William B. Irvine is Professor of Philosophy at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Irvine presents an accessible overview of the early Stoics and then consolidates their thinking according to specific topics such as anger, old age, grief, etc. Most helpful is his collection of Stoic techniques - ways to implement Stoic philosophy in your own life.

As a Stoic, Irvine has a lot of criticism for current psychological approaches to dealing with life's challenges. He says that "the consensus view among psychological therapists is that we should stay in touch with our emotions: Rather than try to deny their existence, we should contemplate them, and rather than trying to bottle them up we should vent them." He contrasts this with the Stoic approach, which doesn't require that we bottle up our emotions, but does "help us to to take steps to prevent negative emotions and to overcome them when our attempts at prevention fail."