The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work

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The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : Emblem Editions
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2010-06-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780771026324

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The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton Pdf

From the international bestselling author of The Architecture of Happiness and How Proust Can Change Your Life comes this lyrical, erudite look at our world of work. We spend most of our time at work, but what we do there rarely gets discussed in the sort of lyrical and descriptive prose our efforts surely deserve. Determined to correct this lapse, armed with a poetic perspective and his trademark philosophical sharpness, Alain de Botton heads out into the world of offices and factories, ready to take in the beauty, interest, and sheer strangeness of the modern workplace. De Botton spends time in and around some less familiar work environments, including warehouses, container ports, rocket launch pads, and power stations, and follows scientists, landscape painters, accountants, cookie manufacturers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and aircraft salesmen as they do their jobs. Along the way, de Botton tries to answer some of the most urgent questions we can pose about work: Why do we do it? What makes it pleasurable? What is its meaning? To what end do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also our planet? Equally intrigued by work’s pleasures and its pains, Alain de Botton offers a characteristically lucid and witty tour of the working day and night, in a book sure to inspire a range of life-changing and wise thoughts.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

Author : Alain de Botton
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2009-04-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780141932750

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The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton Pdf

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 Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

Author : Alain de Botton
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780141027913

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The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton Pdf

Equally intrigued by work's pleasures and its pains, Alain de Botton here heads out into the under-charted worlds of the office, the factory, the fishing fleet and the logistics centre, ears and eyes open to the beauty, interest and sheer strangeness of the modern workplace.

The Sorrows of Work

Author : The School of Life
Publisher : School of Life
Page : 104 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2019-02-05
Category : Psychology, Industrial
ISBN : 0995753512

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The Sorrows of Work by The School of Life Pdf

A fresh approach to modern working life, offering thoughtful solutions on how to cope with professional challenges.

Status Anxiety

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2008-12-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780307491336

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Status Anxiety by Alain De Botton Pdf

“There's no writer alive like de Botton” (Chicago Tribune), and now this internationally heralded author turns his attention to the insatiable human quest for status—a quest that has less to do with material comfort than love. 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 explores the notion that our pursuit of status is actually a pursuit of love, ranging through Western history and thought from St. Augustine to Andrew Carnegie and Machiavelli to Anthony Robbins. Whether it’s assessing the class-consciousness of Christianity or the convulsions of consumer capitalism, dueling or home-furnishing, Status Anxiety is infallibly entertaining. And when it examines the virtues of informed misanthropy, art appreciation, or walking a lobster on a leash, it is not only wise but helpful.

The News

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : Signal
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2014-02-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780771027697

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The News by Alain De Botton Pdf

From the author of The Architecture of Happiness, a thought-provoking look at the manic and peculiar position that news has achieved in our lives. What does the news do to our brains, our souls and our views of one another? We spend an inordinate amount of time checking on it. It molds how we view reality, we're increasingly addicted to it on our luminous gadgets, we check it every morning when we wake up and every evening before we sleep-and yet the news has rarely been the focus of an accessible, serious, saleable book-length study. Until now. Mixing snippets of current news with philosophical reflections, The News will blend the timeless with the contemporary, and bring the wisdom of thousands of years of culture to bear on our contemporary obsessions and neuroses. The News ranges across news categories-from politics to murders, from economics to celebrities, from the weather to paparazzi shows--in search of answers to the questions: "What do we want from this?" and "Is it doing us any good?" After The News, we'll never look at a celebrity story, the report on a tropical storm, or the sex scandal of a politician in quite the same way again.

A Week at the Airport

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : Emblem Editions
Page : 113 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2010-09-21
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9780771026287

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A Week at the Airport by Alain De Botton Pdf

The bestselling author of The Architecture of Happiness and The Art of Travel spends a week at an airport in a wittily intriguing meditation on the "non-place" that he believes is the centre of our civilization. In the summer of 2009, Alain de Botton was invited by the owners of Heathrow airport to become their first ever writer-in-residence. Given unprecedented, unrestricted access to wander around one of the world's busiest airports, he met travellers from all over the globe, and spoke with everyone from baggage handlers to pilots, and senior executives to the airport chaplain. Based on these conversations he has produced this extraordinary meditation on the nature of travel, work, relationships, and our daily lives. Working with the renowned documentary photographer Richard Baker, he explores the magical and the mundane, and the interactions of travellers and workers all over this familiar but mysterious "non-place," which by definition we are eager to leave. Taking the reader through departures, "air-side," and the arrivals hall, de Botton shows with his usual combination of wit and wisdom that spending time in an airport can be more revealing than we might think.

The Consolations of Philosophy

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2013-01-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780307833501

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The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain De Botton Pdf

From the author of How Proust Can Change Your Life, a delightful, truly consoling work that proves that philosophy can be a supreme source of help for our most painful everyday problems. Perhaps only Alain de Botton could uncover practical wisdom in the writings of some of the greatest thinkers of all time. But uncover he does, and the result is an unexpected book of both solace and humor. Dividing his work into six sections -- each highlighting a different psychic ailment and the appropriate philosopher -- de Botton offers consolation for unpopularity from Socrates, for not having enough money from Epicurus, for frustration from Seneca, for inadequacy from Montaigne, and for a broken heart from Schopenhauer (the darkest of thinkers and yet, paradoxically, the most cheering). Consolation for envy -- and, of course, the final word on consolation -- comes from Nietzsche: "Not everything which makes us feel better is good for us." This wonderfully engaging book will, however, make us feel better in a good way, with equal measures of wit and wisdom.

The Art of Travel

Author : Alain de Botton
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 169 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2003-05-29
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780141930268

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The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton Pdf

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 Architecture of Happiness

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : McClelland & Stewart
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2010-12-03
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781551993874

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The Architecture of Happiness by Alain De Botton Pdf

Bestselling author Alain de Botton considers how our private homes and public edifices influence how we feel, and how we could build dwellings in which we would stand a better chance of happiness. In this witty, erudite look at how we shape, and are shaped by, our surroundings, Alain de Botton applies Stendhal’s motto that “Beauty is the promise of happiness” to the spaces we inhabit daily. Why should we pay attention to what architecture has to say to us? de Botton asks provocatively. With his trademark lucidity and humour, de Botton traces how human needs and desires have been served by styles of architecture, from stately Classical to minimalist Modern, arguing that the stylistic choices of a society can represent both its cherished ideals and the qualities it desperately lacks. On an individual level, de Botton has deep sympathy for our need to see our selves reflected in our surroundings; he demonstrates with great wisdom how buildings — just like friends — can serve as guardians of our identity. Worrying about the shape of our sofa or the colour of our walls might seem self-indulgent, but de Botton considers the hopes and fears we have for our homes at a new level of depth and insight. When shopping for furniture or remodelling the kitchen, we don’t just consider functionality but also the major questions of aesthetics and the philosophy of art: What is beauty? Can beautiful surroundings make us good? Can beauty bring happiness? The buildings we find beautiful, de Botton concludes, are those that represent our ideas of a meaningful life. The Architecture of Happiness marks a return to what Alain does best — taking on a subject whose allure is at once tantalizing and a little forbidding and offering to readers a completely beguiling and original exploration of the subject. As he did with Proust, philosophy, and travel, now he does with architecture.

The Course of Love

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : Signal
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2016-06-14
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780771027628

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The Course of Love by Alain De Botton Pdf

In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children -- but no relationship is as simple as "happily ever after." The Course of Love is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence. With philosophical insight and psychological acumen, Alain de Botton shows that our Romantic dreams may do us a grave disservice -- and explores what the alternatives might be. The conclusion, as the characters gradually discover, is that love is not "an enthusiasm," but rather a "skill" that must be slowly and often painfully learnt. This is a Romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term.

Religion for Atheists

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 297 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2012-03-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780307907103

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Religion for Atheists by Alain De Botton Pdf

What if religions are neither all true nor all nonsense? The long-running and often boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved forward by Alain de Botton’s inspiring new book, which boldly argues that the supernatural claims of religion are entirely false—but that it still has some very important things to teach the secular world. Religion for Atheists suggests that rather than mocking religion, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from it—because the world’s religions are packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, de Botton (a non-believer himself) proposes that we look to religion for insights into how to, among other concerns, build a sense of community, make our relationships last, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, inspire travel and reconnect with the natural world. For too long non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing some peculiar doctrines or doing away with a range of consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. At last, in Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton has fashioned a far more interesting and truly helpful alternative.

How to Take Your Time

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 27 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2017-02-13
Category : Humor
ISBN : 9780525435020

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How to Take Your Time by Alain De Botton Pdf

Curiously practical—this no-nonsense blend of literary biography and self-help unravels how interesting life can be if only you could resist the impulse to rush through the mundane rituals of modern life. Every morning, Marcel Proust sipped his two cups of strong coffee with milk, ate a croissant from one boulangerie, dunking it in his coffee as he slowly read the day’s paper with great care—poring over each headline and section. Only Alain de Botton could have pulled so many useful insights from the oeuvre of one the world’s greatest literary masters. Fascinating and vital, How to Take Your Time will urge you to find the wisdom in defying “the self-satisfaction felt by ‘busy’ men—however idiotic their business—at ‘not having time’ to do what you are doing.” A Vintage Shorts Wellness selection. An ebook short.

How To Think More About Sex

Author : Alain de Botton,The School of Life
Publisher : Pan Macmillan
Page : 162 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2012-05-10
Category : Self-Help
ISBN : 9780230766129

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How To Think More About Sex by Alain de Botton,The School of Life Pdf

Think more about sex by thinking about it in a different way. In this rigorous and supremely honest book Alain de Botton helps us navigate the intimate and exciting – yet often confusing and difficult – experience that is sex. Few of us tend to feel we’re entirely normal when it comes to sex, and what we’re supposed to be feeling rarely matches up with the reality. How To Think More About Sex argues that 21st-century sex is ultimately fated to be a balancing act between love and desire, and adventure and commitment. Covering topics that include lust, fetishism, adultery and pornography, Alain de Botton frankly articulates the dilemmas of modern sexuality, offering insights and consolation to help us think more deeply and wisely about the sex we are, or aren’t, having. Discover more books from The School of Life: How to Stay Sane by Philippa Perry How to Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric How to Worry Less About Money by John Armstrong How to Change the World by John-Paul Flintoff How to Thrive in the Digital Age by Tom Chatfield How to Think More About Sex by Alain de Botton

How Proust Can Change Your Life

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2013-01-23
Category : Humor
ISBN : 9780307833495

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How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain De Botton Pdf

A bestselling author draws on the work of one of history’s most important writers to show us how to best live life in a book that’s "delightfully original.... A self-help book in the deepest sense of the term" (The New York Times). Alain de Botton combines two unlikely genres—literary biography and self-help manual—in the hilarious and unexpectedly practical How Proust Can Change Your Life. Who would have thought that Marcel Proust, one of the most important writers of our century, could provide us with such a rich source of insight into how best to live life? Proust understood that the essence and value of life was the sum of its everyday parts. As relevant today as they were at the turn of the century, Proust's life and work are transformed here into a no-nonsense guide to, among other things, enjoying your vacation, reviving a relationship, achieving original and unclichéd articulation, being a good host, recognizing love, and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on a first date. It took de Botton to find the inspirational in Proust's essays, letters and fiction and, perhaps even more surprising, to draw out a vivid and clarifying portrait of the master from between the lines of his work. Here is Proust as we have never seen or read him before: witty, intelligent, pragmatic. He might well change your life.