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Letter to the Editor

Book Review

Ego is the Enemy

Author : Ryan Holiday
Genre : Business and Economics, Nonfiction, motivational essays
Publisher : Penguin, Portfolio
Release Date : June 14, 2016
Pages : 256
Rs : 335
OCLC : 922156056
ISBN : 978‑1‑59184‑781‑6
Dewey Decimal : 158.1
LC Class : BJ1474.H635 2016
Country : United States
Language : English
Subject : Leadership, personal development, business management, ambition
Media type : Print (hardcover), ebook
ASIN : B01AWUTMB0

The trick to bring down tyrants. collective wisdom of generations of thinkers and philosophers
and historians who’ve spent a lifetime observing and
It’ll come bounding out of nowhere, small, slow, invisible,
transcribing the world around them as they see it – so he says
and stealthy. It’ll slither up your legs, your knees, crawl into
that he’ll merely attempt to collate a lot of those lessons, all of
your insides, and infest your pulse. It’ll cozy in gently and call
which have helped lift him up at certain points of his life, and
into your brain and knock a stranger. A stranger who quickly
becomes a friend. present them to you in this book in an applicative way, so you
know how to employ them when need be. Such a hands‑on
This friend will come calling often, first a cup of tea, then dinner, personalized approach is truly what sets this book apart in the
and soon your bedroom. You find its presence comforting, self‑help market, in my opinion.
soothing even. It whispers words of comfort when you most need
them, it props you up when you sway with fear, it bashes outsiders The book is divided into three neat sections – aspiration,
who shine exposing light on you, it cries fear, security, strength, success, and failure. Right there, those three words are a
courage, resilience, pain, insecurity, and anger – all in one go. succinct summation of pretty much every endeavor ever and
just from the contents’ page, highlight that this man knows what
Its name, ego. he’s talking about. He talks about ego as the downfall of great
This is the subject of Ryan Holiday’s incisive novel based on business tycoons, towering scientific figures, and infamous
true events, Ego is the Enemy. artists at the peak of their creative prowess and how all of
them probably thought that’s a vice that’ll never afflict them.
But, don’t be deceived by the seemingly obvious, oh‑yet‑another!
title of a book that on the surface promises nothing more than In simple lines, he cuts through the muddle to hit the core of
your average self‑help book whose lessons will leave a lasting your being.
impact on you once you finish it for the entire duration of To slap some truth into it.
1 day. The introduction, just the brutally honest self‑effacing
introduction by the author determined not to leave out the gritty Because the truth is that we don’t all need to be egotistical
gory bits in the retelling of his own life (a flaw that he openly maniacs afflicted with narcissism and ceaseless self‑love to be
acknowledges plagues the autobiographies of many greats suffer from the disease of egoism. That’s the primary argument
throughout history) convinces you that maybe what this man Holiday makes. We don’t need to be an extreme that few
is talking about may be the thick of the cream… people are because even the little egos we exercise everyday,
which we put up as self‑defense mechanisms to brush away the
Maybe this one is not trying to get you somewhere, but trying insecurities that the world shoots at us, are more than enough
to get himself somewhere he’s at peace with.
to do destructive harm in the long run.
And that can be infinitely more inspiring than any advice
A vice that several warn against, that’s a staple of biopics and
someone shells out.
biographies surrounding great men and women accomplished in
Ryan Holiday doesn’t claim to be an all‑in‑one omniscient some field or the other – it’s almost like a trope narrative, when
preacher. He admits that his knowledge will never surpass the someone rises from humble beginnings to achieve great fame only

© 2019 Journal of the Practice of Cardiovascular Sciences | Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow 223
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Seth: Ego is the Enemy

to crash down because of the heavy tentacles of ego from which Financial support and sponsorship
they must slowly rise back up to their erstwhile humble state. Nil.
But, what these stories often ignore is the true on‑ground Conflicts of interest
grittiness of it. Just because they conquered their demons once, There are no conflicts of interest.
doesn’t mean they won’t fall prey to them again. That’s the
sad reality that sanitized and sweetened industrial storytelling Udbhav Seth
doesn’t want to reveal. But, Holiday doesn’t shy away from this. BA (Hons) English,   Hindu College, Delhi University, New Delhi, India.
E‑mail: udbhavseth7@gmail.com
He will tell you that ego is not a demon to be conquered or a
vice to be defeated and put to bed once and forever. He will tell
you that arrogance, self‑indulgence, confidence, and insulation Date of Submission: 01‑Nov‑2019 Date of Web Publication: 20-Dec-2019
are all little gnats, scuttling around inside you forever and ever, Date of Acceptance: 10‑Nov‑2019
and all you can really do is wack them away as frequently and
strongly as you can. This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution‑NonCommercial‑ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to
As he claims, all these bugs come with ambition – it’s a necessary remix, tweak, and build upon the work non‑commercially, as long as appropriate credit
evil that won’t ever be done away with. You can’t reach for more is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.

without being confident in your abilities – but being a little too

Access this article online
confident is what’s going to pull you back down.
Quick Response Code:
And Holiday does his best to prepare you to raise yourself Website:
www.j‑pcs.org
despite the weight, and if you fall, to help you stand back up
and get going again.
DOI:
This book can’t really be sold further without hero‑worshipping 10.4103/jpcs.jpcs_63_19
the author – something that goes very well against the entire
philosophy of this novel, so I’ll stop now and let you try it
out for yourself. How to cite this article: Seth U. Book review: Ego is the Enemy. J Pract
You won’t regret it. Cardiovasc Sci 2019;5:223-4.

224 Journal of the Practice of Cardiovascular Sciences  ¦  Volume 5  ¦  Issue 3  ¦  September-December 2019