Alain de Botton - Böcker

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Give the gift of inspiration: an essential guide to living wisely and well, no matter what challenges the world throws at you - from Alain de Botton, the bestselling author of The Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel and The Course of LoveThis is a book about everything you were never taught at school. It's about how to understand your emotions, find and sustain love, succeed in your career, fail well and overcome shame and guilt. It's also about letting go of the myth of a perfect life in order to achieve genuine emotional maturity. Written in a hugely accessible, warm and humane style, The School of Life is the ultimate guide to the emotionally fulfilled lives we all long for - and deserve. This book brings together ten years of essential and transformative research on emotional intelligence, with practical topics including: - how to understand yourself- how to master the dilemmas of relationships- how to become more effective at work - how to endure failure- how to grow more serene and resilient Praise for Alain de Botton:'What he has managed to do is remarkable: to help us think better so that we may live better lives' Irish Times'A serious and optimistic set of practical ideas that could improve and alter the way we live' Jeanette Winterson, The Times'Alain de Botton likes to take big, complex subjects and write about them with thoughtful and deceptive innocence' Observer

Exploring ideas around minimalism, simplicity and how to live comfortably with less.The modern world can be a complicated, frenzied and noisy place, filled with too many options, products, ideas and opinions. That explains why what many of us long for is simplicity: a life that can be more pared down, peaceful and focused on the essentials.But finding simplicity is not always easy; it isn’t just a case of emptying out our closets or trimming back commitments in our diaries. True simplicity requires that we understand the roots of our distractions – and develop a canny respect for the stubborn reasons why things can grow complex and overwhelming.This book is a guide to the simpler lives we crave and deserve. It considers how we might achieve simplicity across a range of areas: our relationships, social lives, work routines and our approaches to possessions and media. Along the way, we learn about Zen Buddhism, modernist architecture, monasteries, psychoanalysis, and why we probably don’t need more than three good friends or a few treasured belongings.It isn’t enough that our lives should look simple; they need to be simple from the inside. This book takes a psychological approach, guiding us towards less contorted hearts and minds. It suggests that once we truly know who we are and what we want, we will be able to live with far less than we currently believe we need. We have for too long been drowning in excess and clutter from a confusion about our aspirations; A Simpler Life helps us tune out the static and focus on what properly matters to us.

One of the things we all deeply crave, and all richly deserve, is a more exciting life. We know well enough that many things have to be routine, hard and a little bit boring. But we also rightly sense that, if only we can find a way, our lives could be rendered intermittently more joyful, intense, thrilling and beautiful. This is a guide to the more exciting life we know could be ours. It isn’t about the outward things we might do: travel, parachute out of airplanes or learn a foreign language. This is a book of psychology and about how we can nurture a sense of inner liberation, accept our desires and aspirations and then have the courage to set ourselves free. Perhaps for too long we have resigned ourselves to things that aren’t fair or necessary, we have felt too constricted (and perhaps unloved) to communicate well with others and the proper expansion of our characters has been sacrificed for the sake of compliance. Now is a chance to recover some of our spirit, and to become open to the full intensity, beauty and mystery of life and to the richness of our own possibilities. Here is a guide to that more exciting life we know should – and can – be ours.

We probably went to school for what felt like a very long time. We probably took care with our homework. Along the way we surely learnt intriguing things about equations, the erosion of glaciers, the history of the Middle Ages, and the tenses of foreign languages. But why, despite all the lessons we sat through, were we never taught the really important things that dominate and trouble our lives: who to start a relationship with, how to trust people, how to understand one’s psyche, how to move on from sorrow or betrayal, and how to cope with anxiety and shame? The School of Life is an organisation dedicated to teaching a range of emotional lessons that we need in order to lead fulfilled and happy lives – and that schools routinely forget to teach us. This book is a collection of our most essential lessons, delivered with directness and humanity, covering topics from love to career, childhood trauma to loneliness. To read the book is to be invited to lead kinder, richer and more authentic lives – and to complete an education we began but still badly need to finish. This is homework to help us make the most of the rest of our lives.

Raising a child to be an authentic and mentally robust adult is one of life’s great challenges. It is also, fortunately, not a matter of luck. There are many things to understand about how children’s minds operate and what they need from those who look after them so they can develop into the best version of themselves.The Good Enough Parent is a compendium of lessons, including ideas on how to say ‘no’ to a child one adores, how to look beneath the surface of ‘bad’ behaviour to work out what might really be going on, how to encourage a child to be genuinely kind, how to encourage open self expression, and how to handle the moods and gloom of adolescence.Importantly, this is a book that knows that perfection is not required – and could indeed be unhelpful, because a key job of any parent is to induct a child gently into the imperfect nature of everything. Written in a tone that is encouraging, wry and soaked in years of experience, The Good Enough Parent is an intelligent guide to raising a child who will one day look back on their childhood with just the right mixture of gratitude, humour and love.

THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom one of our greatest voices in modern philosophy, author of The Course of Love, The Consolations of Philosophy and The School of Life, The Architecture of Happiness explores the fascinating hidden links between the buildings we live in and our long-term wellbeing.'Engaging and intelligent . . . Full of splendid ideas, happily and beautifully expressed' IndependentWhat makes a house truly beautiful? Why are many new houses so ugly? Why do we argue so bitterly about sofas and pictures - and can differences of taste ever be satisfactorily resolved?To answer these questions and many more, de Botton looks at buildings across the world, from medieval wooden huts to modern skyscrapers; he examines sofas and cathedrals, tea sets and office complexes, and teases out a host of often surprising philosophical insights. The Architecture of Happiness will take you on a beguiling tour through the history and psychology of architecture and interior design, and will change the way you look at your home.'Alain de Botton takes big, complex subjects and writes about them with thoughtful and deceptive innocence' Observer'Clever, provocative and fresh as a daisy' Literary Review

From one of our greatest voices in modern philosophy, author of The Course of Love, The Consolations of Philosophy, Religion for Atheists and The School of Life - a lucid exploration of the state in which most of us spend most of our lives'De Botton's wit and powers of ironic observation are on display throughout what is a stylish and original book. The workplace brings out the best in his writing' Sunday Times'Timely, wonderfully readable. De Botton has pretty much got to the bottom of the subject' Spectator'Terribly funny, touches us all' Daily Mail'Brilliant, enormously engaging' Guardian Why do so many of us love or hate our work? How has it come to dominate our lives? And what should we do about it?Work makes us. Without it we are at a loss; in work we hope to have a measure of control over our lives. Yet for many of us, work is a straitjacket from which we cannot free ourselves.Criss-crossing the world to visit workplaces and workers both ordinary and extraordinary, and drawing on the wit and wisdom of great artists, writers and thinkers, Alain de Botton here explores our love-hate relationship with our jobs. He poses and answers little and big questions: from what should I do with my life? to what will I have achieved when I retire?The Pleasure and Sorrows of Work explains why it is we do what we do all day, and applies sympathy, humour and insight to helping us make the most of it.

The modern world can present the body as a machine that just needs to be regularly exercised. However, it is a remarkably sensitive organ in which a lot of our pain and hope is stored and that we need to interpret and handle with subtlety. This impact of our body upon our mind is something which needs to be explored as it is easy to pay attention to one more than the other and to to ignore the crucial balance between the two. This is a book filled with reflections and exercises designed to help us live more harmoniously and maturely within both mind and body. It gives guidance on how to calm our minds with bodily exercises that work on the real sources of our anxieties. It suggests how to be less rigid in, and timid about, our bodies and how to relax into them in a way we might not have done for far too long. It offers ideas on how to accept the way we look, and how to treat the body in order for it to assist the mind in yielding its very best ideas. The impacts of activities such as singing, dancing and art are explored along with the liberation of spirit that these might offer. This is a book, both theoretical and practical, that will improve our relationship between our physical and mental selves and allow us a route to a life of greater self-assurance, wisdom and freedom to be ourselves.

One of the trickiest tasks we ever face is that of working out who we really are. If we’re asked directly to describe ourselves, our minds tend to go blank. We can’t just sum ourselves up. We need prompts and suggestions and more detailed enquiries that help tease out and organise our picture of ourselves.This book is designed to help us create a psychological portrait of ourselves with the use of some far more unusual, oblique, entertaining and playful prompts. The questions are designed to help us cumulatively appreciate how rich our identities are and how complicated, beautiful and sometimes painful our experiences have been.If self-knowledge is central to a wise and fulfilled life, it is because it teaches us which of our many—often contradictory—feelings and plans we might trust, in order that we can be a little more sceptical around our first impulses and less puzzled by the ebb and flow of our moods. We can understand where some of our feelings have come from and what might be driving our convictions and our longings.

Two authorities on popular culture reveal the ways in which art can enhance mood and enrich lives - now available in paperbackThis passionate, thought-provoking, often funny, and always-accessible book proposes a new way of looking at art, suggesting that it can be useful, relevant, and therapeutic. Through practical examples, the world-renowned authors argue that certain great works of art have clues as to how to manage the tensions and confusions of modern life. Chapters on love, nature, money, and politics show how art can help with many common difficulties, from forging good relationships to coming to terms with mortality.

It’s one of the things we are most afraid might happen to us. We go to great lengths to avoid it. And yet we do it all the same. We marry the wrong person. Anyone we might marry could, of course, be a little bit wrong for us. We know that perfection is not on the cards. The fault isn’t entirely our own.In the Classical age one might have considered criteria such as how much land a prospective marriage partner has. In the Romantic age, which still dominates our culture, we place great confidence in intuition – a sense that there is such a thing as ‘the one’, that you understand one another perfectly and that you both never want to sleep with anyone else again.The time has come to bury the Romantic intuition-based view of marriage and learn to practice and rehearse marriage as one would ice-skating or violin playing, activities no more deserving of systematic periods of instruction.A Collection of Three Essays: Why You Will Marry the Wrong PersonWhen is One Ready to Get Married?How Love Stories Ruin Our Love Lives

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERFrom one of our greatest voices in modern philosophy, author of The Course of Love, The Consolations of Philosophy, Religion for Atheists and The School of Life - Alain de Botton sets out to understand our universal fear of failure - and how we might change it'De Botton's gift is to prompt us to think about how we live and how we might change things' The Times We all worry about what others think of us. We all long to succeed and fear failure. We all suffer - to a greater or lesser degree, usually privately and with embarrassment - from status anxiety. Alain de Botton gives a name to this universal condition and sets out to investigate both its origins and possible solutions. He looks at history, philosophy, economics, art and politics - and reveals the many ingenious ways that great minds have overcome their worries. The result is a book that is not only entertaining and thought-provoking - but genuinely wise and helpful as well.'He analyses modern society with great charm, learning and humour. His remedies come as a welcome relief when most books offering solutions to the stresses of life recommend the lotus position' Daily Mail

AS HEARD ON THE DIARY OF A CEO PODCAST WITH STEVEN BARTLETTFrom the Sunday Times bestselling author of The School of LifeThis is a book about how to optimise your mental health. Written with kindness and sympathy, it is a practical guide to emotional well-being, calm and psychological maturity. Alain de Botton explores how we can cope with a variety of mental challenges, from the mild to the severe. It considers how and why we can get overly anxious or low; how we can best understand our pasts and how they shape us; and how we can build resilience, so as to live wisely alongside certain difficulties.At heart this is a book about psychological happiness – about discovering equilibrium and meaning, and finding our way to connection and joy.‘This book does a wonderful job of making you realise that the thing you’re going through, and the way that you are, isn’t evidence of your inadequacy. It’s actually evidence that you are perfectly human’ Steven Bartlett, author and host of The Diary of a CEO'One of our most consistently illuminating writers on contemporary culture' John Gray, New Statesman

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLEROne of the most influential voices in modern philosophy - the author of The Course of Love, Religion for Atheists, The Art of Travel and The School of LifeAlain de Botton presents a one-stop shop for solving the problems of everyday life through the wisdom of history's great philosophers'Singlehandedly, de Botton has taken philosophy back to its simplest and most important purpose: helping us live our lives' Independent'Few discussions on the great philosophers can have been so entertaining... An ingenious, imaginative book' The Sunday Times'Witty, thoughtful, entertaining... It manages to make philosophy both enjoyable and relevant' Anthony Clare, Literary Review'No doubt about it, philosophy is the new rock and roll and Alain de Botton is its Colonel Tom Parker... A pleasure to read. And good writing, like good philosophy, is always a consolation' John Banville, Irish Times Alain de Botton has set six of the finest minds in the history of philosophy to work on the problems of everyday life. Find out what Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche would say about the things that bother us all the most: lack of money, the pain of love, inadequacy, anxiety, the fear of failure and the pressure to conform.

SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERNUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom one of our greatest voices in modern philosophy, author of The Course of Love, The Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel and The School of Life'A serious and optimistic set of practical ideas that could improve and alter the way we live' Jeanette Winterson, The Times'A beautiful, inspiring book... offering a glimpse of a more enlightened path' Sunday Telegraph'Smart, stimulating, sensitive. A timely and perceptive appreciation of how much wisdom is embodied in religious traditions and how we godless moderns might learn from it' Financial Times'There isn't a page in this book that doesn't contain a striking idea or a stimulating parallel' Mail on SundayAlain de Botton takes us one step further than Dawkins or Hitchens ventured - into a world of ideas beyond the God debate...All of us, whether religious, agnostic or atheist, are searching for meaning. And in this wise and life-affirming book, non-believer Alain de Botton both rejects the supernatural claims of the major religions and points out just how many good ideas they sometimes have about how we should live.And he suggests that non-believers can learn and steal from them.Picking and choosing from the thousands of years of advice assembled by the world's great religions, Alain de Botton presents a range of fascinating ideas and practical insights on art, community, love, friendship, work, life and death. He shows how they can be of use to us all, irrespective of whether we do or don't believe.

SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERFrom one of our great thinkers on modern life and the human condition - an unforgettable story of love and marriage from the author of bestselling novel Essays in Love as well as The Consolations of Philosophy, Religion for Atheists and The School of Life'The Course of Love probes the very heart of marriage, its shifts and squalls, its great adventure, with such forensic tenderness. I laughed a lot, too' Deborah MoggachModern love is never easy. Society is obsessed with stories of romance, but what comes after happily ever after?This is a love story with a difference. From dating to marriage, from having kids to having affairs, it follows the progress of a single ordinary relationship: tender, messy, hilarious, painful, and entirely un-Romantic. It is a love story for the modern world, chronicling the daily intimacies, the blazing rows, the endless tiny gestures that make up a life shared between two people. Moving and deeply insightful, The Course of Love offers us a window into essential truths about the nature of love.'Engaging, sympathetic, acutely perceptive... There's a refreshing honesty in what de Botton has to say' Guardian'Anyone who is, has been, or would ever like to be, in a satisfying, successful relationship, would do well to read de Botton' Irish Independent 'He debunks the myth of the happily ever after with a painfully familiar, often hilarious detailing of petty arguments, the occasional extra-marital fling, the moments of loneliness and the declining frequency of sex... It's not only hugely enjoyable but life enhancing too' Daily Mail

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER'Honest, funny and dripping with witty aphorisms. Extremely entertaining and enlightening [...] all the way to journey's end' Herald One of our greatest voices in modern philosophy, author of The Course of Love, The Consolations of Philosophy, Religion for Atheists and The School of Life, presents a travel guide with a difference - an exploration of why we travel, and what we learn along the way...Few activities seem to promise as much happiness as going travelling: taking off for somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with more interesting weather, customs and landscapes. But although we are inundated with advice on where to travel to, we seldom ask why we go and how we might become more fulfilled by doing so.With the help of a selection of writers, artists and thinkers - including Flaubert, Edward Hopper, Wordsworth and Van Gogh - Alain de Botton provides invaluable insights into everything from holiday romance to hotel minibars, airports to sightseeing. The perfect antidote to those guides that tell us what to do when we get there, The Art of Travel tries to explain why we really went in the first place - and helpfully suggest how we might be happier on our journeys.'Delightful, profound, entertaining. I doubt if de Botton has written a dull sentence in his life' Jan Morris'An elegant and subtle work, unlike any other. Beguiling' Colin Thubron, The Times

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERFrom one of our greatest voices in modern philosophy, author of The Course of Love, The Consolations of Philosophy, Religion for Atheists and The School of Life - an accessible and eye-opening exploration of our relationship with 'the news''His gift is to prompt us to think about how we live and how we might change things' The Times'De Botton analyses modern society with great charm, learning and humour. His remedies come as a welcome relief' Daily Mail'Like all classic de Botton, there are plenty of insightful observations here, peppered with some psychology, a dash of philosophy, a big dollop of commonsense' Scotsman 'The news' occupies a range of manic and peculiar positions in our lives. We invest it with an authority and importance which used to be the preserve of religion - but what does it do for us?Mixing current affairs with philosophical reflections, de Botton offers a brilliant illustrated guide to the precautions we should take before venturing anywhere near the news and the 'noise' it generates. Witty and global in reach, The News will ensure you'll never look at reports of a celebrity story or political scandal in quite the same way again.

The Romantic Movement is the story of its beguiling heroine Alice and her quest for love, cataloguing the progress of her affair with Eric in all its thrills and pitfalls. Delightfully funny as well as moving, the novel elaborates on the psychology of men and women in love, posing and answering a hot of questions from ‘How does one come to know one’s partner’ to ‘What is the link between love, sex and shopping?’‘Alain de Botton is a marvellous writer, and his novels are bliss to read if, like me, you are fascinated by what couples are like when they are alone together, and what is really going on in their minds’ Ysenda Maxton Graham, Evening Standard‘It takes a most accomplished novelist to take the prosaic, ordinary routines of an unexceptional love affair and transform them into an exquisitely written and learned study of love in the real world. But this is what Alain de Botton has done . . . This novel is nothing less than a guide to the lies, truths, and foibles of modern love’ Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Times‘His books are original hybrids, part novel, part philosophical reverie. They are solemn, ridiculous, charming and funny’ Kate Kellaway, Observer

'Dazzling' John Updike

The Great Thinkers is a collection of some of the most important ideas of Eastern and Western culture - drawn from the works of those philosophers, political theorists, sociologists, artists and novelists whom we believe have the most to offer to us today.We've worked hard to make the thinkers in this book clear, relevant and charming, mining the history of knowledge to bring you the ideas we think have the greatest importance to our times.This 480-page book contains the canon of The School of Life, the gallery of individuals across the millennia who help to frame our intellectual project - and we have succeeded if, in the days and years ahead, you find yourself turning to our thinkers to illuminate the multiple dilemmas, joys and griefs of daily life.

The difference between success and failure often hangs on a fascinatingly small and elusive concept that our standard education system never touches: confidence.This is a guidebook to what confidence consists of, why we lack it - and how we can acquire more of it in our lives. On Confidence walks us gently and wryly around the key issues that stop us from making more of our potential. We hear about the impostor syndrome, the wisdom of imagining the great in their bathrooms and what Nietzsche and Montaigne (among others) have to tell us about resilience and courage.We often stay stuck with the level of confidence we have because we implicitly regard being confident as a matter of slightly freakish and unrepeatable good luck. In fact, as this essay charmingly shows, the opposite is true.Confidence is a skill based on a set of ideas about our place in the world - and its secrets can quietly and deftly be learnt.What people are saying about On Confidence:“Awesome graphic design and the paper quality is amazing.” Joana“Great content, engagingly written.” Janine“Great life advice without being overly pedantic. Cleverly written, digestible format.” Carolyn

This is a book that should never fall into the hands of children – for it is filled with the darkest truths about life that might unbearably depress the young.However, for the older ones among us, this is a book full of solace, humour and relief. In a charming, naively illustrated tale, we follow the adventures of Bunny – a version of all of us – as he encounters a series of obstacles we are in some ways liable to recognise from our own lives. Watching poor Bunny, we end up delighted we’re not alone, and perhaps smiling darkly in sympathy with his sorrows.Children might even have the odd peek inside if they dare.