What Is Ancient Philosophy? (Pierre Hadot, 1995)

Pierre Hadot's thesis is fairly simple. Ancient philosophy was not just a discourse, but a way of life. While the discourse aspect has stayed with philosophy, the way of life aspect has fallen away and only returns intermittently through history. One could say (as Hadot does) that Christianity, poised as another type of philosophy (a "revealed" one), absorbed the way of life part. This would in turn lead to some of the periodic estrangements between philosophy and religion.

This one was for class, but, as was the case with the other class, I'm glad for having read it. I'm a history person. Philosophy has always proved challenging for me to wrap my brain around. Even though the introduction was a bit daunting, I found the layout of the book to be straightforward and the direction was clear. It served well as our "textbook" for the first half of the course. In fact, I feel a little more lost with a secondary resource accompanying our further path into medieval philosophy. As for those primary resources, we covered them a little spottily, so I'll be going through and catching up on the missing bits and reporting back here soon.

Although I just called it a textbook, this is actually very accessible to readers of all interests, not just philosophy nuts. Therefore, it's a staple at most decent public libraries, not just academic ones, in spite of being published by Harvard University Press.

Driven to Distraction at Work (Edward M. Hallowell, 2014)

Maybe this is some kind of Harvard Business Review thing, but the e-book was published a couple months before the print version, so even though my book was published in 2015, the original publication date ends up being 2014. Details only a librarian could love!

Anyway, Driven to Distraction promises some big things, but, perhaps due to a serious oversell in the first chapter, I was left underwhelmed. In fact, I feel even more distracted than ever at work, but that probably isn't the direct fault of the book. Let's start with the book's problems. The structure of the book breaks distracted people down into six groups, with the sixth having confirmed Adult ADHD. As each (I presume) fictional/composite character is introduced, it is quickly shown that they have some kind of deep-seated family issues. So each vignette started off with me thinking "hey, I'm completely like that!" or "I know somebody just like that!" but then the backstory kicks in and broke those connections. Also, the folks portrayed all seemed very upper-crust and, even though they didn't say so directly, fairly white-washed. I could easily see this being a turn-off for more diverse readers. Also, the author is pretty strongly pro-medication. While I'm no anti-vaxxer nutjob (though I've been known to vote for them on rare occasion), it seems like drugs were the answer for Dr. Hallowell is almost all of the situations. The similarly-titled Driven to Distraction by the same author is a more general look at matter of Adult ADHD is many (not just work) aspects of life, so it's good to keep in mind he's coming from a more clinical rather than human resources perspective, which may be influencing his more open attitude toward medicating the problems.

On the other hand, it wasn't a totally useless reading experience. I think the matter of distraction at work is a very real thing. We can't just unplug the Internet, which is generally the beast in the room, even for the other types not called "screen suckers". Trust me, you do that and it just makes everyone slow and stupid. On the other hand the Age of Information has no filters and it's pretty easy to go from the programs you need to get your job done to TMZ, online games, and God knows what else. In the end I'll thank Dr. Hallowell for raising the issue, but I think much more work needs to be done and we need to think beyond pill popping to cope with the new reality.