The Commonplace Book

Notes from the table

The mentors, their lives and philosophies, and the craft of learning itself.

Filtered by “mentors” · clear

Meet Laozi: The Watercourse Way

Eighty-one short chapters about water, valleys, and the strength of not forcing it.

Rich, powerful, compromised — and the author of the most practical letters ever written about living well.

The Stoic coach who owned nothing, feared nothing, and taught emperors what freedom actually is.

One generation: from expelled, resourceless island to one of the richest, safest nations on earth.

He imagined complete machines in his head, powered the modern world — and died broke, decades ahead of schedule.

He wrote the sentence that keeps rewriting history — and lived a contradiction history rightly holds against him.

Fifty years of spectacular failure prepared the one man who wouldn't negotiate with catastrophe.

The Wealth of Nations made him famous; he thought his other book was better — and it explains the first.

He invented management as a discipline — and spent sixty years asking five questions most leaders never answer.

Nobel laureate, bongo player, safecracker — and the best explainer science ever produced.

Journal posts, new mentors, and a weekly digest — pick your topics, leave any time.