**The New York Times–bestselling author's modern classic that "takes a conventional love story and textures it with philosophical ruminations" ( Kirkus Reviews).A man and a woman meet over casual conversation on a flight from Paris to London, and so begins a love story—from first kiss to first argument, elation to heartbreak, and everything in between. Each stage of the relationship is illuminated with starling clarity, as novelist and philosopher Alain d...

Twenty case studies explaining how to gently deliver a range of life’s most awkward messages while causing minimal harm.Life constantly requires us to give other people some hugely awkward messages: that we don’t love them anymore; that we do love them (though we’re not meant to); that they smell a bit; that they’re fired; that we’re furious with them (though we adore them) or that their music is too loud...Often, out of embarrassment, we just stay quiet. O...

A book to offer clarity and guidance when facing the difficult decision of whether your relationship has a future.Whether we should stay in or leave a relationship is one of the most consequential and painful decisions we are ever likely to confront.What makes the issue so hard is that there are no fixed rules for judgement. How can we tell whether a relationship is 'good enough' or plain wrong? How do we draw the line between justified longing and naivety?...

A guide to modern times that explores the challenges living in the 21st century can pose to our mental wellbeing.The modern world has brought us a range of extraordinary benefits and joys, including technology, medicine, and transport. But it can also feel as though modern times have plunged us ever deeper into greed, despair, and agitation. Seldom has the world felt more privileged and resource-rich yet also worried, blinkered, furious, panicked, and self-absorbed...

A wise and utterly original book of travel essays from an international bestselling author that will “give one an expansive sense of wonder” (The Baltimore Sun).Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of ...

A compassionate guide to raising resilient, authentic, well-rounded children.The Good Enough Parent is a compendium of life lessons, including how to say 'No', how to look beneath the surface of "bad" behavior to find the root of what is going on, how to encourage a child to be genuinely kind, and how to handle the moodiness of adolescence.Rather than striving for perfection, the book argues, the job of any parent is in fact to guide a child gently...

This book explores ideas around minimalism, simplicity and how to live comfortably with less.The modern world can be a complicated, frenzied, and noisy place, filled with too many options, products, ideas and opinions. That explains why what many of us long for is simplicity: a life that can be more pared down, peaceful, and focused on the essentials.But finding simplicity is not always easy; it isn’t just a case of emptying out our closets or trimming back...

Many of us are quiet geniuses at the art of procrastination. We tend to feel so guilty about everything we haven't done yet (and the hours frittered away as though we were immortal), we never get around to reflecting on why we delay and how we might do so less o en. It seems as if we have procrastinated too much to deserve a new start. Far from it. As this book shows, procrastination isn't a weird affliction we alone have been cursed with: it's a fascinating and solvable design-flaw of the...

A collection of the essential emotional lessons we need in order to thrive.We probably went to school for what felt like a very long time. We probably took care with our homework. Along the way we surely learnt intriguing things about equations, the erosion of glaciers, the history of the Founding Fathers, and the tenses of foreign languages.But why, despite all the lessons we sat through, were we never taught the really important things that dominate and t...

The Venture Philanthropy Blueprint (VPB) is a transformative model that redefines how we fund and grow impact-driven businesses. It bridges capital, innovation, and entrepreneurship to drive scalable, sustainable change. Unlike traditional philanthropy, which often relies on one-time grants and donations, VPB applies an investment mindset-funding mission-driven businesses that generate both financi...

A practical guide to knowing yourself.Socrates summed up all philosophical commandments with one directive: "Know yourself." Self-knowledge informs not only our identity, but how we make decisions in life, work, and love. Society has no shortage of people and organizations offering to guide us to distant places, but very few will help us with the far more important task of traveling around the byways of our own minds. This book takes us on a journey into our deepes...

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPRFrom one of Africa’s greatest living writers, a ghostly reckoning with Congolese history"Alain Mabanckou addresses the reader with exuberant inventiveness in novels that are brilliantly imaginative in their forms of storytelling. His voice is vividly colloquial, mischievous and often outrageous as he explores, from multiple angles, the country where he grew up, drawing on its political c...