"A smart and amusing inquiry. Thick with social history and as funny as [it is] acute."
Boston Globe

"His richest, funniest, most heartfelt work yet, packed with erudition and brimming with an elegant originality
of mind.An informative joy to read."Seattle Times

"His insights float on a kind light irony like pixilated Barthes. The pleasures of his prose come from following
the play of his mind, the vast erudition, the succinct paraphrases, and vivid, often lyrical physical descriptions."
Boston Phoenix

This is a book about an almost universal anxiety that is rarely mentioned: an anxiety about what others think of
us, about whether we're judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. This is a book about status anxiety.
Best-selling author Alain de Botton, askswith lucidity and charmwhere our worries about status come from
and what, if anything, we can do to surmount them. With the help of philosophers, artists, and writers, he
examines the origins of status anxiety before revealing ingenious ways in which people have been able to
overcome their worries in the search for happiness. We learn about sandal-less philosophers and topless
bohemians, about the benefits of putting skulls on our sideboards, and about looking at ancient ruins. The
result is a book that is not only highly entertaining and thought-provoking but genuinely wise and helpful,
too.

Alain de Botton is the author of six books, including On Love, How Proust Can Change Your Life, and The Art of Travel. His work has been translated into twenty languages. He lives in Washington, D.C., and London, where he is an Associate Research Fellow of the Philosophy Programme of the University of London, School of Advanced Study.

Earphones Awards recipient Simon Vance was born in England and worked for the BBC for ten years as a radio news announcer and as a narrator for the Royal National Institute for the Blind in London. Besides narrating audiobooks, he is involved in numerous stage-acting projects in the United States and Europe.