Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton

Anyone whos ever lost sleep over an unreturned phone call or the neighbors Lexus had better read Alain de Bottons irresistibly clearheaded new book immediately. 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. To demonstrate his thesis de Botton ranges through Western history and thought from St. Augustine to Andrew Carnegie and Machiavelli to Anth