Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
The more I read Seneca the more I like the man. I read Susanna Braund’s translation of De Clementia in 2011 but never got around to reading more. My mistake. Writing in Antifragile, Nassim Taleb says of Seneca: His work has seduced people …
This article is part of our series on how to read a book. The second level of reading concerns inspectional reading, a concept from The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer Adler. Inspectional Reading There are two types of …
One of the secrets to acquiring knowledge is to read. A lot. My Hero, Charlie Munger, said it best “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.” Picking …
One of the keys to getting smarter is to read a lot. But that’s not enough. How you read matters. But reading is only one part of the equation. It’s nearly worthless if you can’t remember and apply what you read. To learn …
Most people go through life not really getting any smarter. Why? They simply won’t do the work required. It’s easy to come home, sit on the couch, watch TV, and zone out until bedtime rolls around. But that’s not going to …
We’ve all been there. At the bookstore looking for a book to read. On one side of the store is the safe bet. The best-selling books that everyone else is reading. These are (generally) mediocre books that time hasn’t yet …
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) offered ruthless advice in his timeless classic The Prince, which was inspired on Xenophon’s Cyrus The Great: The Arts of Leadership and War. Based on force and ruthlessness, Machiavelli offered advice on …
On Reading and Books — an essay by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), who influenced some of the most prominent minds in the world. Ignorance is degrading only when it is found in company with riches. Want and penury …
I’ve always wondered just what influenced Steve Jobs thinking? Walter Isaacson‘s biography of Steve Jobs provides an unprecedented look at not only Steve Jobs life but the books which influenced him. For such a success, there is …
Aristotle claimed that poetry—at the time, he meant the epics of Homer and other tragedies, which we now call fiction—was better than history. He argued that fiction tells us what is possible, whereas history tells us only what has …