Shelfology Book Pairing

by Marcus Aurelius

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Meditations offers a glimpse into mind, his habits, and his approach to life. . . . I think any reader would find something useful to take away from it.”—James Clear, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Atomic Habits “To me, this is the greatest book ever written. . . . It is the definitive text on self-discipline, personal ethics, humility, self-actualization, and strength. . . . If you’re going to read it, you absolutely have to go with the Gregory Hays translation.”—Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Obstacle Is the Way “It is unbelievable to see how the emperor’s words have stood the test of time. . . . Read a page or two anytime you feel like the world is too much.”—Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Wall Street Journal Nearly two thousand years after it was written, Meditations remains profoundly relevant for anyone seeking to lead a meaningful life. Your ability to control your thoughts—treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions—false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. A series of spiritual exercises filled with wisdom, practical guidance, and profound understanding of human behavior, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written. With bite-size insights and advice on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity and interacting with others, Meditations has become required reading not only for statesmen and philosophers alike, but also for generations of readers who responded to the straightforward intimacy of his style. In Gregory Hays’s translation—the first in nearly four decades—Marcus’s thoughts speak with a new immediacy. In fresh and unencumbered English, Hays vividly conveys the spareness and compression of the original Greek text. Never before have Marcus’s insights been so directly and powerfully presented. With an Introduction that outlines Marcus’s life and career, the essentials of Stoic doctrine, the style and construction of the Meditations, and the work’s ongoing influence, this edition makes it possible to fully rediscover the thoughts of one of the most enlightened and intelligent leaders of any era.

What Killed Capitalism

by Yanis Varoufakis

‘What an amazing piece of work this is. Ground-breaking, thought-provoking and highly accessible. Everyone should read it. The dark, scary, exciting song of our age. 100 out of 100’ IRVINE WELSH Capitalism is dead. Welcome to technofeudalism. In his boldest and most far-reaching book, the visionary economist and number-one bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis shows how the owners of big tech became the world's feudal overlords – replacing capitalism with a fundamentally new system that enslaves our minds, defies democracy and rewrite the rules of global power. But as Varoufakis also reveals, technofeudalism contains new opportunities to thwart and overturn it, bringing into focus more clearly than ever the revolution we need to escape our digital prison. ‘An epochal, once-in-a-millennium shift . . . this isn't just new technology. This is the world grappling with an entirely new economic system and therefore political power’ Observer ‘An urgent demand to seize the means of computation’ CORY DOCTOROW A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR