A Brief Note About Everything…

Joshua Fields Millburn

Three Years Later

In 2010, Ryan Nicodemus and I, best friends for over 20 years, both abandoned the majority of our material possessions and created TheMinimalists.com. In 2011, at age 30, we each walked away from successful careers to live more intentionally. Then, in 2012, we moved to Montana, into a cabin in the middle of nowhere, and started writing a book. This book. Below you can find synopsis and purchasing links to Everything That Remains, as well as the book’s unabridged short forward, “A Brief Note for the Reader.”

Synopsis & Purchase Links

Paperback: Amazon

Ebook: Kindle · iBooks · Nook · Kobo · PDF

Audiobook: Audible · iTunes · Amazon

A Brief Note for the Reader

This book is a work of nonfiction. Sort of. You see, all characters and entities herein really are real, and all the events actually did happen, but sometimes we had to make stuff up (e.g., specific dialogue, precise dates, the various colors of the sky).

Structured as a book-length, five-year conversation between its two authors, Everything That Remains is written as a first-person narrative by me (Joshua Fields Millburn) with intentional interruptions—comments, interjections, and smart-alecky remarks—from Ryan Nicodemus. This structure is somewhat mimetic of our in-person interactions (i.e., we like to interrupt each other—a lot). In the book, however, Ryan’s interruptions take place in the form of endnotes. These endnotes can be read when each interruption occurs or at the end of the book. As with everything in life, you get to choose.

It’s worth noting that a handful of names—persons and corporations—were changed to avoid pissing off certain folks. We also took occasional creative liberties to aid the flow and continuity of the book, which was attenuated (necessarily) from more than a thousand pages at its bloated nadir to its current slender tome. And it’s almost certain that Ryan and I misremembered or couldn’t agree on some people/events, and yet these misremembrances are, in a weird way, still true. After all, truth is perspectival, isn’t it?

For want of a better descriptor, we decided to call this book a memoir. Trust me, I realize how pretentious it sounds to’ve written a memoir at thirty-two. But it’s not really a memoir—more like a bunch of life lessons explored in a narrative format, which allowed Ryan and me to flesh out many of the topics we touch upon at our website, TheMinimalists.com, expanding on those topics by way of storytelling and conversation. Besides, autobiography sounded too stiff and stilted, a title reserved for more important folk: presidents and tycoons and child actors with drug problems. If you hate the whole idea of calling this thing a memoir, then please feel free to call it something else. Call it a prescriptive-nonfiction novel. Call it a personal history. Call it a recipe book for a more meaningful life. Call it whatever you want. I won’t mind.

—JFM

Thank You

We hope you love the book. If you do, we’d really appreciate a review wherever you purchase it. Feel free to get your copy signed during the tour, but remember to minimize it once you’re finished—pass it to a friend, donate it, or sell it.