Success is not what happens to you.

It is the meaning and excellence you bring to each task.

In this vivifying omnibus, historian and popular voice of esoteric spirituality Mitch Horowitz abridges and introduces more than twenty world classics of inspiration, motivation, and successful living.

From The Art of War and The Prince to Walden and As a Man Thinketh, listeners will discover time-hallowed methods of powerful living that honor traits of nobility and selfhood versus sneakiness and avarice. The many books in this collection—each introduced by Mitch—offer not sentimentality or myopia but hard-won and realistic guidance for life as it is, not as we idealize it.

Mitch opens the collection with his provocative “101 Rules of Effective Living,” each worthy of a chapter in itself.

“I have no idea whether nice guys finish first, last, or not at all,” Mitch writes in the preface. “But I do know that honor is what builds powerful (not forceful) individuals and sound communities and companies, without which nothing can thrive. I believe this book places the motivated querent on the path to both.”