Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: What is Alain de Botton's best-selling book?
Alain de Botton, FRSL (/dəˈbɒtən/; born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born British philosopher and author. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published Essays in Love (1993), which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004) and The Architecture of Happiness (2006).
Mutanda was Chair at Relate charity's 80th anniversary, with guest speaker Alain De Botton I(Philosopher). May 2018.Alain de Botton
Negative reviews allege that de Botton tends to state the obvious[27][28] and have characterized some of his books as pompous and lacking focus.[29][30][31][32]
Status Anxiety is a nonfiction book by Alain de Botton. It was first published in 2004 by Hamish Hamilton; subsequent publications have been by Penguin Books.
The Architecture of Happiness is a book by Alain de Botton () which discusses the importance of beauty, published by Pantheon Books in 2006. De Botton, inspired by Stendhal's motto "beauty is the promise of happiness," analyzes human surroundings and how human needs and desires manifest their ideals in architecture. 
In 2008, Alain de Botton founded The School of Life. Based in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Seoul, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, São Paulo, Berlin, Zurich and Melbourne, The School of Life offers an emotional education focusing in particular on the issues of Work and Relationships. In an interview with Metkere.com[34] de Botton said:
The book attracted favourable attention from architects and architectural critics. In the "Boston Globe", the architectural critic Robert Campbell declared it the "best introduction to architecture" that he had ever read. There was favorable comment from UK, US and Australian critics. The book featured prominently in the film "500 Days of Summer", where it was the reading matter of choice for the protagonist. In recognition of his services to architecture with the book, the RIBA made Alain de Botton an honorary fellow of the Institute in February 2010.
De Botton was born in Zurich, the son of Jacqueline (née Burgauer) and Gilbert de Botton, who was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and expelled under Nasser. Gilbert went to live and work in Switzerland, where he co-founded an investment firm, Global Asset Management; his family was estimated to have been worth £234 million in 1999.[1] Alain de Botton's Swiss-born mother was Ashkenazi, and his father was from a Sephardic Jewish family from the town of Boton in Castile and León.
In August 2014, de Botton was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.[47]
De Botton has described his relationship with his father as difficult, stating: "When I sold my first bestseller (and a million dollars was peanuts for my father) he was not impressed and wondered what I was going to do with myself."[39] When his father died, his family was left a large trust fund,[40] although de Botton says his income is derived solely from his own activities (book sales, speaking engagements, business consulting, The School of Life).[41][42][43] Alain's stepmother Janet de Botton is a prominent patron of the arts and competition bridge player.[44] De Botton lives in London with his wife, Charlotte, and their two children.[45][46]
De Botton's ancestors include Abraham de Boton.[2] De Botton's paternal grandmother was Yolande Harmer.[3] He has one sister, Miel, and they received a secular upbringing.[4] Alain spent the first twelve years of his life in Switzerland where he was brought up speaking French and German.
Critical reception of the book has been mixed. It was the most-reviewed book of the week in January 2012, according to The Bookseller. David Brooks finds that the book makes atheism "kind of boring", like a "spiritual handicap". Terry Eagleton describes the book as an attempt to "hijack other people's beliefs, empty them of content and redeploy them in the name of moral order, social consensus and aesthetic pleasure". Angus Wood says that De Botton's proposed solutions feel "trite or feel crassly commercial", and that transferring the authoritarian methods of religion to a secular world looks "like indoctrination". Martha Gill, after reading Religion for Atheists, feels that "as a spiritual guide, de Botton offers as much opportunity for growth as a hard-boiled egg". Joe Winkler recommends A.C. Grayling's "The Good Book", "The Joys of Secularism", and Bertrand Russell's "A Free Man's Worship" over this book. Winkler finds the omission of positive psychology confusing in the book, and criticises De Botton's assumption that "because the mechanics used in a religious setting work, and have worked for thousands of years, they will work in a secular setting", and describes this assumption as naive at best and "slightly totalitarian" at worst. Despite his criticisms, Winkler recommends Religion for Atheists because he finds the book eloquent and thought-provoking. Christopher Hirst writes of the book: "De Botton has reduced religion to a mechanism", and describes the tone of the book as "bossy, but readable". James Croft describes the book as having a lack of balance, and under-valuing the achievements of humanity.
Barney Zwartz says "De Botton selects areas of need - community, kindness, education, tenderness, perspective, architecture and art - and draws out detailed, practical lessons." José Teodoro suggests the book is "subtly condescending in the way it demands that everything in our shared environment constantly remind us that we’re not alone in our anxieties and disappointments". The Economist, in a comparison with Roger Scruton's "The Face of God", writes that de Botton "often stretches a good idea beyond its elastic limit". John Armstrong regards this book as not being part of 'militant Atheism', not arguing whether religion is true or not, but looking at its effects in people's daily lives.
Stephen Cave, writing for the Financial Times regards a theme of "Religion for Atheists" to be "we are less grown-up than liberal societies assume we are and frequently in need of guidance, reassurance and tenderness". Richard Holloway, writing for the Literary Review notes that when examining the purpose of religion in life, "Along the way he rethinks the nature and purpose of higher education and national cultural policy." and feels that the audience of the book is "a lot of uneasy believers [who] will welcome it like a well of water in a dry place". Marc Mohan suggests that an "ideal reader" of this book would be a religious person who doubts, but is hesitant to stop being religious because they fear that a life without religion is a life without ethics. The Telegraph's Tom Payne writes that the author continues from Ovid's assertion on the utility of gods: "It’s useful that there are gods, and that’s why we believe in them". According to Payne, De Botton argues that religion provides useful boundaries, in addition to inspiring a sense of awe. Payne praises De Botton's prose and charm, but notes that De Botton seems to find libertarianism distasteful. Payne describes the book as being both prescriptive and optimistic, but sums it up in the book's central premise - the hope that religion can be made to 'really suit us'. Charles Moore, writing for The Telegraph, states that De Botton's purpose in the book is to study religions and learn from them. Moore states that De Botton "has an instinctively religious grasp of the power of paradox" in that the concept of original sin is depicted in the book as "comforting". Moore suggests that De Botton knows that his suggested secular solutions to the problems of life are "mostly a bit silly", and notes that while De Botton discusses failed attempts at secular religion, like August De Comte's, De Botton 'does not seem to ask himself why' they failed. For Moore, religious 'uses' come from the 'truth' at the heart of religions, and De Botton does not recognise this.
In February 2014, de Botton published his fourteenth book, a title called "The News: A User's Manual", a study of the effects of the news on modern mentality, viewed through the prism of 25 news stories, culled from a variety of sources, which de Botton analyses in detail. The book delved with more rigour into de Botton's analyses of the modern media which appeared in Status Anxiety.
In May 2009, de Botton launched a project called "Living Architecture"[36] – which builds holiday rental houses in the UK using leading contemporary architects. These include Peter Zumthor, MVRDV, JVA, NORD and Michael and Patti Hopkins. The most recent house to be announced is a collaboration between the Turner-prize winning artist Grayson Perry, and the architecture firm FAT. The houses are rented out to the general public. De Botton, the creative director and chairman of Living Architecture, aims to improve the appreciation of good contemporary architecture – a task which is the practical continuation of his theoretical work on architecture in his book The Architecture of Happiness. In October 2009, he was appointed an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), in recognition of his services to architecture.[37]
In 2014, de Botton was invited by three museums – the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto – to contribute content to special exhibitions based on his work, Art as Therapy. De Botton and his colleague John Armstrong inserted captions, arranged on large Post-it-style labels designed by the Dutch Graphic artist, Irma Boom, bearing slogans and commentary on exhibits throughout the Rijksmuseum.[38]
Gilbert de Botton married Jacqueline Burgauer in 1962. The marriage was dissolved in 1988. They had two children: a son, the writer Alain de Botton, and a daughter, Miel de Botton, a philanthropist and art collector. In 1990, he married Janet Green (née Wolfson), the eldest daughter of businessman Leonard Wolfson, Baron Wolfson, of the Great Universal Stores family, and previously the wife of broadcasting executive Michael Green. Dame Janet Wolfson de Botton is also a prominent collector of modern art.
This was followed by The Consolations of Philosophy in 2000. The title of the book is a reference to Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, in which philosophy appears as an allegorical figure to Boethius to console him in the period leading up to his impending execution. In The Consolations of Philosophy, de Botton attempts to demonstrate how the teachings of philosophers such as Epicurus, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Seneca, and Socrates can be applied to modern everyday woes. The book has been both praised and criticized for its therapeutic approach to philosophy.
In The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009),[12] de Botton produced a survey of ten different jobs, including accountancy, rocket science and biscuit manufacture. The book, a piece of narrative non-fiction, includes two hundred original images and aims to unlock the beauty, interest and occasional horror of the modern world of work. After a negative review of the book by New York Times critic Caleb Crain, de Botton posted a scathing ad hominem attack against Crain.[13] He later apologized for his remarks.[14]
How to Thrive in the Digital Age was published in May 2012 by Pan Macmillan in association with The School of Life, as part of a six-book series of guides to modern living edited by Alain de Botton. Chatfield's book examines the implications of wired life for contemporary lives, society and culture - and offers practical advice on what it means to prosper in a digital century.
Miel de Botton is a Swiss contemporary art collector, singer-songwriter, psychologist and philanthropist, who lives in London. De Botton is the daughter of the pioneer of open architecture asset management Gilbert de Botton and his first wife Jacqueline Burgauer. Her father died in 2000. She is a member of the International Council of the Tate Gallery. She is the sister of Alain de Botton. De Botton is a member of the committee of the British Friends of the Art Museums of Israel. She is a benefactor of the London String Quartet Foundation. In 2009, through the Artichoke Trust, she co-funded the Antony Gormley project "One & Other," at the "Fourth Plinth," Trafalgar Square, London.
In August 2009, de Botton applied to a competition advertised among British literary agents by BAA, the airport management company, for the post of "writer-in-residence" at Heathrow Airport. The post involved being seated at a desk in Terminal 5, and writing about the comings and goings of passengers over a week. De Botton was duly appointed to the position. The result was the book, A Week at the Airport, published by Profile Books in September 2009. The book features photographs by the documentary photographer Richard Baker, with whom de Botton also worked on The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.[15]
De Botton has written in a variety of formats to mixed response. Positive reviews of his books attest that he has made literature, philosophy and art more accessible to a wider audience.[22][23][24][25][26]
The reviewer for "Bookmarks" notes that critics have considered de Botton to be closer to C.S. Lewis and Augustine in his views, rather than the atheists Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, and that De Botton seems to delight in being subversive in "Religion for Atheists", giving the book three stars out of five. A.N. Wilson, who had been an atheist but converted to Christianity, criticized first the amount of illustrations and blank pages in the book. Wilson sums up de Botton's argument as being that religion is too serious to be confined to the General Synod, and describes this argument as attractive - although noting that the 'Education' chapter is the least convincing. Still, Wilson is glad for the optimism in the book. An early review by Kirkus suggests that De Botton's message is that religions take care of two important needs which secular society has not been able to - the need for community and the need for consolation in the face of life's problems. The reviewer describes De Botton's examples from religions as being 'cherry-pick[ed]', and states that De Botton's secular alternatives are less than persuasive, and 'insulting'. The reviewer notes that De Botton discounts the achievements of civic culture such as libraries, and regards it as a poorer work than De Botton's "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" and "The Architecture of Happiness". Jeremy Biles considers De Botton's goal to be to keep philosophy in everyday life. Biles compares Religion for Atheists unfavorably to De Botton's "The Consolations of Philosophy", saying that Religion for Atheists seems at times "willfully blind" to aspects of reality, describing the book as a "hopeful fantasy". Biles criticizes the generalizations in the book, and De Botton failing to address how "politics and power" keep the dogmatic parts of religion together with the parts of religion De Botton says should be emulated in a secular fashion. James DeRoche, writing for Library Journal, states that many of De Botton's benefits of religion may have escaped atheists' view before, although religious people might take "some of this[the book] for granted". It is described as a book that will promote discussion between atheists and religious people. The reviewer for the Journal of Ecumenical Studies recommends "Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious" over "Religion for Atheists", criticizing "Religion for Atheists" for not providing citations for its quotes, and describes the book as a "glib and finally unconvincing proposal".
The Consolations of Philosophy () is a nonfiction book by Alain de Botton. First published by Hamish Hamilton in 2000, subsequent publications (2001 onwards) have been by Penguin Books.
Poole writes book reviews and literary and cultural essays for numerous publications, including a long obituary of Jean Baudrillard for "The Guardian", and a critique of the work of Alain de Botton.