Alain de Botton’s career to date has been spent writing books that tackle questions of everyday life. They refer both to his own experiences and ideas – and those of artists, philosophers and thinkers of the past. His work has been described as a ‘philoso
CURRENT AFFAIRS
Released: Feb. 11, 2014
"How does news shape our thoughts and lives? That's a significant question, but de Botton's musings fall short of a serious response."
Philosophical gadfly de Botton (
How to Think More About Sex, 2012, etc.) has ruminated, delightfully and often incisively, on the meaning of status, architecture, travel, Proust, sex, work, religion and love. Now he turns his attention to the news industry.
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HEALTH & MEDICINE
Released: Jan. 1, 2013
"A well-rounded examination of the ways we can marry intelligent thought and physical pleasure."
RELIGION
Released: March 6, 2012
"Unlike The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work and The Architecture of Happiness, this installment in the author's oeuvre is shallow and glib."
De Botton (
A Week at the Airport, 2010, etc.) suggests ways a secular society can provide the benefits and comfort its citizens once derived from faith.
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BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Released: Sept. 21, 2010
"Enjoyable and informative—perfect in-flight reading."
An unfiltered meditation on the airport, a space that de Botton (
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, 2009, etc.) argues is representative of humanity's philosophical outlook.
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BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Released: June 2, 2009
"A luminous photo-essay from a consistently fresh and noble writer."
Novelist/essayist de Botton (
The Architecture of Happiness, 2006, etc.) turns his inquisitive eye to the business of work.
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Released: Oct. 3, 2006
"A lyrical and generously illustrated monograph about the intimate relationship between our buildings and ourselves. (To be a three-part PBS series, Fall 2006)"
Graceful disquisition on the significance of architecture, by a novelist and essayist whose eclectic interests range from
How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997) to
Status Anxiety (2004).
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PSYCHOLOGY
Released: June 1, 2004
"An intelligent breath of fresh air, sans the usual ax-grinding."
A novelist (
Kiss and Tell, 1996, etc.) with a flair for gleaning self-help from across the ages (
The Consolations of Philosophy, 2000) cleverly deconstructs and demystifies that sinking feeling of material inferiority.
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BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Released: April 28, 2000
" Congenial, refreshing, original—and mercifully succinct—de Botton may well achieve the impossible by making philosophy popular."
Having changed lives with the help of a French writer (
How Proust Can Change Your Life, 1997), de Botton now seeks to offer those lives needed consolation—and specific advice—with the writings of some of the world's most illustrious philosophers.
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BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Released: May 14, 1997
"For a painless crib, de Botton's tongue-in-cheek tract beats out Harold Bloom on the Western canon and David Denby on Great Books without even a madeleine break."
For the era of the self-help bestseller, novelist de Botton delivers a witty, entertaining literary appreciation of the author of Remembrance of Things Past.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: June 10, 1996
"Having stuck with this one-joke plot that is, like its narrator, amusing and tedious by turns, readers will understand her fond impatience all too well."
A young, self-centered British swain vows to get to know the next woman he meets better than she knows herself, in de Botton's self-consciously coy follow-up to On Love (1993) and The Romantic Movement (1995). ``It took me a long time to . . . understand how someone could have been so un-self-aware and at the same time so self-obsessed,'' reads the narrator's most recent Dear John letter. ``You said you loved me, but a narcissist can't love anyone but himself.'' Miffed by the accusation, de Botton's intellectual hero determines not just to pay more attention to the next woman he meets but to immerse himself in her life as assiduously as a biographer studies his subject.
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Released: June 15, 1995
"If de Botton's little drawings are often vapid, he's still a promising writer who entertains glibly more than he falls flat."
A sometimes diverting, sometimes loquacious and cutesy second novel from de Botton (On Love (1993), who once again combines a twentysomething off-again-on-again relationship with various sorts of mock-serious disquisitions on love and other topics.
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Released: Nov. 1, 1993
"A very promising debut. (First printing of 25,000)"
A tour-de-force pleasure of a first novel that takes a conventional love story and textures it with philosophical ruminations, ironic subtitles, and various sorts of playfulness, including pencil drawings.
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