The Art of Travel

· Sold by Vintage
4.5
8 reviews
Ebook
272
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

A wise and utterly original book of travel essays from an international bestselling author that will “give one an expansive sense of wonder” (The Baltimore Sun).

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 “refreshing and profoundly readable" book (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Don’t leave home without it.

Ratings and reviews

4.5
8 reviews
A Google user
June 6, 2017
Like sipping a soothing, soul-warming cup of aromatic tea on a forbidding winter's night. Inspiring, enlightening and thought-provoking.
1 person found this review helpful
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gabrielle demoulin
January 15, 2020
A book that describes and interprets how historical personalities have thought about and described their reactions to travel.
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Luis Uribe
June 29, 2019
full, round and satisfying
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About the author

ALAIN DE BOTTON is the author of On Love, The Romantic Movement, Kiss and Tell, How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy and, most recently, Status Anxiety. His work has been translated into twenty languages. He lives in London.

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