Ryan Holiday is a young-ish American marketing executive who seems to have stumbled upon stoicism and turned the philosophy of the ancient Greeks into a real money spinner. His books are fast reads and mega-best-sellers, But they are under-researched (one imagines that much of the ‘research’ was done on the Wikipedia). Holiday wants people to stop complaining, denounces notions of victimhood (as if there are no actual victims in the world), and wants to restore America to its former (I hesitate to type this) greatness. This 10-year-old book has aged badly; Holiday wrote it at a time when the worst thing that could happen to someone might be losing their business. But today, when we live in a truly dark age, one can imagine far greater ‘obstacles’. Oh, and one of Holiday’s heroes is Margaret Thatcher and another is Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Yes, the Desert Fox. Hitler’s greatest general. Ouch.