Stoics in an afternoon

The most powerful man in the world, reminding himself daily that he is not.

Private notes by a Roman emperor, never meant to be read. The brief explains what Stoicism actually asks of you, which translation to pick, and why the book works better in fragments than front to back.

A man is condemned less for a killing than for failing to cry at his mother's funeral.

Camus's first novel in a hundred and twenty pages of flat, exact prose. The brief covers the plot in one minute, the absurd in three, and why the trial is the real subject of the book.