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.

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page

"Like a combination of Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace and pop philosopher Thomas Moore . . . De Botton's perspective is so vivid and self-exposing that it's hard not to crave it well after you've put down his books."
— Salon.com

"[De Botton is] a sharp observer, a witty raconteur and insightful guide . . . hugely entertaining."
— National Post

"One of the prettiest, most richly insightful and deceptively simple books about toil."
— Vancouver Sun

"[An] insightful, elegantly written book . . . De Botton tells the story with charming wit and a masterful style."
— Winnipeg Free Press

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page

Visit Alain de Botton's website.

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page

I. Cargo Ship Spotting
II. Logistics
III. Biscuit Manufacture
IV. Career Counselling
V. Rocket Science
VI. Painting
VII. Transmission Engineering
VIII. Accountancy
IX. Entrepreneurship
X. Aviation

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page

Alain de Botton has published six non-fiction books: The Architecture of Happiness, Essays in Love, Status Anxiety, The Art of Travel, How Proust Can Change Your Life, and The Consolations of Philosophy, three of which were made into TV documentaries. He has also published two novels: The Romantic Movement and Kiss and Tell. In 2004, Status Anxiety was awarded the prize for the Economics Book of the Year by the Financial Times, Germany. Cambridge-educated, de Botton is a frequent contributor to numerous newspapers, journals, and magazines. His work is published in twenty-five countries.

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page