This really is a book about an almost universal anxiety that may be rarely mentioned: an anxiety about what others think of us, about whether we’re judged a success or even a failure, a winner or perhaps a loser.
That is a book about status anxiety.
Best-selling author Alain de Botton, askswith lucidity and charmwhere our worries about status come from and what, if anything, we can do to surmount them. With the assist of philosophers, artists, and writers, he
examines the origins of status anxiety before revealing ingenious ways in which folks have been able to
overcome their worries within the search for happiness.
We learn about sandal-less philosophers and topless
bohemians, about the benefits of putting skulls on our sideboards, and about looking at ancient ruins.
The result is really a book that isn’t only extremely entertaining and thought-provoking but genuinely wise and useful, too.
Alain de Botton is the author of six books, including On Love, How Proust Can Change Your Life, and the Art of Travel. His work has been translated into twenty languages. He lives in Washington, D.C., and London, where he is an Associate Research Fellow from the Philosophy Programme with the University of London, School of Advanced Study.
Earphones Awards recipient Simon Vance was born in England and worked to the BBC for ten years being a radio news announcer and like a narrator for the Royal National Institute for that Blind in London. Besides narrating audiobooks, he is involved in numerous stage-acting projects inside United States and Europe.