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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom and temperance.

And here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare, we think deeply about the challenging issues of our time.

And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to worker to get the kids to school, when we have the time to sing, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring.

American born businessman George Cohan, the founder of McDonald's Canada, was never satisfied with the status quo. Throughout his career, George was always searching for new ways to innovate and revolutionize the way he did business.

At McDonald's, that innovative spirit let him to do something truly extraordinary.

Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of the business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives.

In our latest series, George Cohan gives up his career as a Chicago attorney to open the first McDonald's fast food restaurant in Canada.

But as George moves up the McDonald's corporate ladder, a chance meeting with members of the Russian Olympic Committee gives George an opportunity to shake up the status quo once again.

In the midst of the Cold War, George sets out to open the first McDonald's behind the Iron Curtain. Find out how, follow business movers wherever you get your podcasts, and you can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.

Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of The Daily Stoic. Today's episode is me riffing on three books that if you've been paying attention, you've probably heard of, if you've been putting off reading, you should stop that.

One is one of my favorite novels. One is one of my favorite nonfiction books, and the other is, I think, the greatest philosophy book ever written. And so I go into these books. I've just, I just thought it'd be fun to talk about why these things have resonated with me, the value you can get out of them.

I think my interactions with them over time, I think one thing I don't talk quite enough about in this little session, so I thought I'd preface it, is the idea of reading and rereading, and rereading. I have a shelf behind my desk that I call sort of my life shelf.

And these three books, each one of them sits prominently on that shelf. And by life, I mean, their books that not just guide you through life, but books you have to read throughout your life, because you get something different from them each time.

So when I read the Great Gatsby in high school, Gatsby struck me as heroic. When I read them in my 20s, it struck me slightly different. And when I read it again, some more recently, there was a tragic element that I experienced a bit more.

I also thought a lot more about Nick Carroway, and I noticed there's a great little line about parenting at the beginning of that book. And it's not just because I've changed and I've gotten older, but I've read other books about Fitzgerald, about the 20s, about bootlegging, even the, you know, I opened my book conspiracy with a chunk, an observation that came from, probably not the first, certainly I didn't notice this little observation, the first time I read Gatsby in 11th grade.

It was the reading and the rereading. And now I just have a much more complicated, but profound connection with the material, with the characters and all that. So it's not just about reading, but it's about rereading. And so even if you've read all three of these books, which I've got to imagine I've raved about them enough times that some of you listening have, but hopefully in hearing me describe why they've resonated with me, you'll see them from a slightly different or new angle.

And the experience will even be more powerful. And maybe you'll be able to recommend them better to other people. So here are three books that you must read.

Everyone has a book that's changed their life, like something that just sort of hits you. Tyler Cowan calls them Quake Book, something that sort of shakes your whole existence.

So I was thinking like three Quake books that have changed my life. The first one, 48 laws of power.

I read this one I was in high school. I've gone through a bunch of copies. Someone stole my copy when I was working at American Apparel, which is the perfect place to read a book like this.

The CEO of a company used to say, look, he would quote one of the laws. He said, look, we do good stuff for people. We make stuff in the US.

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