-
The Consolations of Philosophy
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Prime members: New to Audible?Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
The Consolations of Philosophy
Buy for $13.96
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
How Proust Can Change Your Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 543
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 453
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 453
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
A nice petite primer on Proust
- By Darwin8u on 02-20-13
By: Alain de Botton
-
On Confidence
- By: The School of Life, Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Alain de Botton
- Length: 1 hr and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 179
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 145
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 142
We spend vast amounts of time acquiring confidence in narrow technical fields: quadratic equations or bioengineering; economics or pole vaulting. But we overlook the primordial need to acquire a more free-ranging variety of confidence - one that can serve us across a range of tasks: speaking to strangers at parties, asking someone to marry us, suggesting a fellow passenger turn down their music, changing the world. This is a guidebook to confidence, why we lack it and how we can acquire more of it in our lives.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Poignant and timeless
- By Graceny Jimenez on 08-15-20
By: The School of Life, and others
-
Essays in Love
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: James Wilby
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 299
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 256
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 258
Essays in Love is a stunningly original love story. Taking in Aristotle, Wittgenstein, history, religion and Groucho Marx, Alain de Botton charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Every relationship you've ever analyzed
- By Maria L. Lantin on 05-07-12
By: Alain de Botton
-
How to Think More About Sex
- The School of Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 3 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 277
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 237
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 236
We don't think too much about sex; we're merely thinking about it in the wrong way. So asserts Alain de Botton in this rigorous and supremely honest book designed to help us navigate the intimate and exciting—yet often confusing and difficult—experience that is sex. Few of us tend to feel we're entirely normal when it comes to sex, and what we're supposed to be feeling rarely matches up with the reality. This book argues that twenty-first-century sex is ultimately fated to be a balancing act between love and desire, and adventure and commitment.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
How to Think About Sex as Only Sex
- By Richard on 02-26-13
By: Alain de Botton
-
The Course of Love
- A Novel
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Julian Rhind-Tutt
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,269
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,097
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,093
We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children—but no long-term relationship is as simple as "happily ever after". The Course of Love is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Amazing, much needed retooling of the expectations and realities of Love
- By Lydia on 07-04-16
By: Alain de Botton
-
The News
- A User's Manual
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 77
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 67
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 68
The news is everywhere. We can’t stop constantly checking it on our computer screens, but what is this doing to our minds? We are never really taught how to make sense of the torrent of news we face every day, writes Alain de Botton (author of the best-selling The Architecture of Happiness), but this has a huge impact on our sense of what matters and of how we should lead our lives.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Quit the news
- By Bett Bollhoefer on 05-16-15
By: Alain de Botton
-
How Proust Can Change Your Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 543
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 453
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 453
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
A nice petite primer on Proust
- By Darwin8u on 02-20-13
By: Alain de Botton
-
On Confidence
- By: The School of Life, Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Alain de Botton
- Length: 1 hr and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 179
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 145
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 142
We spend vast amounts of time acquiring confidence in narrow technical fields: quadratic equations or bioengineering; economics or pole vaulting. But we overlook the primordial need to acquire a more free-ranging variety of confidence - one that can serve us across a range of tasks: speaking to strangers at parties, asking someone to marry us, suggesting a fellow passenger turn down their music, changing the world. This is a guidebook to confidence, why we lack it and how we can acquire more of it in our lives.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Poignant and timeless
- By Graceny Jimenez on 08-15-20
By: The School of Life, and others
-
Essays in Love
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: James Wilby
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 299
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 256
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 258
Essays in Love is a stunningly original love story. Taking in Aristotle, Wittgenstein, history, religion and Groucho Marx, Alain de Botton charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Every relationship you've ever analyzed
- By Maria L. Lantin on 05-07-12
By: Alain de Botton
-
How to Think More About Sex
- The School of Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 3 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 277
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 237
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 236
We don't think too much about sex; we're merely thinking about it in the wrong way. So asserts Alain de Botton in this rigorous and supremely honest book designed to help us navigate the intimate and exciting—yet often confusing and difficult—experience that is sex. Few of us tend to feel we're entirely normal when it comes to sex, and what we're supposed to be feeling rarely matches up with the reality. This book argues that twenty-first-century sex is ultimately fated to be a balancing act between love and desire, and adventure and commitment.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
How to Think About Sex as Only Sex
- By Richard on 02-26-13
By: Alain de Botton
-
The Course of Love
- A Novel
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Julian Rhind-Tutt
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,269
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,097
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,093
We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children—but no long-term relationship is as simple as "happily ever after". The Course of Love is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Amazing, much needed retooling of the expectations and realities of Love
- By Lydia on 07-04-16
By: Alain de Botton
-
The News
- A User's Manual
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 77
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 67
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 68
The news is everywhere. We can’t stop constantly checking it on our computer screens, but what is this doing to our minds? We are never really taught how to make sense of the torrent of news we face every day, writes Alain de Botton (author of the best-selling The Architecture of Happiness), but this has a huge impact on our sense of what matters and of how we should lead our lives.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Quit the news
- By Bett Bollhoefer on 05-16-15
By: Alain de Botton
-
A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from The School of Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Charlie Anson
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 14
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 12
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 12
A Therapeutic Journey follows the arc from mental crisis and collapse, to convalescence and recovery. Written with kindness, knowledge and sympathy, it is both a practical guide and a source of consolation and companionship in what might be some of our loneliest, most anguished moments.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Deep, intelligent, compassionate
- By Terri Myers on 12-23-23
By: Alain de Botton
-
Status Anxiety
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 600
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 426
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 421
This is a book about an almost universal anxiety that is rarely mentioned: an anxiety about what others think of us, about whether we're judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. This is a book about status anxiety. Best-selling author Alain de Botton asks, with lucidity and charm, where our worries about status come from and what, if anything, we can do to surmount them.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
False Advertising!
- By Jon on 08-02-07
By: Alain de Botton
-
Religion for Atheists
- A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Kris Dyer
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 304
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 264
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 260
The boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved on by Alain de Botton's inspiring new book, which boldly argues that the supernatural claims of religion are of course entirely false - and yet that religions still have important things to teach the secular world.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Disappointing, Erroneous, Implausible
- By Douglas C. Bates on 11-02-12
By: Alain de Botton
-
The School of Life
- An Emotional Education
- By: The School of Life
- Narrated by: Alain de Botton, Charlie Anson
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
Emotional intelligence affects every aspect of the way we live, from romantic to professional relationships, from our inner resilience to our social success. It is arguably the single most important skill for surviving the twenty-first century. But what does it really mean? One decade ago, Alain de Botton founded The School of Life, an institute dedicated to understanding and improving our emotional intelligence. Now he presents the gathered wisdom of those ten years in a wide-ranging and innovative compendium of emotional intelligence that forms an introduction to The School of Life.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The school of life needs to be in schools.
- By Angela pope on 02-03-23
-
A Simpler Life
- A Guide to Greater Serenity, Ease and Clarity
- By: The School of Life
- Narrated by: Rachel Lanning
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 86
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 72
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 71
The modern world can be a complicated, frenzied, and noisy place, filled with too many options, products, ideas and opinions. That explains why what many of us long for is simplicity: a life that can be more pared down, peaceful, and focused on the essentials. But finding simplicity is not always easy; it isn’t just a case of emptying out our closets or trimming back commitments in our diaries. True simplicity requires that we understand the roots of our distractions – and develop a canny respect for the stubborn reasons why things can grow complex and overwhelming.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Bite-size practical tips for a better life
- By Tonya Kubo on 02-12-22
-
What They Forgot to Teach You at School
- Essential Emotional Lessons Needed to Thrive
- By: The School of Life
- Narrated by: Sonya Cullingford
- Length: 3 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 49
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 48
We probably went to school for what felt like a very long time. We probably took care with our homework. Along the way we surely learned intriguing things about equations, the erosion of glaciers, the history of the Middle Ages, and the tenses of foreign languages. But why, despite all the lessons we sat through, were we never taught the really important things that dominate and trouble our lives: who to start a relationship with, how to trust people, how to understand one’s psyche, how to move on from sorrow or betrayal, and how to cope with anxiety and shame?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Wonderful
- By Anonymous User on 07-18-21
-
How to Think More Effectively
- A Guide to Greater Productivity, Insight, and Creativity
- By: The School of Life
- Narrated by: Sonya Cullingford
- Length: 2 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 28
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
We know that our minds are capable of great things because, every now and then, they come out with a brilliant idea or two. However, our minds are also unpredictable, spending large stretches of time idling or distracting themselves. This is a book about how to optimize these beautiful yet fitful instruments so that they can more regularly and generously produce the sort of insights and ideas we need to fulfill our potential and achieve the contentment we deserve.
-
How to Overcome Your Childhood
- How to Raise Contented, Interesting, and Resilient Children
- By: The School of Life
- Narrated by: Sonya Cullingford
- Length: 2 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 61
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 45
When trying to deal with our current troubles and anxieties, it can be deeply irritating to be asked to consider our childhoods. They happened so long ago; we can probably barely remember, let alone relate to, the little person we once were. But one of the most powerful explanations for why we may, as adults, be struggling, is that we were denied the opportunity to fully be ourselves in our earliest years. This book is a guide to better understanding our younger selves in order to shape who we wish to be in the future.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
An essential read.
- By Anonymous User on 12-03-23
-
The Consolation of Philosophy
- By: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 262
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 241
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 240
The Consolation of Philosophy is one of the key works in the rich tradition of Western philosophy, partly because of the circumstances in which it was written. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c480-c524) was of aristocratic Roman birth and became consul and then master of offices at Ravenna, one of the highest posts under the Ostrogothic Roman ruler Theodoric. But Boethius was unjustly charged with treason in 524, and this led to house arrest, then torture and execution.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A Self-Help Bestseller since 524 AD
- By John on 01-25-17
-
Anxiety
- Meditations on the Anxious Mind
- By: The School of Life
- Narrated by: Rachel Lanning
- Length: 2 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 21
This is a guide to anxiety: why we feel it, how we experience it when it strikes, and what we can do when we come under its influence. Across a series of essays that look at the subject from a number of angles, the tone is helpful, compassionate, and in the best sense, practical.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Insightfulness
- By Anonymous User on 06-10-23
-
The Myth of Sisyphus
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 900
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 752
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 753
One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Brilliant work, excellently narrated
- By Richard B. on 04-30-19
By: Albert Camus
-
How to Live
- Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 614
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 523
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 524
This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, perhaps the first recognizably modern individual. A nobleman, public official, and winegrower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them essays, meaning “attempts” or “tries.” He put whatever was in his head into them: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog’s ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the religious wars....
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Interesting and in parts Inspired.
- By Darwin8u on 05-21-12
By: Sarah Bakewell
Publisher's summary
In ancient Greece or Rome, philosophers were seen as natural authorities on the most pressing questions. However, since then, the idea of finding wisdom from philosophy has come to seem bizarre. Enter a university department today and ask to study wisdom, and you will politely but firmly be shown the door. The Consolations of Philosophy sets out to refute the notion that good philosophy must be irrelevant and gathers together six great philosophers who were convinced of the power of philosophical insight to work a practical effect on our lives.
Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche are studied for the light their work can shine on certain great universal problems - poverty, inadequacy, lovelessness, and so on. They stand as examples of the practical utility of philosophy.
Critic reviews
More from the same
Related to this topic
-
I Am Dynamite!
- A Life of Nietzsche
- By: Sue Prideaux
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 328
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 286
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 284
Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings listeners into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Fascinating; tragic
- By Cineaste21 on 12-30-18
By: Sue Prideaux
-
How Proust Can Change Your Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 543
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 453
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 453
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
A nice petite primer on Proust
- By Darwin8u on 02-20-13
By: Alain de Botton
-
A Wicked Company
- The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment
- By: Philipp Blom
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
The flourishing of radical philosophy in Baron Thierry Holbach’s Paris salon from the 1750s to the 1770s stands as a seminal event in Western history. Holbach’s house was an international epicenter of revolutionary ideas and intellectual daring, bringing together such original minds as Denis Diderot, Laurence Sterne, David Hume, Adam Smith, Ferdinando Galiani, Horace Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, Guillaume Raynal, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In A Wicked Company, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom retraces the fortunes of this exceptional group of friends.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Excellent Book on Radical Enlightenment
- By EJJ on 02-15-15
By: Philipp Blom
-
The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 358
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 299
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 294
In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
-
The Spiritual Teachings of Seneca
- Ancient Philosophy for Modern Wisdom
- By: Mark Forstater, Victoria Radin
- Narrated by: David Troughton, Louisa Millwood Haig
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 95
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 71
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 69
Seneca was dedicated to Stoicism, and in his essays and letters he explained the stoic position on many fundamental issues: pleasure and the problem of desire, happiness, and contentment; anger, fear, living in the present, how to think for yourself, anxiety and tranquillity, goodness, freedom, trusting the universe; courage, opportunity, cruelty and how to deal with it, friendship, love and trust, death and how to live, learning , chance and fate, time, aspirations, wisdom - and more.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Odd presentation style
- By Mark on 08-03-08
By: Mark Forstater, and others
-
Romantic Outlaws
- The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
- By: Charlotte Gordon
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 299
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 265
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 265
Charlotte Gordon's new work is a fresh look at the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, who together comprise one of the most illustrious and inspiring mother-daughter pairs in history.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Tons of info, poor format choice.
- By Gotta Tellya on 02-06-17
By: Charlotte Gordon
-
I Am Dynamite!
- A Life of Nietzsche
- By: Sue Prideaux
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 328
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 286
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 284
Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings listeners into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Fascinating; tragic
- By Cineaste21 on 12-30-18
By: Sue Prideaux
-
How Proust Can Change Your Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 543
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 453
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 453
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
A nice petite primer on Proust
- By Darwin8u on 02-20-13
By: Alain de Botton
-
A Wicked Company
- The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment
- By: Philipp Blom
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
The flourishing of radical philosophy in Baron Thierry Holbach’s Paris salon from the 1750s to the 1770s stands as a seminal event in Western history. Holbach’s house was an international epicenter of revolutionary ideas and intellectual daring, bringing together such original minds as Denis Diderot, Laurence Sterne, David Hume, Adam Smith, Ferdinando Galiani, Horace Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, Guillaume Raynal, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In A Wicked Company, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom retraces the fortunes of this exceptional group of friends.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Excellent Book on Radical Enlightenment
- By EJJ on 02-15-15
By: Philipp Blom
-
The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 358
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 299
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 294
In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
-
The Spiritual Teachings of Seneca
- Ancient Philosophy for Modern Wisdom
- By: Mark Forstater, Victoria Radin
- Narrated by: David Troughton, Louisa Millwood Haig
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 95
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 71
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 69
Seneca was dedicated to Stoicism, and in his essays and letters he explained the stoic position on many fundamental issues: pleasure and the problem of desire, happiness, and contentment; anger, fear, living in the present, how to think for yourself, anxiety and tranquillity, goodness, freedom, trusting the universe; courage, opportunity, cruelty and how to deal with it, friendship, love and trust, death and how to live, learning , chance and fate, time, aspirations, wisdom - and more.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Odd presentation style
- By Mark on 08-03-08
By: Mark Forstater, and others
-
Romantic Outlaws
- The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
- By: Charlotte Gordon
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 299
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 265
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 265
Charlotte Gordon's new work is a fresh look at the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, who together comprise one of the most illustrious and inspiring mother-daughter pairs in history.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Tons of info, poor format choice.
- By Gotta Tellya on 02-06-17
By: Charlotte Gordon
-
Metaphysical Animals
- How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life
- By: Clare Mac Cumhaill, Rachae Wiseman
- Narrated by: Alex Dunmore
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
The history of European philosophy is usually constructed from the work of men. In Metaphysical Animals, a pioneering group biography, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman offer a compelling alternative. In the mid-twentieth century Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch were philosophy students at Oxford when most male undergraduates and many tutors were conscripted away to fight in the Second World War. Together, these young women, all friends, developed a philosophy that could respond to the war’s darkest revelations.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Book about nothing
- By Gerardo Naranjo Gonzalez on 06-14-22
By: Clare Mac Cumhaill, and others
-
Magnificent Rebels
- The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self
- By: Andrea Wulf
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 106
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 90
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, how can I be free? It all began in the 1790s in a quiet university town in Germany when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, writing, and their lives.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
fascinating overall, too much drama
- By soup cook on 11-27-22
By: Andrea Wulf
-
What Is Man?
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: Carl Reiner
- Length: 3 hrs
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 50
What Is Man? appears in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a romantic young idealist and an elderly cynic, who debate issues of mankind, such as whether man is free to act or is more of a machine, whether personal merit is meaningless given how the environment shapes us, and whether man truly has impulses other than to pursue pleasure and avoid pain.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
I'm 21, this shit was crazy. But I loved it.
- By Trina on 10-16-17
By: Mark Twain
-
Self Reliance
- By: Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Narrated by: Alana Munro
- Length: 1 hr and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,015
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 857
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 847
The most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of Emerson's most famous quotations, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." This essay is a considered a watershed moment in which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. An American classic.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Don't buy this
- By Leah L on 07-31-16
-
The Swerve
- How the World Became Modern
- By: Stephen Greenblatt
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 3,394
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,935
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 2,926
Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late 30s took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic by Lucretius—a beautiful poem containing the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Very compelling history, a less compelling thesis
- By A reader on 05-01-12
-
The Roman Way
- By: Edith Hamilton
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 193
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 146
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 146
Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different from that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days, and far livelier.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Not so bad
- By steve on 04-25-11
By: Edith Hamilton
-
Emerson
- The Mind on Fire
- By: Robert D. Richardson
- Narrated by: Michael McConnohie
- Length: 26 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 277
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 246
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 247
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Finally!
- By Douglas on 08-15-14
-
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
- By: Arnold Bennett
- Narrated by: Eric Brooks
- Length: 1 hr and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 444
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 375
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 369
This classic personal time-management book, originally published in 1908, has inspired generations of men and women to live deliberate lives. Not just another collection of timesaving tips, this book is more of a challenge to leave behind mundane everyday concerns, focus on pursuing one's true desires, and live the fullest possible life. Reflection, concentration, and study techniques make it easier to accomplish more truly rewarding undertakings than anyone ever dreamed possible.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Well written, well read.
- By Lauren on 02-21-12
By: Arnold Bennett
-
At the Existentialist Café
- Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,047
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 921
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 915
Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Consistent look at incoherent philosophy
- By Gary on 06-19-16
By: Sarah Bakewell
-
Our Oriental Heritage
- The Story of Civilization, Volume 1
- By: Will Durant
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 50 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,274
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,133
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,125
The first volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I chronicles the early history of Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Wonderful
- By Michael on 11-30-13
By: Will Durant
-
Notes of a Native Son
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,307
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,128
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,124
Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of Black life and Black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Masterful Essayist
- By Andre on 09-30-16
By: James Baldwin
-
Conundrum
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 86
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 77
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 76
This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great insight
- By Kelly Houske on 02-02-19
By: Jan Morris