The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work »

ALAIN DE BOTTON is the author of three works of fiction and six works of nonfiction, including How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy, and The Art of Travel. He lives in London, where he founded The School of Life.

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.

The Barnes & Noble Review

"What do you do all day?" children often ask their working parents. The activities of all but the most obvious occupations -- butcher, baker, candlestick maker -- can be especially mysterious and abstract, and not just to children. Brand supervision coordinator? Rocket scientist?

The question has spawned numerous books, including Richard Scarry's children's classic What Do People Do All Day? and Studs Terkel's great oral history, Working (1974). In The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton explores some of the increasingly specialized fields of the workaday industrialized world -- cargo shipping, snack food product development, accountancy, airplane parts. He laments that most of us are woefully ignorant of, indifferent to, and disconnected from "the manufacture and distribution of our goods" and, indeed, from the machines and processes that facilitate our lives.

I Cargo Ship Spotting 11

II Logistics 33

III Biscuit Manufacture 69

IV Career Counselling 105

V Rocket Science 131

VI Painting 171

VII Transmission Engineering 193

VIII Accountancy 225

IX Entrepreneurship 269

X Aviation 291