The News: A User's Manual

by Alain de Botton

Overview

The News: A User’s Manual is an insightful analysis of the impact of the incessant news machine on us and our culture.
   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 taught how to make sense of the torrent of news we face daily, which has a huge influence on our sense of what matters and of how we should lead our lives. Alain de Botton takes twenty-five archetypal news stories—including an airplane crash, a murder, a celebrity interview, and a political scandal—and submits them to intense analysis. Why are disaster stories often so uplifting? Why do we enjoy watching politicians being brought down? Why are upheavals in far-off lands often so boring? What makes the love lives of celebrities so interesting? De Botton has written the ultimate guide for our frenzied era, designed to bring calm, understanding, and a measure of sanity to a news-obsessed age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307476838
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/02/2014
Series:	Vintage International
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	7.95(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Alain de Botton is the author of nonfiction works on subjects ranging from love and travel to architecture and philosophy. His best-selling books include How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Art of Travel and The Architecture of Happiness. He lives in London, where he founded The School of Life (www.theschooloflife.com) and Living Architecture (www.living-architecture.co.uk).

Read an Excerpt

Preface
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "The News: A User's Manual"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Alain De Botton.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents
 
I. Preface
II. Politics
III. World News
IV. Economics
V. Celebrity
VI. Disaster
VII. Consumption
VIII. Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

A thought-provoking look at the impact of news on culture and individuals.” —Booklist

“De Botton’s utopian project . . . is to challenge our pessimistic assumptions about what news is and imagine how it could be.”  —The Guardian

“Elegantly argued. . . . Moves briskly across the vast landscape of contemporary news.”  —San Francisco Chronicle

“Broaches the problems of twenty-first century media outlets with de Botton’s signature flourish.” —The New Republic

From the Publisher

2013-12-04
Philosophical gadfly de Botton (How to Think More About Sex, 2012, etc.) has ruminated, delightfully and often incisively, on the meaning of status, architecture, travel, Proust, sex, work, religion and love. Now he turns his attention to the news industry. "What should the news ideally be?" asks the author. "What are the deep needs to which it should cater? How could it optimally enrich us?" De Botton insists that the overriding function of news is to make us better people. News about dire crimes, for example, tells us "how badly we need to keep controlling ourselves by showing us what happens when people don't." Journalists should foster a sense of community, using their immense "power to assemble the picture that citizens end up having of one another." We need foreign news that imparts the texture of other places and people and "ignites our interest in events by remaining open to some of the lessons of art, a news that lets the poets, the travel writers and the novelists impart aspects of their crafts to journalists." We can learn more from Shakespeare and Flaubert, he believes, than, say, the Huffington Post. Unfortunately, de Botton's agenda for newsgathering is too often didactic and naïve. He is not a fan of capitalism or consumerism, and he wishes that economic journalists could be "guided by a sense of where one should be going, operating with an economic Utopia in mind." In the weakest chapters, the author asks why readers are captivated by celebrity and envious of the rich and famous. He ignores investigative journalism that churns out films, books and documentaries that do ask hard questions. In the end, he urges us to forego news as distraction--especially on the Internet--and master "the art of being patient midwives to our own thoughts." How does news shape our thoughts and lives? That's a significant question, but de Botton's musings fall short of a serious response.

Kirkus Reviews