Gateway to the Stoics: Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, Epictetus's Enchiridion, and Selections from Seneca's Letters

A good collection to read two of the central Stoic writings that survive.

Very good

As far as this book goes, all things Stoic are great, and deserve five stars.As for the forward and the introduction? A razor will quickly free your book of the unnecessary drivel.Trying to link a "new" (at least as far as Paul and his meddling go) religion with a tried and true philosophy is a bad way to approach it. Yes, Paul was clearly heavily influenced by the Stoics, but that is exactly where it ends. Trying to link the two, Stoicism and christianity is ridiculous.Yes, there are similarities, of course there are. Paul was trying to push his religion, and found a way to use Stoicism to do it. By using Stoic principal, he was able to push that agenda straight through to the bloody end (and if you know anything about christian history/wars/every other negativity they've created/perpetuated) then this will not be shocking.Clearly, Paul uses a reference to Zeus as his jumping point trying to claim it was actually his guy, not Zeus. I guess we're just supposed to ignore the fact that these guys were trying to get a religion off the ground, and were being persecuted for it. Of course they'd twist whatever possible for that end. Regardless, it seems clear that the intro and forward were written by christians who fancy the idea of stoicism, but... I guess these two didn't stop to think that ANY belief system one adheres to would fit into ANY real or perceivedindications of following a religion as well as a philosophy... They do make a few backhanded jabs it seems though, so I guess you could simply take it with a grain of salt, and just read what you actually paid for(hence the razor). This part of the book made it easy enough to drop the two stars.As for the Stoic teachings? Worth every penny. Though for Meditations, I highly recommend the Gregory Hays version as a far better read.

There was dried food on the front.