Episode · The Daily Stoic · 2022-09-20
Books mentioned on Thomas Chatterton Williams on Practical Philosophy and Embracing Contradiction
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables is a classic collection of moral tales attributed to the ancient Greek storyteller, designed to impart enduring lessons through allegorical animal characters.
Discussed“So he took money that in retrospect I realized he didn't always have, and he paid us handsomely, for our age, to sit and study and to read Aesop's Fables when we were really young and then to get on to more sophisticated things later.”
Where to get it
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War and Peace
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy is a monumental literary masterpiece that chronicles Russian society, family life, and the dramatic historical events surrounding the Napoleonic Wars.
Discussed“It's you know, when you immerse yourself in War and Peace or something like that, it it requires hours and hours of investment before you start to feel this world that Tolstoy conjured up around you out of sheer language.”
Where to get it
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War and Peace
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy is a monumental historical epic chronicling Russian society, aristocracy, and military struggles during the Napoleonic era.
Discussed“War and Peace when you're 11 versus War and Peace when you're 22 could be profoundly different reading experiences.”
Where to get it
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The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby by F.
Discussed“And so I feel like we also have this kind of one-fits-all, like everyone should read Great Gatsby in high school.”
Where to get it
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F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
F.
Discussed“Well, the type of school that I went to, I mean, yeah, The Great Gatsby, I fell in love with in high school.”
Where to get it
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Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is a classic gothic novel exploring destructive passion, revenge, and obsession on the Yorkshire moors through the turbulent relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine.
Discussed“It was very difficult for me to see, even as somebody coming from a house full of books, why at that age I was reading Wuthering Heights, for example.”
Where to get it
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The Lottery
Shirley Jackson's chilling short story depicts a seemingly idyllic small town that annually conducts a brutal ritualistic stoning, exposing the dark side of blind tradition and conformity.
Discussed“So The Lottery is something that I can still see myself sitting at the kitchen table and him handing to me on a Xerox printout to think through and underline and then talk about later when we were done.”
Where to get it
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Guide for the Perplexed
Discussed“for my dad, like enormously impactful um books for him were like Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed, which I have to admit I I I've I used to talk to him about Maimonides, but I never did actually read um Guide for the Perplexed.”
Where to get it
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Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed
Discussed“For my dad, like enormously impactful books for him were like Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed, which I have to admit I used to talk to him about Maimonides and stuff, but I never actually read.”
Where to get it
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The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a profound Russian masterpiece exploring faith, doubt, morality, and the deep complexities of the human condition.
Discussed“The Brothers Karamazov was like this link to the world for me.”
Where to get it
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The Story of Philosophy
The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant is a comprehensive survey of Western philosophy and the lives of its greatest thinkers.
Discussed“Basically, before the age of 10, the story that we’ve always understood from him was that in a neighbor's house, he came across a copy of Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy.”
Where to get it
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Between the World and Me
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a bestselling epistolary book written as a letter from the author to his teenage son, exploring the reality of growing up Black in America.
Discussed“But there's an astonishing kind of passage in Between the World and Me where he basically sees a kind of caricature of an upper-class or wealthy Frenchman in a beautiful car smoking a cigarette.”
Where to get it
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The Children
The Children by David Halberstam is a historical examination of the civil rights movement focusing on the ordinary college students who spearheaded the pivotal sit-in protests.
Discussed“And I was reading lately, I've been reading David Halberstam's book, The Children, on the sit-in movement.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (3) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“And that's actually really um one of the main arguments in my in my second book, Self-Portrait in Black and White.”
“And that's actually really um one of the main arguments in my in my second book, Self-Portrait in Black and White.”
“And that's actually really one of the main arguments in my second book, Self-Portrait in Black and White.”