THE ART OF TRAVEL

Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence an d insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation/ the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow. Even as de Botton takes the r eader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the bi ologist ...[Read more]