Monday, May. 18, 2009
Alain de Botton's The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Available June 2
De Botton is the Malcolm Gladwell of philosophy: he begins from an utterly pedestrian real-life scenario — say, a meeting at an accounting firm — and vaults from there into the realm of Big Questions. He doesn't see any incompatibility between daily life and philosophy. Now de Botton is turning his attention to work: why do we do it? Why do we enjoy it? Why don't we? It's a cultural blind spot — we tend to ignore that unspeakable thing we spend most of the day doing. But De Botton looks straight at it and finds unexpected beauty there.
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