Vain Hopes

Derren Brown closes out the third book of the Meditations, where Marcus takes his own fame, deification and all, and shrinks it down to nothing next to Rome's other famous dead. From there Brown builds an argument that lands somewhere unexpected: against vision boards, and against the entire memoir genre written by people who succeeded by refusing to listen to anyone. He ends by defending Marcus's harshest private pep talks on their own terms, as a man talking himself into shape rather than handing down a law.