The author, an expatriate from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, writes about his homeland and its dying traditions, in tales that marry the elemental themes of Gaelic song (loneliness, sorrow, work, death) with a simple but deceptively modern narrative style.
This week's titles: "Labor Day," "Working," "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work," and "Summer's End".
In "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" (Pantheon; $26), de Botton conducts a charming and unapologetically scattershot tour of global capitalism.
Unfortunately, the British essayist Alain de Botton indulges in this kind of mockery in his new book, "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work".
Alain de Botton, the philosophy-minded Swiss writer ("How Proust Can Change Your Life," "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work") who has long resided in England, has begun issuing a new series of books, written by himself and others, titled The School of Life.
In 2009, Alain de Botton logged on to a critic's blog to denounce a review of his The Pleasures of Sorrows and Work in the New York Times, "driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth".
In his book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, author Alain de Botton explains that a job feels meaningful "whenever it allows us to generate delight or alleviate suffering in others".
Alain de Botton's latest book is The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (Penguin) We have narrowed the field by the way we've come to define public intellectuals.
It is all, you might be tempted to conclude, pretty pointless.In this section The pleasures and sorrows of work Democracy in difficult places On the waste land Shock and oar Dragons' den Top guns ReprintsExcept that we know that it isn't.
Very few parents, Ms Evans notes, have absolutely nothing to add to the lives of their children.In this section The pleasures and sorrows of work Democracy in difficult places On the waste land Shock and oar Dragons' den Top guns Reprints Related items Divorce: Money in miseryFeb 5th 2009The other big lesson is that broken homes can be patched up from the outside.
His new book, "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work", takes on that odd thing that most of us do for so many of our waking hours on Earth.It would be easy to accuse Mr de Botton, who describes his new volume as "a hymn to the intelligence, peculiarity, beauty and horror of the modern workplace", of firing cheap shots.
