The Antidote Paperback by Oliver Burkeman

Product Details

• Publisher: Penguin Canada (2013-10-01)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 256 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780143175988
• Item Weight: 221.13 grams
• Dimensions: 8.0 x 5.2 x 0.65 cm

From the author of the New York Times-bestselling Four Thousand Weeks, a totally original approach to self-help: success through failure, calm through embracing anxiety

Self-help books don't seem to work. Few of the many advantages of modern life seem capable of lifting our collective mood. Wealth—even if you can get it—doesn't necessarily lead to happiness. Romance, family life, and work often bring as much stress as joy. We can't even agree on what "happiness" means. So are we engaged in a futile pursuit? Or are we just going about it the wrong way?

Looking both east and west, in bulletins from the past and from far afield, Oliver Burkeman introduces us to an unusual group of people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. Whether experimental psychologists, terrorism experts, Buddhists, hardheaded business consultants, Greek philosophers, or modern-day gurus, they argue that in our personal lives, and in society at large, it's our constant effort to be happy that is making us miserable. And that there is an alternative path to happiness and success that involves embracing failure, pessimism, insecurity, and uncertainty—the very things we spend our lives trying to avoid. Thought-provoking, counterintuitive, and ultimately uplifting, The Antidote is the intelligent person's guide to understanding the much-misunderstood idea of happiness.

About the Author

Oliver Burkeman is the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals as well as The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking and HELP! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done. For many years he wrote a popular column for The Guardian, ‘This Column Will Change Your Life’, on psychology, productivity, self-help culture, and the science of happiness. His writing has also appeared in The Observer, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Psychologies magazine and New Philosopher. A resident of Brooklyn, New York for more than a decade, he lives with his wife and son in the North York Moors in England.