This little book is full of wisdom—some uncomfortable, some confounding, but all of it profound. It combines works by Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus into a sort of handbook for would-be Stoics, stoical in the sense of being steady, self-directed, and unshaken by fear or pain or challenging circumstances. There’s much to chew on here, particularly for us moderns who want to believe that we can change things and that our lives make a difference. “Don’t hope for Plato’s utopian republic,” Marcus Aurelius cautions the reader, “but be content with the smallest step forward, and regard even that result as no mean achievement” (104).