Scope and Contents

This is a first edition, first printing, of this half novel and half the craft of writing a biography. The protagonist is an ordinary young woman who becomes extraordinary with de Button's description of her. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

Alain de Botton contributed an introductory essay. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This is the first edition, first printing of the book. Kirkus Associates provided the following review. "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. If too many nowadays find thinkers Nietzsche and Schopenhauer stifling and irrelevant, they need only turn to this witty, engaging book to see how wrong they are. These men de Botton also calls on, Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, and Montaigne, were in their own sometimes abstruse ways actually giving some down-to-earth, practical advice about how to cope with life's miseries and frustrations. De Botton is an able and companionable guide as he demonstrates, for example, how Socrates proves there are things far more consoling than popularity. He turns to Epicurus for advice on how to cope with not having enough money. Montaigne, clearly de...