Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series) Hardcover – September 28, 2021

Courage Is Calling is another powerful and thought-provoking book from Ryan Holiday. Storytelling is engaging, and the lessons are clear and motivating. If you’ve enjoyed his other books like The Obstacle Is the Way or Stillness Is the Key, you’ll definitely love this one too. Ryan Holiday continues to deliver meaningful, practical philosophy for life.

Ryan Holiday has been one of my favorite authors since 2018. I’ve written about his books before, and they are consistently in my Best Books lists. In 2019, Holiday released the last of three books written about Stoic philosophy in today’s world, Stillness is the Key. The other two are Ego Is the Enemy and The Obstacle is the Way. I also read a standalone of Holiday’s called Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire’s Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire, which is still one of the craziest stories. Then, I discovered (well before a formal announcement) that Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave would be published in September 2021. I immediately ordered it and, once released, read it in one sitting.Courage is Calling is the first of four books on the four Stoic virtues: Courage, Temperance, Justice, and Wisdom. Holiday shares real stories of courage in it, but not always in the heroic, action-movie way. Holiday goes on to describe the many faces of courage. Yes, sometimes courage is six seconds of bravery from two young Marines giving their lives to stop a truck rigged to blow up the nearby base. However, sometimes courage is quietly pursuing a path and defying convention or your family. Courage is doing the right thing when no one is looking. Courage says, “If not me, then who?”I found myself highlighting something on nearly every page of this book. There are so many meaningful quotes to help keep you going in the face of tough choices, which is the other facet to this book: choice. Courage is a choice. You will have moments where you didn’t make the courageous choice, but the point of all of this – of life – is choice. Courage takes practice. It’s in the little moments that you think don’t matter, but those little moments train you for the big moments.Holiday discusses fear, and its relationship to courage, throughout the book. It’s no surprise that fear keeps us from courage. It keeps us in the dead-end job, the relationship you’ve outgrown, the city you don’t love. But, as Holiday discusses, fear isn’t the opposite of courage – it’s apathy. Doing nothing, being cynical, assuming your actions don’t matter – that’s the opposite of courage. Courage is a choice. You might make the right choice. You might make the wrong one. Regardless, choosing something holds power and takes courage. Just like Gandalf says, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”Choose courage. Have hope. Go first. Leave the job. Ask that person on a date. Buy the book. Choose to do something. You’ll be happy you did something, but you’ll regret doing nothing.

Ryan holiday writes in a way that draws you in. I’m not so sure he would call himself a stoic philosopher but one who studies the virtue’s. I have a feeling based one reading his books he would say the same. In true stoic ideology, one never truly obtains the rank of “ philosopher” and those that claim it are false ideology’s and should be stayed away from. See Marcus Aurelius, the only philosopher king for reference.Ryan’s writes in a way that makes a very hard subject digestible, let’s you find out of this way of world view and life practice is for you. He’s a gateway to the historic writings and allows you to enter with a little background and understanding. The historical are hard, very hard to read. Sometimes I spend an entire day ready one passage, over and over again. trying to truly understand and digest it. Ryan’s work allows you to find out if this study is for you….. stoicism is the way for me; but is it your path? Remember many questions will arise. Continue reading and they seem to answer those questions the deeper you get. Enjoy and be humble. Remember they may keep you in shackles but it’s just your body. Only you can allow your mind to be imprisoned.

What do I mean by portable? This book does not require the reader to dedicate hours of contemplation to each chapter or page. I read most of this book in waiting rooms or on breaks at work. It's very digestible like that. Ryan Holiday really did an excellent job pacing the book and breaking up its chapters.It's not some deep treatise on the philosophical notions of courage. It's an evidence-based, historical approach to the Stoic virtue of courage. Courage is not the absence of fear -- it's moving forward in spite of your fear, or because of it.Others have been in worse situations than you. Others have done this task before. "What one man can do another can do" is a mantra from one of my favorite movies. You can have courage. You can do the right thing.Also, I really enjoyed the last chapter. Maybe I've missed it, but I've never heard Holiday go into depth about his life before Daily Stoic. I knew he was a marketing executive at American Apparel, but that was it. I knew there'd been some scandal with the CEO. But that was all I knew and all I cared to know. But Holiday opens up and writes about what happened, his role, and his regrets. He explains where he failed to have courage, and when he began to have it. It was a really honest look back, and one that I truly appreciated because we all have been there -- maybe not at a major company, but certainly all of us have been moral cowards at various points in our lives.While I've always appreciated Holiday's efforts at bringing Stoicism to modern life, that last chapter really made me love and respect him. It's what led me to write this review, in fact.

Very good book , eciveexceptional condition

i loved this book, holidays chapter on florence nightengale was inspiring, i re-read it multiple times during tough times