We spend most of our waking lives at work--in occupations most often chosen by our inexperienced younger selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what our jobs mean to us.
"The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" is an exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, beautifully exploring what other people wake up to do each day--and night--to make our frenzied world function. With a philosophical eye and his signature combination of wit and wisdom, Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around an eclectic range of occupations, from rocket scientist to biscuit manufacturer, from accountant to artist--in search of what makes jobs either soul-destroying or fulfilling.

Reviews

Swiss author/TV presenter De Botton (www.alaindebotton.com) follows The Architecture of Happiness (2006) with this book exploring the highs and lows-mostly the lows-of work. De Botton asserts that work keeps us from facing the reality of impending death, but his argument seems to reflect his own insecurities rather than some universal truth. Veteran actor/narrator David Colacci sounds bored here, not wholly effectively conveying De Botton's dry wit. The Pantheon hc edition contains approximately 100 original images by documentary photographer Richard Baker; listeners can view the images that didn't make it into that edition at www.alaindebotton.com. A good match for The New Yorker crowd.-Johannah Genett, Hennepin Cty. Lib., Minneapolis Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

This pensive study explores work not as an economic or sociological phenomenon but as an existential predicament. Observing an eclectic sample of workers, from fishermen to a CEO of an accounting firm, de Botton (How Proust Can Change Your Life) counterposes "the expansive intelligence" embodied in vast business organizations with the blinkered routines of their human cogs and finds that tension rife with philosophical conundrums. Cookie marketers illustrate the link between happiness and triviality in bourgeois society; office drones wear "a mask of shallow cheerfulness" over "the fury and sadness continually aroused by their colleagues"; a visit to a satellite launch center contrasts the restrained self-effacement of rocket scientists with their power to "upstage the gods" during fiery blastoffs. De Botton's humanism recoils at the banality, crassness and forced optimism of the business mindset, but he admires its ability to construct the world-and even finds poetry in a supermarket supply chain that flies "blood-red strawberries... over the Arctic Circle by moonlight, leaving a trail of nitrous oxide across a black and gold sky." (The book includes evocative photos of commercial and industrial sites.) De Botton's sprightly mix of reportage and rumination expands beyond the workplace to investigate the broader meaning of life. (June 2) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.