Ryan Holiday – Ego is the Enemy, a book review

In a nutshell (226 pages), this book is about how our egos can help us, but can also create our biggest problem. Holiday doesn’t hide or deny the fact that an ego is important for helping us to strive to do great things. He defines great things as the Stoics did as being of social significance. There’s a difference between feeding thousands of people or building a library or a school versus running an ultramarathon to show how strong you are.

What I got out of it

A lot of concrete examples of people who chose to do a thing, rather than be somebody. There’s a lot you will get out of the book but it seemed to me like it comes down to a choice: be someone or do something.

What was difficult

While not at all difficult, the book is a pleasure to read, the less you know about Stoicism, or Ryan Holiday as an author, the more you will get out of his book. For those already knowledgeable about Stoicism you’ll find a good read and probably some improvements or adjustments to your current thinking.

Recommendation

As with all Holiday’s books on Stoicism, I think every single person can benefit. Maybe mostly those who don’t think they need to read it.