William Irvine: A Guide to the Good Life
Irvine, William. A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
After some background on stoicism's origins and one chapter on Zeno of Citium and the Greeks, William Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life focuses mostly on the Roman Stoics: Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Irvine emphasizes the importance of tranquility in stoicism:
We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.The psychologists Shane Frederick and George Loewenstein have studied this phenomenon and given it a name: hedonic adaptation. (p. 66)
They [the Stoics] recommended that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value--that our wife has left us, our car was stolen, or we lost our job. Doing this, the Stoics thought, will make us value our wife, our car, and our job more than we otherwise would. This technique--let us refer to it as negative visualization--was employed by the Stoics at least as far back as Chrysippus. It is, I think, the single most valuable technique in the Stoics' psychological tool kit. (p. 68)
More directly, Liveine writes that "Stoicism, properly understood, is a cure for a disease:"
The disease in question is the anxiety, grief, fear, and various other negative emotions that plague humans and prevent them from experiencing a joyful existence. By practicing Stoic techniques, we can cure the disease and thereby gain tranquility. (pp. 238-9)
Irvine has done an excellent job of enticing the reader (this one, at least!) to investigate stoicism. If you are similarly inspired by this book, check out the following:
William Stephens "The Rebirth of Stoicism"
Wikipedia
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy