How to Listen to How to Think Like Socrates

This is the publication day for my latest book and you can hear it here

At last, I’ve reached the end of one journey… and the beginning of a new one. My latest book, How to Think Like Socrates, was released today in the US/Canada, and in some other regions.

A practical application of his philosophy to contemporary problems, this book makes the wisdom of Socrates more accessible than ever before. — Barnes & Noble

I remember telling people that it seemed impossible to write a book “like How to Think Like a Roman Emperor but about Socrates” — then I changed my mind. I just kept asking myself what my seventeen year old self would want to read. And it actually began to seem like a sort of injustice to me that he didn’t have a more engaging introduction to the life and thought of history’s greatest philosopher! So this is my gift to him, and I just hope other people have the same tastes, and that it appeals to them too.

The first reviews are in! Hector says it’s riveting.

Actually, for me, one of the final steps in the process was narrating the audiobook at the recording studio of Patrice D’Aragon in Montreal. My friend and editor, Lalya Lloyd, is a classicist, and we went over the pronunciation of 254 Greek words together. (I learned a little ancient Greek when I first studied Plato, at university, over 25 years ago, but since then I’ve mainly been learning modern Greek — so sometimes I have to be reminded not to get modern and ancient pronunciations mixed up!)

Patrice had me strap a pillow to my belly to conceal any rumbling

You can now listen to an audio sample from the finished book on Audible. I have a philosophy when it comes to writing that I call “audio first” — I think of myself primarily as writing the script for an audiobook not a print book. (A good audiobook normally makes a good print book but it doesn’t always work the other way round.)

Part of the challenge with recording this book was that it’s quite dramatic, and involves a lot of dialogue. So, although I’m no voice actor, my audio director, Gordon Rothman, encouraged me to put a bit more emotion and character than normal into my narration. Even though it’s (sort of) a nonfiction book — there’s a very strong narrative element.

Lalya at the National Archeological Museum in Athens, with the book she edited!

Our initial feedback from advance reader copies (ARCs) of the book have been positive. You can already read the early reviews on Goodreads.

In the past, I’ve found ratings from readers who subsequently buy the book to be higher. ARC readers sometimes don’t know what to expect whereas my readers are mostly looking for this type of book. When I first proposed How to Think Like a Roman Emperor my publisher was slightly confused by the idea of blending together three different genres: history, philosophy, and self-help. Would anyone actually want to read a cross-genre / interdisciplinary mashup? Books like that didn’t really exist. We were relieved, though, to discover that there an audience for them existed! Although it was an unusual idea, in some ways, it seems very natural to me.

Later today, I’m doing an exclusive book launch / Q&A for those of you who already preordered the book. (You should already have received the Zoom link via email.) I’ve had a lot of feedback from people in response to the recent interview I did about the book with Chris Williamson, which has now been viewed by nearly 100k people. I also flew down to Austin, TX, to record an interview with Ryan Holiday about Socrates, which (I think) will be released this Saturday. Watch out too for my forthcoming audio course on Stoicism and Socrates, for Sam Harris’ Waking Up app, which I’m told is being released in January.

Thanks once again to you all for your support. I hope you enjoy listening to, or reading, How to Think Like Socrates, as much as I enjoyed creating it.