From Heathrow to TED Global, Alain de Botton Shares His Insights on the Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

Philosopher Alain de Botton’s new book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work has landed him a new writing assignment.

Kolchommercial: Alain de Botton via Flickr’s Sam VanallemeerschCultural Creative Botton intends to write about the modern world through the lens of airport travel, becoming the first-ever writer-in-residence at a UK airport.

Botton says that airports encapsulate the modern world, featuring “interconnection, fast travel, the destruction of nature… dreams of consumerism and travel”. He’ll bring this vision to literary life in Heathrow’s new Terminal Five.

If this vision isn’t a pretty picture, it’s modern reality. On the promotion end of this novel literary and marketing scheme, the airport will give away 10,000 free copies of Botton’s new book. The word is that the philosopher writer will have total literary control over the project. via BBC News

Alain de Bitton in conversation with Paul Holdengraber at NYPL via FlickrAs an intellectual aside, I’m sharing Alain de Botton’s “A kinder, gentler philosophy of success talk”, supporting the philosophy of his book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work and his July TED talk at Oxford. Anne

Alain de Botton at TED Global