The Daily Stoic
Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman's The Daily Stoic is a yearlong meditation book built around the core ideas of the ancient Stoics, pulling 366 short passages from Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca and pairing each with a page of modern commentary. The year is divided into twelve monthly themes, including perception, passions, right action, duty, and mortality, so that the reading accumulates into a working curriculum rather than a collection of standalone quotes. The translations are fresh and idiomatic, stripped of Victorian stiffness, and the commentary connects two-thousand-year-old practical advice to present-day concerns like parenting, career anxiety, politics, grief, and the distractions of the phone in your pocket. It has become one of the most popular modern entry points into Stoicism.
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The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman pair a fresh translation of a Stoic passage from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, or Epictetus with a short modern meditation for each day of the year, organized by themes like control and acceptance.
The Daily Stoic is a 366-day reader by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, with one short Stoic meditation per day drawn from Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca. It launched a long-running Daily Stoic ecosystem of newsletters, podcasts, and journals.
No. The Daily Stoic is structured for daily reading and works as a standalone entry to Stoic philosophy. The Obstacle Is the Way (2014) and Stillness Is the Key (2019) are Ryan Holiday's earlier framing books.
The Daily Stoic was written by Ryan Holiday, published in 2017 by Penguin Publishing Group.
The Daily Stoic is 368 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Daily Stoic takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
The Daily Stoic is a standalone novel by Ryan Holiday, not part of a series.
The Daily Stoic is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
