The Art of Travel - Softcover

De Botton, Alain

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241970067 ISBN 13: 9780241970065

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton UK, 2014

Synopsis

The Art of Travel is Alain de Botton's travel guide with a difference. Few activities seem to promise us as much happiness as going travelling: taking off for somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with more interesting weather, customs and landscapes. But although we are inundated with advice on where to travel to, we seldom ask why we go and how we might become more fulfilled by doing so. With the help of a selection of writers, artists and thinkers - including Flaubert, Edward Hopper, Wordsworth and Van Gogh - Alain de Botton's bestselling The Art of Travel provides invaluable insights into everything from holiday romance to hotel mini-bars, airports to sight-seeing. The perfect antidote to those guides that tell us what to do when we get there, The Art of Travel tries to explain why we really went in the first place - and helpfully suggests how we might be happier on our journeys. 'Richly evocative, sharp and funny. De Botton proves himself to be a very fine travel writer indeed' Sunday Telegraph 'Delightful, profound, entertaining, I doubt if de Botton has written a dull sentence in his life' Jan Morris 'An elegant and subtle work, unlike any other. Beguiling' Colin Thubron, The Times

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Any Baedeker will tell us "where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us "how and "why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life," de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow.
Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don't leave home without it.

About the Author:

Alain de Botton is the author of On Love, The Romantic Movement, Kiss and Tell, How Proust Can Change Your Life, and The Consolations of Philosophy. He lives in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton UK
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0241970067
• ISBN 13: 9780241970065
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272