Customer Reviews

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated & Explained

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The book is written in contemporary American English, so it's easier to read than George Long's original translation. The annotations helped me understand the passages/verses better and were insightful.

At the end of the book in the Notes section, I beg to differ with McNeil when he writes that Aurelius' would be pro-Karl Marx and sympathetic to the Communist cause if Aurelius were alive today. Moreover, he writes about the evils of Capitalism, and why Aurelius would naturally reject it. The section is heavily slanted in favor of Communism in my opinion. You can read it, and form your own opinion about it. I feel that McNeil's belief that Aurelius would be a Communist if he were alive today, better reflects Russell McNeil's own political proclivities rather than that of Aurelius, and should not have been included in the book.

I have read numerous self-help books over the years, as well as several books on the pursuit of happiness, but none have ever spoken to me the way this book has. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius brings Marcus Aurelius back to life. The annotations are well explained which make the meditations easy to understand. This is a must read for anyone who is in search of a better quality of life.

I have already read Russell McNeil's The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius three times. The time was very well spent. McNeil brings Aurelius alive with wisdom, perspective, timeliness. Frankly, I am ordinarily annoyed by annotations and explanations, but in this case they are indispensable to the reading, and do the Aurelius selections full justice. It felt like McNeil was "channeling" Aurelius, that the additional commentary would have been what Aurelius would have added. Want to live a better life? McNeil has brought us Aurelius' still authentic and relevant answers.

I've read the Great Books of The Western World version of "Meditations" and found it interesting but challenging, because Aurelius repeats himself, but not exactly. Discussions of and comments on the same topic were scattered throughout the text. I kept thinking, "Wait, didn't he say something similar but differing enough to notice, somewhere in the last 80 pages?" Is he paraphrasing himself or making a subtle distinction?

So, McNeil's sorting Aurelius's words by topic was exactly what I wanted. For each topic in the table of contents, McNeil has gathered up relevant quotes and presented his commentary on the facing page. An excellent plan!

McNeil has a political axe or two to grind, but don't let that bother you.

4 stars on content
1 star on format

I hate leaving a poor review when I actually like the book. This review is specifically about issues with the Kindle format.

1) The content is out of order. If you use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature, you can see how the book is laid out. There's a passage by Aurelius on one page then notes about the passage on the following page. In the kindle version, the notes come first, then the passage and it's sometimes hard to tell them apart. Additionally, the notes aren't linked to the passages, so you're left jumping forward and backward throughout the book.

2) The Kindle book uses a horrible san-serif font that is very distracting. Half the letters look like their italic and render poorly on the Kindle 3's screen.