Anyone who’s ever lost sleep over an unreturned phone call or the neighbor’s Lexus had better read Alain de Botton’s irresistibly clear-headed new book, immediately. For in its pages, a master explicator of our civilization and its discontents turns
In The Romantic Movement, Alain de Botton explores the progress of a love affair from first meeting to breaking up, intercut with musings on the nature of art of love. The relationship between Alice, an advertising executive, and Eric, a banker, is examin
What do you do when you find yourself imprisoned in your room for 6 weeks? Xavier de Maistre, a 27-year-old Frenchman found himself in this uneasy situation when he was arrested in Turin after a duel, in the Spring of 1790. But with only a butler and a do
Every day we map. We map how we get from a to b. We map when we’re somewhere new, and somewhere we’ve been many times before. We map ourselves, our days, our thoughts, memories, what we want to mark, save and share. Today it seems, that most of the ti
What is art for? In the engaging, lively, and controversial new book, bestselling philosopher Alain de Botton, with art historian John Armstrong, proposes a new way of looking at art, suggesting that it can be useful, relevant, and - above all else - ther
A series of intelligent, rigorous, well-written self-help books, put together by some of the leading minds in the field. This bindup includes the following titles:Alain de Botton's How to Think More About Sex Tom Chatfield's How to Thrive in the Digital A
Covering such topics as adultery, lust, pornography and impotence, Alain de Botton argues that 21st century sex will always be a balancing act of trust versus risk, and of primal desire versus studied civility. By examining sex from a subjective perspecti
