The Hidden Pleasures of Life

Winner of the Salon London Transmission Prize

The story of a search for a new art of living.

How can one escape from work colleagues who are bores and from organisations that thrive on stress? What new priorities can people give to their private lives? When the romantic ideal is disappointing, how else can affections be cultivated? If only a few can become rich, what substitute is there for dropping out? If religions and nations disagree, what other outcomes are possible beyond strife or doubt? Where there is too little freedom, what is the alternative to rebellion? When so much is unpredictable, what can replace ambition?

“As a philosopher and a historian Zeldin defies convention and categorisation . . . There is certainly much prophetic in this engaging book - Financial TimesZeldin is an engaging travel companion, flitting between biography and philosophy with an easy charm - IndependentEclectic, ambitious and highly thought-provoking - Sunday TimesA challenge and a success . . . He is particularly good and funny on work and the apparently catastrophic affair we are having with management science - Literary Review”

As a philosopher and a historian Zeldin defies convention and categorisation . . . There is certainly much prophetic in this engaging book - Financial Times

Zeldin is an engaging travel companion, flitting between biography and philosophy with an easy charm - Independent

Eclectic, ambitious and highly thought-provoking - Sunday Times

A challenge and a success . . . He is particularly good and funny on work and the apparently catastrophic affair we are having with management science - Literary Review

Theodore Zeldin has been named 'one of the forty world figures whose ideas are likely to have a lasting relevance to the new millennium' (Independent on Sunday), and 'one of Britain's leading intellects' (Management Today). His books Conversation and An Intimate History of Humanity are international bestsellers. For his studies of France he has been called 'a modern Balzac', 'not just funny, [but also] intelligent, loving, caustic, learned, light-hearted, serious, brilliant' - and he has been made a Commander of the Legion d'Honneur. He has won the Wolfson Prize for history, been elected to the British Academy and the European Academy and been awarded the CBE. He is an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College and an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College in Oxford.

Winner of the Salon London Transmission Prize The story of a search for a new art of living. How can one escape from work colleagues who are bores and from organisations that thrive on stress? What new priorities can people give to their private lives? When the romantic ideal is disappointing, how else can affections be cultivated? If only a few can become rich, what substitute is there for dropping out? If religions and nations disagree, what other outcomes are possible beyond strife or doubt? Where there is too little freedom, what is the alternative to rebellion? When so much is unpredictable, what can replace ambition?

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