”
Where to get it
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The Republic
Recommended“Yeah, so I think you know, you can't not read Plato's Republic. Plato's Republic is probably the greatest book on justice ever written.”
Where to get it
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Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
Recommended“I've written a book on him, but he wrote a book called Beyond Good and Evil which in my view is the most scathing critique of the West from top to bottom ever written.”
Where to get it
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Emma
Recommended“I think you need to meditate especially as a young person on love. Whether you do that through Jane Austen and a book like Emma or Pride and Prejudice, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Plato's Symposium books on love...”
Where to get it
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Pride and Prejudice
Recommended“Whether you do that through Jane Austen and a book like Emma or Pride and Prejudice, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Plato's Symposium books on love...”
Where to get it
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Middlemarch
Recommended“Whether you do that through Jane Austen and a book like Emma or Pride and Prejudice, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Plato's Symposium books on love...”
Where to get it
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The Symposium
Recommended“George Eliot's Middlemarch, Plato's Symposium books on love that give you that make you begin to think more than just about kind of the super...”
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The Taming of the Shrew
Discussed“Shakespeare's guilty of the same thing although he wrote a book called Taming of the Shrew which sobers one up about what love should be.”
Where to get it
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The Great Gatsby
Discussed“F. Scott Fitzgerald is among the most beautiful writers ever to emerge in the world and I think when students have a sentence that takes their breath away when there's a phrase we were reading The Great Gatsby yesterday and I pointed out to my producer that Fitzgerald uses this phrase to describe the night sky, the silver pepper of”
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Other mentions in this episode (4) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing In Old School Days
“This is the driving vision of the new podcast he just launched with the Free Press called Old School, where he talks to guests about the books that have shaped their lives.”
Passing The Great Gatsby
“Fareed Zakaria on The Great Gatsby, Nick Cave on The Adventures of Pinocchio, Richard Dawkins on P.G. Wodehouse.”
Passing The Adventures of Pinocchio
“Fareed Zakaria on The Great Gatsby, Nick Cave on The Adventures of Pinocchio, Richard Dawkins on P.G. Wodehouse.”
Passing The Most Of P.G. Wodehouse
“Fareed Zakaria on The Great Gatsby, Nick Cave on The Adventures of Pinocchio, Richard Dawkins on P.G. Wodehouse.”