We spend most of our waking lives at work—in occupations often chosen by our unthinking younger selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what our occupations mean to us.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is an exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, beautifully evoking what other people wake up to do each day—and night—to make the frenzied contemporary world function. With a philosophical eye and his signature combination of wit and wisdom, Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around a deliberately eclectic range of occupations, from rocket science to biscuit manufacture, accountancy to art—in search of what make jobs either fulfilling or soul-destroying.

Along the way he tries to answer some of the most urgent questions we can ask about work: Why do we do it? What makes it pleasurable? What is its meaning? And why do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also the planet? Characteristically lucid, witty and inventive, Alain de Botton’s “song for occupations” is a celebration and exploration of an aspect of life which is all too often ignored and a book that shines a revealing light on the essential meaning of work in our lives.

De Botton is the author of eight previous books, mostly philosophical essays covering ideas such as love, friendship, architecture, and self-worth, often using the analysis of other thinkers as a guide. Here he travels the globe to examine occupations of the unusual and mundane variety in search of the elusive qualities that cause work to range from delightful to dreadful. Some of the touchstones for this meditation on work include a London biscuit factory, a satellite rocket launch in French Guiana, and a meeting with the Maldives minister of fish while tracing the path of a tuna from net to dinner table. Visits with a painter, accountants, career counselors, and entrepreneurs all help to shed light on the “intelligence, peculiarity, beauty, and horror of the modern workplace, and, not least, its extraordinary claim to be able to provide us, alongside love, with the principle source of life’s meaning.” De Botton’s essays reveal the fragile dependencies and interconnectedness that make every one of us a key component of the human network. --David Siegfried