Imagine if our negative feelings, or at least lots of them, turned out to be illusions, and we could dispel them by just contemplating them from a particular vantage point.

But power isn’t wisdom, and after 100,000 years of discoveries, inventions, and conquests humanity has pushed itself into an existential crisis.

“The clearest evidence that justice is the most important of all the virtues comes from what happens when you remove it. It’s remarkably stark: The presence of injustice instantly renders any act of virtue—courage, discipline, wisdom—any skill, any achievement, worthless…or worse.”

As the plant grows, the stem uncoils, revealing new leaves, tender at first, rough at last. The fruit appears at the end of a cycle, growing from a stem that bends toward the ground under its own weight.

“The late Native historian Jack Forbes always stressed that while living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in.”

Where the ice and the fire met the ice melted, and in the melting waters life appeared: the likeness of a person bigger than worlds, huger than any giant there will be or has ever been. This was neither male, nor was it female, but was both at the same time. This creature was the ancestor of all the giants, and it called itself Ymir.

The story of a century of life.

“Nothing,” he wrote, “vexes the mind so much as feeling one’s self injured in a way that cannot be prevented or avenged.”

Margaret Willson compiled a fascinating retelling of Captain Thuridur’s life in Woman, Captain, Rebel. Thuridur defied many conventions of the time for how women were to act, what they were to wear, and how they are viewed within the Icelandic society.

Discipline isn’t just endurance and strength. It’s also finding the best, most economical way of doing something. It’s the commitment to evolving and improving so that the tasks get more efficient as you go.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Vikings. Price discusses everything from gender-fluid Vikings, how they raised their children and managed a household, their burials, their raids, and their explorations around the world.

Halfway through the year already! Here are the best books I read in Spring (or Q2) this year.

I loved this book. Nichols talks about everything from the merits of colleges, the good and bad of social media (spoiler: there’s very little that’s good), and the concept that while experts are occasionally wrong, they are consistently less wrong than you and I.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is the book you never knew you wanted to read. Full of approachable facts, logic, and cohesive storytelling, Yuval Noah Harari makes our species proud by addressing the wild, woeful, and wonderful things we, as Homo Sapiens, do, create, and achieve.