The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers

Traveling by train to philosophers’ physical terrains, former NPR journalist Weiner (The Geography of Genius) confronts 14 quotidian and existential “how to’s”—how to walk, wonder, be kind, be attentive, and grow old and how to die. Along the way, he dispenses warm wisdom drawn from an eclectic set of succinctly put perspectives. The travelog takes readers by rail with Weiner to the spot where Gandhi was assassinated, to search for the Swiss boulder where Nietzsche was struck with the concept of Eternal Recurrence, and to find Confucian kindness riding the subway’s F train to New York City’s Chinatown. Amid his travels and personal reminiscences, Weiner loops back to Stoic voices: he depicts Marcus Aurelius struggling to get out of bed, joins a “Stoic Camp” in Wyoming to read Epictetus, and finds Stoic resonances in Montaigne and Simone de Beauvoir.