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Status Anxiety
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - very thought provoking
i am very busy and have no time to read non professional subjects except on vacations. i read two non work related books a year. this is my fourth Alain de Botton title. so i suppose in a way you could say i am illiterate although i have over four years of post college education. call me what you will, de Botton has again turned my world view upside down. OK i am not being very specific. let's just say i finally understand some of the things in my world that never made sense to me before. YMMV. good luck.
Rating:  - Entertainingly thought-provoking
Like a series of footnotes to an otherwise non-existent text, SA is a collection of so many observations -- few of them original, many of them interesting, all of them all the more interesting for their juxtaposing. SA is a bit of philosophy, a bit of history, a bit of sociology, and some other bits tossed in a bowl and stirred together. The resulting brew had just enough caffeine to keep me awake and alert from start to finish, and just enough flavor to please the palate. Having finished, I now have a keener sense of why status anxiety is, ever was, and will likely ever be a significant force in human affairs. Overall, a pleasurable and thought-provoking read.
Rating: - two different audio versions
My mother enjoyed Alain de Botton's book Status Anxiety on cd, read by the author- so she suggested I listen to it on a road trip I took recently. So I did, and I liked it well enough, but found the author's voice very cool and uninteresting, inflectionless. I was surprised, looking at the label of the cd to find that it was abridged, so I bought a copy of the book at a local bookshop and there was so much in it that was not on the cd, not to mention all the pictures (of course). This abridged cd version left out the entire section on Humor, for one thing, and many interesting details- I have not had time to comb through and discover how many.
I got her the audio book because she cannot read anymore, because of her bad eyesight. Now I see there is a new, unabridged version- what a pity that she had to listen to the abridged one instead.
Rating: - A good way of avoiding misery
Status Anxiety sets out to use philosophy, art, history and economics to describe and understand what drives us to seek status and why we become envious of the success of those around us. This book is not a philosophy text and, like Alain's other books, is written in an easy to read style and tackles the question in an interesting and thoughtful way.
The book is written in two parts, with the first covering the causes of status anxiety, which Alain De Botton sets out as being lovelessness, snobbery, expectation, meritocracy and dependence. In each case he sets out to explore what is the driver of each form of status anxiety, delving into numerous historical examples to explain his case.
The second section of the book details what he believes could be solutions of the afore mentioned problems. These solutions include and examination of status within philosophy, art, politics, Christianity and Bohemia culture and concludes that while each of these groups did not do away with status, they attempted to remould what status was. This therefore allows those who do not quite fit into what their generation's idea of status is, to comfortably find their place in society and to have status somewhere within society.
Alain writes in an easy to read style and fills his books with interesting and appropriate pictures, diagrams and draws on a wide variety of sources to make his point. Thought easy to read, each chapter has, none the less, a depth to each discussion and are in no way intellectually floppy.
While this book is not in anyway a philosophy text book, the ideas it raises and the thoughts it generates are complex in their nature and Alain has used many non-philosophical arguments and examples to back up his case.
Rating: - Important Satire
Status Anxiety as coined by Alain de Botton, is probably one of the most important aspects of modern western life, as it is propably one of the greatest causes for unhappiness in us modern supermarket folk.
His book dives deep into this issue, and shows how the lack of Status Anxiety can bring one much more happiness.
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