Status Anxiety (First Edition in Dust Jacket, Like New) - Hardcover

De Botton, Alain

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670044679 ISBN 13: 9780670044672

Publisher: Pantheon Books, 2004

Synopsis

"This is a book about an almost universal anxiety that rarely gets mentioned an anxiety about what others think of us; about whether we're judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. This is a book about status anxiety." "Alain de Botton, asks - with lucidity and charm - where worries about our status come from and what if anything we can do to surmount them. With the help of philosophers, artists and writers, he examines the origins of status anxiety - ranging from the consequences of the French Revolution to our secret dismay at the success of our friends - before revealing ingenious ways in which people have learnt to overcome their worries in their search for happiness. We learn about sandal-less philosophers and topless bohemians, about the benefits of putting skulls on our sideboards and of looking at ruins." The result is a book that isn't just highly entertaining and thought-provoking, but genuinely wise and helpful as well.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

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 turns his attention to the insatiable quest for status, a quest that has less to do with material comfort than with love. To demonstrate his thesis, de Botton ranges 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.

About the Author

Alain de Botton is the author of Essays in Love, The Romantic Movement, Kiss and Tell, How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel, Status Anxiety, The Architecture of Happiness, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, A Week at the Airport, Religion for Atheists, The News: A User's Manual, and latest novel The Course of Love, among many others. Alain is a bestselling author in 30 countries. He lives in London, where he runs The School of Life and Living Architecture.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0670044679
• ISBN 13: 9780670044672
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336