Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday is an American author and Stoic philosophy popularizer whose books The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, and The Daily Stoic have introduced millions to ancient wisdom.

Ryan Holiday has done more than anyone in recent decades to bring Stoic philosophy to a mass audience. His Obstacle Is the Way (2014) reframes the Stoic principle that difficulties are not obstacles to progress but the means of it, illustrated with historical case studies from Marcus Aurelius to Amelia Earhart. Ego Is the Enemy uses the Stoics to argue against the kind of self-aggrandizing ambition that sabotages long-term success. Stillness Is the Key, the third in the loosely connected trilogy, draws on Stoic, Buddhist, and other wisdom traditions to make the case for calm, focused attention as a competitive advantage. The Daily Stoic offers daily meditations drawn from the primary texts.

Holiday is a capable and engaging popularizer who has clearly read his sources carefully and thought seriously about how ancient ideas translate to contemporary life. His books are well-paced and practically oriented, and they have a particularly strong following among athletes, entrepreneurs, and military personnel. The criticism of his work — fair but not fatal — is that he simplifies Stoicism in ways that smooth over its more demanding and less self-helpy dimensions, and that his historical examples are often selectively interpreted to support predetermined conclusions.

For readers new to Stoic philosophy, Holiday’s books are an excellent entry point. For readers who want to go deeper, they should serve as an introduction to the primary texts of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca.