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Also by Alain De Botton:

A Week At The Airport, October 2010
Paperback
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, June 2009
Hardcover
The Architecture of Happiness, October 2006
Hardcover
How Proust Can Change Your Life, May 1998
Trade Size (reprint)

A WEEK AT THE AIRPORT
By: Alain De Botton

Vintage Books
October 2010
On Sale: September 21, 2010
112 pages
ISBN: 0307739678
EAN: 9780307739674
Paperback
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Non-Fiction

From the bestselling author of The Art of Travel comes a wittily intriguing exploration of the strange "non-place" that he believes is the imaginative center of our civilization.

Given unprecedented access to one of the world’s busiest airports as a “writer-in-residence,” Alain de Botton found it to be a showcase for many of the major crosscurrents of the modern world—from our faith in technology to our destruction of nature, from our global interconnectedness to our romanticizing of the exotic. He met travelers from all over and spoke with everyone from baggage handlers to pilots to the airport chaplain. Weaving together these conversations and his own observations—of everything from the poetry of room service menus to the eerie silence in the middle of the runway at midnight—de Botton has produced an extraordinary meditation on a place that most of us never slow down enough to see clearly. Lavishly illustrated in color by renowned photographer Richard Baker, A Week at the Airport reveals the airport in all its turbulence and soullessness and—yes—even beauty.

Media Buzz

On Point - November 1, 2010