Russell McNeil

I had been warned before starting this book that Meditations is repetitive and scattered—a combination that made me leery of going anywhere near it. So this particular edition of Meditations was a good one for a newbie like me to start with. As the subtitle "Selections Annotated & Explained" warns you, this is an abridged edition (although Russell McNeil has annotated those selections so thoroughly that this edition is thicker than my unabridged edition). He has also ordered his selections by theme ("Ignoring What Others Think," "Aging and Death," "The Supremacy of Reason") and then ordered these themes into chapters ("The Practice of Stoicism," ""Stoicism and the Environment," "Society and Government in Stoicism"). McNeil offers a guided path through Meditations that made them clear and easier to understand.

Although I enjoyed reading this, I wish it had been put together a little differently. I think an index of the selections would be useful. I found McNeil's annotations to be helpful, but the introduction was a mite confusing. I think it might work to read the introduction after reading the rest of the book, when all the concepts McNeil refers to have been explained. The translation itself is by George Long and dates from the nineteenth century. I understand Long's translation is considered to be excellent, but although McNeil modernized it in places, it felt dated to me. McNeil compares Stoicism to Christianity several times in his annotations. While I can see how many people would find this interesting and/or helpful, I got tired of it. But through all of this, I discovered that I liked reading Marcus Aurelius' observations, and that many of them were relevant to modern life and were worth pondering and rereading.… (mere)