Status Anxiety

Anyone who's ever lost sleep over an unreturned phone call or the neighbor's Lexus had better read Alain de Botton's irresistibly clear-headed new book, immediately. To demonstrate his thesis, de Botton ranges through Western history and thought from St. For in its pages, a master explicator of our civilization and its discontents turns his attention to the insatiable quest for status, a quest that has less to do with material comfort than with love.

And when it examines the virtues of informed misanthropy, art appreciation, or walking a lobster on a leash, it is not only wise but Augustine to Andrew Carnegie and Machiavelli to Anthony Robbins.Whether it's assessing the class-consciousness of Christianity or the convulsions of consumer capitalism, dueling or home-furnishing, Status Anxiety is infallibly entertaining.