The School of Life Press 2018
The School of Life The School of Life is devoted to developing emotional intelligence. It addresses issues such as how to find fulfilling work, how to master the art of relationships, how to achieve calm, and how better to understand and – where necessary – change the world. These ideas are delivered through a range of channels: from videos, books, and products to classes, events, and one-toone therapy sessions. Headquartered in London, it operates around the globe with ten international branches (Amsterdam, Antwerp, Berlin, Istanbul, Melbourne, Paris, São Paulo, Seoul, Sydney, and Taipei). The School of Life is a rapidly growing global brand, with over three million YouTube subscribers, 285,000 Facebook followers, and 135,000 Twitter followers. The School of Life Press brings together the thinking and ideas of the School of Life creative team under the direction of series editor, Alain de Botton. Their books share a coherent, curated message that speaks with one voice: calm, reassuring, and sane. /schooloflifechannel /theschooloflifelondon @theschooloflifelondon @theschooloflife
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frontlist / fall 2018
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Calm Few life skills are as neglected, yet as important, as the ability to remain calm. Our very worst decisions and interactions are almost invariably the result of a loss of calm – and a descent into anxiety and agitation. Surprisingly, but very fortunately, our power to remain calm can be rehearsed and improved. We don’t have to stay where we are now: our responses to everyday challenges can dramatically alter. We can educate ourselves in the art of keeping calm not through slow breathing or special teas but through thinking. This is a book that patiently unpacks the causes of our greatest stresses and gives us a succession of highly persuasive, beautiful and sometimes dryly comic arguments with which to defend ourselves against panic and fury.
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Sept ‘18 6 × 7¼ in 136 pp Hardback Ribbon marker, bellyband isbn 978-0-9935387-2-8 rrp $19.99 • Explores causes of
everyday stress and frustration in order to offer a new approach to the art of finding calm in a demanding world • A philosophical guide which equips readers with tools for remaining serene in the face of anxiety and anger
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Small Pleasures So often, we exhaust ourselves and the planet in a search for very large pleasures – while all around us lies a wealth of small pleasures, which, if only we paid more attention – could daily bring us solace and joy at little cost and effort. But we need some encouragement to focus our gaze. This is a book to guide us to the best of life’s small pleasures: everything from the distinctive delight of holding a child’s hand to the enjoyment of disagreeing with someone to the joy of the evening sky; an intriguing, evocative mix of small pleasures that will heighten our senses and return us to the world with new-found excitement and enthusiasm.
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Sept ‘18 5⅜ × 8 in 248 pp Hardback Ribbon marker, bellyband isbn 978-0-9935387-3-5 rrp $19.99 • A series of 52 short and
digestible meditations on life’s small pleasures, designed for dipping into when a spare 5 minutes allows • Entries include: – Cypress Trees – The Charm of Cows – Indulgent Pessimism
frontlist / fall 2018
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The School of Life Dictionary A dictionary is a guide to a language. This dictionary is for the distinctive language that The School of Life ‘speaks’: that of emotions. It is an alphabetical selection of some 200 words and phrases that shed light on our feelings about ourselves, other people, and the workings of the modern world. Too often, we struggle to find the right words to explain what we mean; The School of Life Dictionary is a tool to help us convey our true intentions with economy and precision. Definitions include: Cure for Unrequited Love, Existential Angst, FOMO, Impostor Syndrome.
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Oct ‘18 5⅛ × 7¾ in 280 pp Hardback Ribbon marker isbn 978-0-9957535-9-4 rrp $29.99 • A reference book of the
key words and terms that underpin The School of Life’s project of emotional education • A modern, up-to-date take on the traditional dictionary, with emphasis on the distinct terminology we require to express ourselves in the 21st century
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Self-Knowledge In Ancient Greece, when the philosopher Socrates was asked to sum up what all philosophical commandments could be reduced to, he replied: ‘Know yourself’. Self-knowledge matters so much because it is only on the basis of an accurate sense of who we are that we can make reliable decisions – particularly around love and work. This book takes us on a journey into our deepest, most elusive selves and arms us with a set of tools to understand our characters properly. We come away with a newly clarified sense of who we are, what we need to watch out for when making decisions, and what our priorities and potential might be.
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Nov ‘18 4⅜ x 7⅛ in 96 pp Hardback isbn 978-0-9957535-0-1 rrp $14.99 • Explores the power of
truly understanding ourselves and how this can help us make decisions and set priorities • Provides a comprehensive set of tools for self-discovery • Includes a series of practical exercises for self-analysis
frontlist / fall 2018
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Sorrows of Love Love has, quite unfairly, come to be associated with being happy. However, it is also one of the most reliable routes to misery. We tend to treat our sadness individually, as if it were unique and shameful. But, as this book explains, there are some solid reasons why love should be highly sorrowful at times. The good news is that, by understanding our romantic troubles and griefs, seeing them in their proper context and appreciating their prevalence, we will cease to feel so alone and so cursed. This essay is not a study in despair; it is a guide to a more consoling, humane and in its own way joyful perspective on the complexities of love.
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Dec ‘18 4⅜ × 7⅛ in 80 pp Hardback isbn 978-0-9957535-2-5 rrp $14.99 • A unique essay
examining the many ways that love can make us miserable and how they need not be cause for despair • An alternative, universally relatable take on the ‘Romantic’ notion of love, focussing on practical advice for everyday scenarios
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Sorrows of Work Work can be a route to creativity, excitement and purpose. Nevertheless, many of us end up confused, discouraged and beaten down by our working lives. The temptation is often just to blame ourselves, and to feel privately ashamed and guilty. However, as this book lucidly explains, there is a range of well-embedded and intriguing reasons as to why work proves demoralising; amongst others, the evolution of modern work, the role of technology and the mechanics of the economy. This surprisingly cheering book offers us an invigorating perspective on our working lives – and what we might do at times when our work challenges us almost unbearably.
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Feb ‘19 4⅜ × 7⅛ in 104 pp Hardback isbn 978-0-9957535-1-8 rrp $14.99 • An in-depth look at
what exactly we aspire to in our working lives and why we so often end up disappointed • An honest and original perspective, acknowledging that the sorrows of work need not be cause for despair
frontlist / fall 2018
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How to Find Love Choosing a partner is one of the most consequential and tricky decisions we will ever make, and the cost of repeated failure is immense. How to Find Love explains why we have the ‘types’ we do, and how our early experiences affect how and whom we love. It sheds light on harmful repetitive patterns and the extent to which we are not always simply choosing people who can make us happy. We learn the most common techniques we use to sabotage our chances of fulfilment and why, despite their costs, we unwittingly engage in them. The book provides a crucial set of ideas to help us make safer, more imaginative and more effective choices in love.
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Dec ‘18 4⅜ × 7⅛ in 96 pp Hardback isbn 978-0-9955736-9-7 rrp $14.99 • Presents a crucial set
of ideas to help us make safer, more imaginative and more effective choices in love • 50 million people in the US seeking the answer to the question ‘how to find love’ have tried online dating
backlist / spring 2018
Great Thinkers Typically, great thinkers have been included in encyclopedic works on the basis of reputation and historic influence. The School of Life takes a different approach, focusing instead on the thinkers whose ideas are the most helpful to our lives now. This is a collection of sixty of the most important and most useful ideas of Eastern and Western culture. The focus of this book is to present some of the greatest minds of our time in a clear, relevant and charming light. Many of these thinkers have previously been caught in a fiendish trap; what they’ve said has been immensely important, but how they have said it has resulted in going unheard. Thinkers include La Rochefoucauld, Lao Tzu, Matsuo Bashō, Sen no Rikyū, Alexis de Tocqueville, St Benedict, Donald Winnicott, John Bowlby, Melanie Klein, Andrea Palladio, Coco Chanel and Henri Matisse, as well as more familiar entries such as Plato, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Marx, Confucius and Freud. 12
Jan ‘18 5⅛ × 7¾ in 480 pp Hardback Ribbon marker, bellyband isbn 978-0-9935387-0-4 rrp $29.99 • A reference book of the
greatest, and most useful, ideas of our time • Sixty original colour illustrations, one for each thinker • T he ultimate resource for those seeking both answers and inspiration
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A Job to Love The idea that work might be fulfilling rather than just painfully necessary is a strikingly recent invention. Nowadays, in prosperous areas of the world, we don’t only expect to obtain money through labour, we also, to a greater or lesser extent, expect to find meaning and satisfaction. It’s a big ask and explains why career crises are so common. Unfortunately, it is devilishly hard to understand oneself well enough to know quite where one’s energies should be directed. A Job To Love is designed to help us better understand ourselves in order to locate a job that is right for us. It explores the many myths, traps and confusions that get in our way, and shows how to develop new, effective attitudes and habits. With compassion and a deeply practical spirit, this book guides us to discover our true talents and to make sense of our confused desires and aspirations before it is too late.
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Feb ‘18 5 × 7½ in 192 pp Hardback Ribbon marker, bellyband isbn 978-0-9935387-5-9 rrp $19.99 • A guide to finding
fulfilling work by first embarking on a project of self-exploration • Practical examples and exercises to inspire fresh thinking about finding meaningful work
backlist / spring 2018
Relationships Few things promise us greater happiness than our relationships – yet few things more reliably deliver misery and frustration. Our error is to suppose that we are born knowing how to love and that managing a relationship might therefore be intuitive and easy. Relationships starts from a different premise: that love is a skill to be learnt, rather than just an emotion to be felt. It takes us around the key issues of relationships, from arguments to sex, forgiveness to communication, making sure that success in love need never again be just a matter of luck. Full of applied real-life examples, and enlivened throughout with humour and cultural anecdotes, this innovative guide paves the way to a new, brighter future for love.
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April ‘18 5⅜ × 7⅛ in 120 pp Hardback Ribbon marker, bellyband isbn 978-0-9935387-4-2 rrp $19.99 • A refreshing take on
relationships that reconsiders the myths of Romanticism and shows how love is a skill we can learn • Challenges many preconceived assumptions about relationships while offering practical advice
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On Confidence We spend vast amounts of time acquiring confidence in narrow technical fields: quadratic equations or bioengineering; economics or pole vaulting. But we overlook the primordial need to acquire a more free ranging variety of confidence – one that can serve us across a range of tasks: speaking to strangers at parties, asking someone to marry us, suggesting a fellow passenger turn down their music, changing the world. This is a guidebook to confidence, why we lack it and how we can acquire more of it in our lives. On Confidence walks us gently and wryly around the key issues that stop us from making more of our potential.
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April ‘18 4⅜ x 7⅛ in 96 pp Hardback isbn 978-09955736-7-3 rrp $14.99 • An in-depth essay
bringing a fresh approach to how we think about confidence • Explores this essential life skill in an innovative and engaging manner • Both practical and inspirational in tone and approach
backlist / spring 2018
Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person Anyone we might marry could, of course, be a little bit wrong for us. We know that perfection is not on the cards. Nevertheless, errors of deep-seated incompatibility in married couples seem to occur with appalling ease and regularity. This entertainingly informative book examines the reasons why – and then suggests a new approach to marriage. The time has come to bury the Romantic intuition-based view of marriage and learn to practice and rehearse marriage as one would ice-skating or violin playing, activities no more deserving of systematic periods of instruction.
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April ‘18 4⅜ × 7⅛ in 72 pp Hardback isbn 978-0-9955736-2-8 rrp $14.99 • T he New York Times’
most-read article of 2016, now in expanded book form • A collection of essays proposing that we don’t need perfection to be happy, so long as we enter our relationships in the right spirit
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Sex Shame means that many couples still find it difficult to be honest with one another about who they are and what they need to feel sexually satisfied. We shouldn’t suppose that we can always and invariably share our every sexual proclivity with others, but there’s a lot we could feel more confident about expressing. Things that seem strange can turn out to be quite understandable when we consider them rationally; there’s an important role for philosophical analysis in stretching the understanding we have of our own desires. Sex explores a range of sexual enthusiasms in order to help us acknowledge hitherto forbidden aspects of ourselves and to communicate them in unpanicked, undefensive ways to our partners. Its goal is to help us to be maturely unfrightened of our own sexuality; to reduce unnecessary shame; and to increase opportunities for moments of courageous and relationshipenhancing honesty. 17
June ‘18 4½ × 7 in 128 pp Hardback Ribbon marker, bellyband isbn 978-0-9935387-6-6 rrp $19.99 • An open-minded
exploration of how sex operates, showing how helpful it can be to think more deeply about a something so entrenched in taboo • Liberating, refreshing and in places explicit
backlist / spring 2018
On Being Nice Most books that want to change us seek to make us richer or thinner. This book wants to help us to be nicer: that is, less irritable, more patient, readier to listen, warmer, less prickly… Niceness may not have the immediate allure of money or fame, but it is a hugely important quality nevertheless, and one that we neglect at our peril. This guidebook to the uncharted landscape of niceness gently leads us around the key themes of this forgotten quality. We learn how to be charitable, how to forgive, how to be natural and how to reassure. We learn that niceness is compatible with strength and is no indicator of naivety. Niceness deserves to be rediscovered as one of the highest of all human achievements.
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April ‘18 4¾ × 7 in 128 pp Hardback Ribbon marker, bellyband isbn 978-0-9955736-4-2 rrp $19.99 • An in-depth
examination of our attitudes towards the overlooked quality of niceness • Practical advice on how being nicer can benefit our lives in unexpected ways • Encourages a focus on human kindness and empathy in a time of global turmoil
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Good thinking requires good tools. To complement our classes, books and therapies, The School of Life now offers a range of stationery, games and gifts that are both highly useful and stimulating for the eye and mind. If you’re interested in stocking any our products please contact orders@theschooloflife.com.
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Contact Us UK & Ireland Prelude Books Trade sales: David Segrue davids@djsegrueltd.co.uk Other sales: Pete Duncan pete@preludebooks.co.uk
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