3 Books to Help You Make Sense of Life Right Now
Ryan Holiday’s recommendations for a better understanding of the year ahead
I will say this about 2020: It provided plenty of inspiration to read more. Every month, it seemed, there was a new or deepening crisis in a subject that became vital to learn more about: leadership, pandemics, civil rights, elections. It was one of those years that sent you to, well, I would say “the bookstore,” but you know.
Actually doing the reading, of course, was a different story. I read a lot in 2020. But I know a lot of people who couldn’t, who found their focus too shot and their mental energy too drained to actually make it through more than a few pages. But now that we’re a month into a new year, with a new administration and vaccines a reality, many of us are looking to get back into the reading habits we lost. And if that sounds like you, I have a few suggestions for where to start.
Every year, I try to narrow down all the books I have recommended and read to just a handful of the best — the kind of books where, if they were the only ones I’d read that year, I’d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading. (You can check out the “best of” lists I did in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011.) About 250,000 people subscribe to my reading list, which means I hear pretty quickly when a recommendation has landed well. I promise you — you can’t go wrong with any of these.
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry
There is something surreal about reading a book published 15 years ago about an event 100 years ago that just happens to nail exactly what’s happening in this moment. Barry’s haunting book covers, in definitive, gripping detail the Spanish flu: a pandemic that ripped through nations and cities and confounded the brightest medical minds of the time. “It’s only the influenza,” confident officials repeated. “It’ll be over soon.” And then the president of the United States caught it. (I’m talking about Woodrow Wilson, of course).
Reading it feels like a powerful reminder: The more things change, the more they stay the time. History is the same song…
