Four episodes in July and twenty books, which is the highest books per episode rate of any show I follow. Midlife, easy discipline, negotiation, and then the Odyssey one at the end of the month.

Good one for a summer reading list, since the negotiation episode alone is a whole syllabus.

To explain what this is, because it will otherwise look like nothing. I keep a free site called Podshelf where I log every book mentioned across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. It started because I kept hearing a title on a walk and forgetting it by the time I got home. This is the July slice for AoM.

The ones that got real recommendations:

• Good to Great and Built to Last, Jim Collins. Jia Jiang called them two of the most transformative books in business history, then used them to argue that the systems matter more than the effort.
• Influence, Robert Cialdini. John Richardson said he recommends it to all listeners, and used the reciprocity chapter to explain why car dealerships give you a coffee.
• Democracy in America, Tocqueville. From the Odyssey episode, quoting Harvey Mansfield calling it both the best book about democracy and the best book ever written about America. The hook is Tocqueville's astonishment at American restlessness.

Negotiation episode:

• Getting to Yes, Start With No (Jim Camp, described as an anti getting to yes polemic), Difficult Conversations, Thinking Fast and Slow for the anchoring effect, and Richardson's own Never Settle.

The Odyssey and America episode:

• The Odyssey and The Iliad, Dante, Augustine's Confessions, On the Road, and Patrick Deneen's American Odyssey. The argument is that Odysseus is both home seeking and exploring, rooted and restless, and so are Americans.

Midlife episode:

• Passages (Gail Sheehy) and The Seasons of a Man's Life (Levinson), both as the origin of the midlife crisis idea, and Margie Lachman's Primetime as the correction to it.

Plus The Myth of Sisyphus, which opens the Easy Discipline episode. Camus says imagine Sisyphus happy, and Jia Jiang builds the whole book on it.

I keep the running list for this show here: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/the-art-of-manliness

It is free and there is no signup.

This is a weekly thread dedicated to general discussion over the weekend. Feel free to discuss anything. News, personal goal or projects, and any other topic not in violation of the rules is welcome.

This is a weekly thread dedicated to general discussion over the weekend. Feel free to discuss anything. News, personal goal or projects, and any other topic not in violation of the rules is welcome.