在他人眼里，我是怎样一个人？我是个成功者还是失败者？每个人的内心，潜藏着对自身份的一种难言的“焦虑”。可有谁曾真正的审视过这种身份的焦虑呢？睿智的德波顿做到了，他首次引领我们直面这一人心深处的焦虑“情绪”。德波顿援引艺术家、思想家及作家的观点与作品，抽丝剥茧地剖析身份 焦点的根源，并从哲学、艺术、政治、宗教等各个角度探索舒缓和释放这种焦虑的途径。
这本书并非一本充满学术语言的“高深”著作。它用通俗、有趣的语言，为现代人解读了“身份”的前世今生，以及我们为什么会为“身份”而焦虑。“身份”这个词在这本书中更多的还是指一种社会地位，一种当代人追求的功名利禄。为什么我们渴望得到别人的认同？是什么让我们变得“势利”，对于金钱和时尚的欲望之壑为何总也填不满？我们到底怎样才能克服这种身份的焦虑呢？在阅读这些文本的时候，一方面，你会惊叹于德波顿广博的知识，那信手拈来的典故和风趣的点评，为你从多个视角展现了人类的“身份”观念；另一方面，你会渐渐审视自我，发现许多已经在你脑海里根深蒂固的东西，开始动摇和解体。

尽力去证明上帝是不存在的，不过是许多无神论者的兴趣所在，但是真正的问题不是在于上帝到底存不存在，而是在于一旦假设他不存在，人类将如何自处。《写给无神论者的宗教》主题在于一个人即使是一个无信仰者，但是他也能发现宗教是有用的、有趣的并且给人带来安慰的 。在这部刺激的完全属于作者首创的并且即将面临着争议的作品中，德波顿认为世俗的人们可以从与宗教有着千丝万缕联系的道德、艺术和教育等等领域中去学得一些东西。在这本书中，德尽力去淡化和消弥宗教中教条主义的一面，摄取了宗教中能够安慰怀疑论者当下思想的一面，让人们去感受美丽和睿智的东西。

不受欢迎、缺钱、遭遇挫折、被瞧不起、心碎、困顿的哲学心灵良方，六个哲学家的智能解决六种人生问题！
英伦才子艾伦・德波顿了解现实人生的苦难，深深体会到这些苦难引起的伤痛；他认为哲学不应只是躲在象牙塔中的文字游戏，而是帮助人们解决心灵伤痛的良方。因此，他回到伟大哲学家身上，探索这些哲学家的智能，为我们提供舒缓现实生活郁闷的慰藉。
针对六个不同的人生问题──不受欢迎、缺钱、遭遇挫折、被认为有缺陷、心碎、困顿──德波顿分别向苏格拉底、伊比鸠鲁、塞内卡、蒙田、叔本华、尼采这六位哲学家取经，希望这些哲学家的个人体验与思想学说能够在我们饱受痛苦时，舒缓我们的症状，甚至根治我们的问题。

本书是“德波顿作品系列”之一。普鲁斯特的煌煌巨著《追忆似水年华》是那种谁都觉得自己应该去读但对大部分人来说又确属望而生畏的书。但在德波顿的这本结合了文学传记和实用、励志手册的书里，作者以他严正详实的专业学识为根基，用他的生花妙笔向我们娓娓道出《追忆》的真正妙处，描绘出普鲁斯特真实而又生动的精神肖像；同时他又把圣典拉到人间，从巨著和大师身上寻觅到改变我们每个普通人谷世人生的妙招法门，指点我们如何珍惜时光、体验人生的真谛、学会调整人生的轻生缓急。

机场原本只是旅行中的过渡性空间，发生的不过是“出发”与“抵达”，但在阿兰·德波顿的眼中，却成为了一个综合各种文化面貌的博物馆。
2009年夏天，阿兰·德波顿获邀担任英国希斯罗国际机场的“首位驻站作家”。他可以结识来自全球各地的旅客，访谈形形色色的人物，包括安检人员、飞行员、首席执行官，乃至机场牧师；他还可以在出境大厅、入境大厅、机场限制区和机场酒店随意进出，德波顿以他独特的视角探索着机场这个熟悉又神秘的“非场所”，观察着其中的奇妙与庸俗之处，以及旅客与员工的互动。一周后，根据他的所见所闻，以他融合了风趣和智慧的一贯笔触，写出了这部非凡的跨界文化创意之作，探讨旅行、工作、人际关系以及日常生活的本质。让我们知道，待在机场里，可能比我们以为的更具启发性。

在2002年《旅行的艺术》风靡全球之后，全球广大书迷一直殷殷企盼狄波顿的新作。2004年，在各界瞩目之下，《我爱身分地位》於英国搭配由他所主持的电视节目一同推出，旋即登上英美畅销书排行榜。
艾伦‧狄波顿，1969年生於瑞士苏黎士，从八岁起在英国接受教育，曾求学於哈罗学院与剑桥大学。他通晓法文、德文及英文，才气横溢，文章智趣兼备，书写主题丰富多变。这使得他的前六部作品，包括《我谈的那场恋爱》、《爱上浪漫》、《吻了再说》、《拥抱似水年华》、《哲学的慰藉》、《旅行的艺术》，不仅风靡英伦，更风行全世界，目前已有二十多国语言的译本。
狄波顿在最新作品《我爱身分地位》里，开宗明义地点出：「每个成人的人生可说都是以两种爱为主轴。第一种爱——对两性之爱的追求——早已广为流传与记载，其变幻莫测早已是音乐和文学的基本主题，而且也受到社会的认可与歌颂。第二种爱——对世人之爱的追求——则较为私密，而且充满羞辱。即使有人提起这种爱，通常也是以尖酸嘲讽的语气说出，似乎这种东西只有心怀妒意或能力不足的人才会感兴趣，不然就是单纯从经济层面来看待人类追求地位的动力。然而，第二种爱的强度、複杂程度、重要性及普遍性，都不逊於第一种，而且其中的挫折一样令人痛苦。」
狄波顿认为，我们每个人都对自己心中比较自恋的部分感到不好意思，因此人们常常会想尽办法隐藏自己的自恋心态。然而事实上，自恋是很正常的：我们渴望别人对我们有好印象，并且对我们表示敬重。狄波顿指出：「谦逊是一种求生本能。但是在内心深处，每个人都渴望自己能够成为重要人物。只是我们不敢承认罢了。」而顾虑别人如何看待自己，顾虑自己在别人眼中究竟是成功还是失败，就是所谓的「地位焦虑」。其典型的症状为依附权贵、钻营投机、为了妆点门面而过度消费，造成人们晚上辗转难眠。
狄波顿以他一贯的生花妙笔，在《我爱身分地位》中，援引思想家、艺术家及作家的观点与行径，抽丝剥茧地探索地位焦虑的根源，并且精心提供一道道消愁解虑的妙方。

"Essays in Love" will appeal to anyone who has ever been in a relationship or confused about love. The book charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak. The work's genius lies in the way it minutely analyses emotions we've all felt before but have perhaps never understood so well: it includes a chapter on the anxieties of when and how to say 'I love you' and another on the challenges of disagreeing with someone else's taste in shoes.While gripping the reader with the talent of a great novelist, de Botton brings a philosopher's sensibility to his analyses of the emotions of love, resulting in a genre-breaking book that is at once touching and thought-provoking. 'The book's success has much to do with its beautifully modelled sentences, its wry humour and its unwavering deadpan respect for its reader's intelligence ...full of keen observation and flashes of genuine lyricism, acuity and depth' - Francine Prose, New Republic. 'Witty, funny, sophisticated, neatly tied up, and full of wise and illuminating insights' - P. J. Kavanagh, "Spectator". 'De Botton is a national treasure' - Susan Hill. 'I doubt if de Botton has written a dull sentence in his life' - Jan Morris, "New Statesman". 'Single-handedly, de Botton has taken philosophy back to its simplest and most important purpose: helping us to live our lives' - "Independent".

到外地旅行——多麼令人興奮的念頭啊！通常，人們會找個氣候怡人的地方，見識有趣的風土民情，欣賞能喚起靈感的景物。然而，為什麼成行之後，卻往往覺得猶有遺憾？
在本書裡，狄波頓帶領我們踏上旅途，從巴貝多、阿姆斯特丹、普羅旺斯、馬德里到西奈沙漠等地，經歷旅行中種種讓人嚮往與失望之處。
狄波頓還安排了許多位嚮導。他們是大名鼎鼎的作家、藝術家或思想家，也是深諳旅行滋味的行家，如梵谷、華滋華斯、福樓拜、波特萊爾、羅斯金，在書中與我們分享旅行的洞見。
透過這些旅程，狄波頓揭露了旅行中隱藏的慾望和錯綜複雜的面相，挑起無法抵擋的神祕幻想，並且指點我們如何提升旅行的快樂指數，遠離煩悶的日常生活，進入一個奇異世界。

From Publishers Weekly
With this entertaining and stimulating book, de Botton (How Proust Can Change Your Life) examines the ways architecture speaks to us, evoking associations that, if we are alive to them, can put us in touch with our true selves and influence how we conduct our lives. Because of this, he contends, it's the architect's task to design buildings that contribute to happiness by embodying ennobling values. While he makes no claim to be able to define true beauty in architecture, he suggests some of the virtues a building should have (illustrated by pictures on almost every spread): order combined with complexity; balance between contrasting elements; elegance that appears effortless; a coherent relationship among the parts; and self-knowledge, which entails an understanding of human psychology, something that architects all too often overlook. To underscore his argument, de Botton includes many apt examples of buildings that either incorporate or ignore these qualities, discussing them in ways that make obvious their virtues or failings. The strength of his book is that it encourages us to open our eyes and really look at the buildings in which we live and work. A three-part series of the same title will air on PBS this fall. (Oct. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
While happily reading Alain de Botton's graceful musings about architectural beauty, I was suddenly struck by the photograph of the Edgar J. Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, Calif., designed by Richard Neutra in 1946. I turned the page to see what de Botton had to say about it:
"The bourgeois couples who lived in Richard Neutra's mid-twentieth-century steel and glass pavilions in California may at times have drunk too much, squabbled, been insincere and overwhelmed by anxiety, but at least their buildings spoke to them of honesty and ease, of a lack of inhibition and a faith in the future."
That was all. Odd, I thought. De Botton never points out that this same Edgar J. Kaufmann commissioned the most beautiful private home in America, Fallingwater. He was. Nor, I discovered after checking the index, does he mention its architect, a certain Frank Lloyd Wright. Not once.
There's no obvious reason why the author of How Proust Can Save Your Life and The Consolation of Philosophy should leave out Wright. Perhaps he simply decided to challenge himself, to see if he could manage the trick, just as the French novelist Georges Perec once published a perfectly readable novel in which none of the words contain the letter E. Certainly, de Botton otherwise reveals his usual wide learning, lyrically deployed. He discusses the neoclassical influence of Palladio, the impact of Horace Walpole's Gothic extravaganza Strawberry Hill on 19th-century building in Britain, the austere concrete housing of Le Corbusier (who once dubbed his sterile tenements "machines for living"). But mysteriously, almost tantalizingly, he avoids the vastly influential, world-famous Wright, whose houses are so serenely beautiful to look at and yet almost impossible to live in comfortably -- at least if you slouch, have children or collect anything. Not surprisingly, The Architecture of Happiness is itself a carefully designed book, tightly constructed around the photographs that appear on virtually every other page. (Another mystery: Which came first, the images or the text?) There are pictures of castles, cathedrals, office buildings, private homes, bridges, hallways, windows, chairs, ironwork. De Botton visits a theme park in Japan built to resemble 17th-century Amsterdam, shows us a 30-foot-high obelisk memorializing a beloved pig, interprets the monumental elegance of the Royal Crescent in Bath, and discusses both the early modern pursuit of functionality and the ancient Japanese esthetic of wabi, which "identified beauty with unpretentious, simple, unfinished, transient things."
Throughout, de Botton argues that the buildings we walk by, work in or come home to affect how we feel. They influence our mood, our sensibility, our very character. No one is likely to disagree with this, especially those of us who dispiritedly sink down into our windowless office cubicles day after day or vainly yearn for just one room, let alone an entire house, like those in Architectural Digest. Alas, much of the time we must simply accept what we are given or settle for what we can afford. For at no point does de Botton seriously address the economics of architecture and interior design. Even if you do it yourself, construction of any kind, especially the highly individualized, is almost prohibitively expensive.
This reality, however, doesn't undercut de Botton's essential point: "Buildings speak -- and on topics which can readily be discerned. They speak of democracy or aristocracy, openness or arrogance, welcome or threat, a sympathy for the future or a hankering for the past." In short, "they speak of visions of happiness." De Botton attempts to understand aspects of that happiness by touching on the achievements or failures of particular styles and constructions. He offers us, in effect, a handsome photo album printed on coated stock, augmented by thoughtful, highly polished paragraphs and pensées. Time after time, his descriptions neatly capture the distinctiveness and character of even the most unusual buildings. Admittedly, those who prefer their sentences strictly functional may sometimes judge de Botton's a tad lyrical, just as his mini-essays risk sounding a little gushy. For the most part, though, he keeps his balance, largely through his quiet intelligence, passionate conviction and the charm of a personality lightly tinged with melancholy:
"The failure of architects to create congenial environments mirrors our inability to find happiness in other areas of our lives. Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendency which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.
"In architecture, as in so much else, we cast around for explanations to our troubles and fix on platitudinous targets. We get angry when we should realize we are sad and tear down ancient streets when we ought instead to introduce proper sanitation and street lights. We learn the wrong lessons from our griefs while grasping in vain for the origins of contentment.
"The places we call beautiful are, by contrast, the work of those rare architects with the humility to interrogate themselves adequately about their desires and the tenacity to translate their fleeting apprehensions of joy into logical plans -- a combination that enables them to create environments that satisfy needs we never consciously knew we even had."
De Botton concludes his book with an even more heartfelt plea: We must strive to build in a manner worthy of the meadows and woods we are destroying. "We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the buildings we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kind of happiness."
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Alain De Botton, author of How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Art of Travel, and Status Anxiety, among other books, takes a humanistic approach in Architecture of Happiness and explores the ways in which our built environment affects us. He occasionally overindulges in florid prose, but critics agree that his more general observations of architecture are sound and interesting, if not entirely novel. The average reader will find much of interest in the broad range of eras, places, and styles that de Botton discusses. Well-placed photographs illustrate each point in the text. The book is so visual, in fact, that the BBC is making a three-part television series based on it, to air on PBS this fall.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
Review
"De Botton is a lively guide, and his eclectic choices of buildings and locations evince his conclusion, that “we should be as unintimidated by architectural mediocrity as we are by unjust laws.”
—The New Yorker
The next time I'm at a party, and the conversation turns to "serious topics," like what the stock market did today, I think I'll suggest we talk about something more important: architecture. I'll ask the investment banker why he bought the house he did and insist he answer the question. And then I'll start quoting Alain de Botton.
—The National Post
If this book were a building, it would be a contemporary reading room, I think, with big windows, and clean, built-in bookshelves with a fold-out step ladder just right for fetching slim volumes from the top shelf. The elegant clarity and brisk humour of his style, accompanied by pages of photos, opens your eyes to the rich possibility of thinking about your home, and your city, in a new way.
—The Toronto Star
"De Botton's books are the literary equivalent of the Slow Food movement. They demand to be lingered over, not because the concepts are difficult but because they are rich and deep. Be prepared to put down your book frequently and turn his last few sentences over in your mind, testing his theses against the rooms and buildings you know well."
—The Globe and Mail
"In this simple, entertaining and brilliant book, Alain de Botton explores how architecture speaks to us and why it affects all aspects of human life. His great strength is to explain things we always knew but never understood."
—Christopher Hume, Architecture Critic, Toronto Star
“How did we ever manage without de Botton?”
— Sunday Times (U.K.)
“[de Botton] deals with questions of style, ideas of beauty, notions about why certain structures appeal to us. The author argues that we love beautiful buildings because they solidify ideas we have about ourselves and our world. They put into concrete form our aspirations; they compensate for our human weaknesses; in short, they make us happy. Virtually every page contains a sentence any essayist would be proud to have written. A lyrical and generously illustrated monograph about the intimate relationship between our buildings and ourselves.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Singlehandedly, de Botton has taken philosophy back to its simplest and most important purpose: helping us live our lives.”
— Independent
Product Description
One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings and streets that surround us.
And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. The Architecture of Happiness starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and it argues that it is architecture’s task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.
Whereas many architects are wary of openly discussing the word beauty, this book has at its center the large and naïve question: What is a beautiful building? It is a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture that aims to change the way we think about our homes, our streets and ourselves.