Get the book on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BR1FFJLC

Ad Astra Per Aspera (To the Stars Through Hardships) is available as a long-form article here: https://medium.com/@rs3/ad-astra-per-aspera-be7198657e3e  (Medium article is no longer available.)

About the book:

This book may provide answers to some of the perplexing questions in life. Are high achievers introverted or extroverted? Why is diagnosis of autism rising in modern society? Why societies rise and fall? What made ancient Egyptians and Sumerians great? The book tries to answer these questions and also provide a great deal of other fascinating information.

This book has taken several years to complete. To write it, I researched biographies of hundreds of famous people, learned history and philosophy, perused school texts from 4000 years ago, studied etiquette guides from societies all over the world, including Native American, Chinese, Scandinavian, and even ancient Egyptian societies. You might find this book unique in that it gives insights into why human societies thrive as well as why individual people thrive.

In this book, you will learn how great societies of the past educated their children and how it allowed these societies to prosper. You might be surprised to learn how diligent ancient Egyptians were in educating their children. In this book, school texts from 4000 years ago provide a vivid narrative of ancient Egyptians’ and Sumerians’ reverence for education.

You will also learn that introversion and bookishness are very common among high achievers, be it political leaders, successful entrepreneurs, musicians, or others. Many such people might even be on the autistic spectrum. As I describe in my book, since the end of the Victorian times, notions about sociability in the West have undergone a significant change akin to an inversion. The book narrates how an inordinate emphasis on qualities like self-confidence, talkativeness, and gregariousness arose in Western education and psychology in the early 20th century. Not many realize that many of today’s popular educational and psychological notions are anti-intellectual in nature. They reduce children’s academic inclination.

This trend also has serious consequences for human societies. Among others, it may explain why autism diagnoses are increasing, why children in modern schools are susceptible to drug abuse, social maladjustment, etc.

This book is my labor of love. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Thank you for your interest in my book.
Ouseph*

Ad Astra Per Aspera was originally published as a long-form article on the website Medium on Feb 18, 2017. The last major revision was on January 1, 2021. 

Acknowledgment:
Copy-editing by Steve Knox (help4researchers.com) and others.

*Previously, I used the pen name RS.