The School of Life

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...

Alain de Botton's redemptive volume charts a course from collapse to recovery with kindness, compassion and wisdom.“Alain de Botton, one of our era’s most uncommonly perceptive, lyrical, and lucid existential contemplatives.” — The MarginalianA...

A guide to our anxious minds; offering a route to calm, self-compassion, and mental well-being.Far more than we tend to realize, we’re all—in private—deeply anxious. There is so much that worries us across our days and nights: whether our hopes will...

A guide to developing the art of finding serenity, not through meditation, but through understanding the sources of our anxiety and frustrations. Few life skills are as neglected, yet as important, as the ability to remain calm. Our very worst...

A guide to breaking free from the enduring, and sometimes damaging, behavioral patterns learned in childhood. When trying to deal with our current troubles and anxieties, it can be deeply irritating to be asked to consider our childhoods. They...

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...

A guide to identifying, nurturing and growing our insight and creativity for more effective thinking. We know that our minds are capable of great things because, every now and then, they come out with a brilliant idea or two. However, our minds are...

A practical guide to being nice. Much of today's media tells us to be thinner, richer, and more successful. This book tells us how to be nicer. Niceness may not have the immediate allure of money or fame, but we can all benefit from practical advice...

A thought-provoking essay that teaches us that confidence is not a gift from the gods, but a skill that can be learned. We spend vast amounts of time acquiring confidence in narrow technical fields: quadratic equations or bioengineering; economics or...

A guide to emotional healing and living a more self-accepting life. Behind many of our problems lies an often ignored factor: we don’t like ourselves very much. We are sufferers of self-hatred. We tell ourselves the meanest things. It’s because of...

A fresh approach to matters of the heart, teaching us that success in love need never again be just a matter of luck. Love has a history and we ride—sometimes rather helplessly—on its currents. Since around 1750, we have been living in a highly...

An examination of the importance of self-knowledge, providing practical exercises to aid self-discovery. In Ancient Greece, when the philosopher Socrates was asked to sum up what all philosophical commandments could be reduced to, he replied: ‘Know...

"... A book reminding us of all the small moments we overlook when they happen."- Emma Gannon, Ctr Alt Delete podcast52 overlooked small pleasures, from flirtation and figs to cyprus trees and the pleasant exhaustion that follows an especially...

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....

A parenting guide providing compassionate instruction and insight into raising a resilient, well-balanced child. Bringing up a child to be an authentic and mentally robust adult is one of life’s great challenges. It is also, fortunately, not a matter...

How to live wisely and well in the twenty-first century-an introduction to the modern art of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence affects every aspect of the way we live, from romantic to professional relationships, from our inner resilience...

A guide to the art of failing well—with actionable tips and a gentle approach. This is a hopeful, consoling, gentle book about failure. Our societies talk a lot about success, but the reality is that no one gets through life without failing – in small...

The key ingredients to contented love—quintessential advice on relationships from The School of Life, with an approachable tone It can sometimes seem a mystery why some couples stay together and thrive – while many more split up or drag on scratchily....

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...