1
of
1
The School of Life: Collected Essays
15th Anniversary Edition
Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.
Check link for latest rating. ( 21 ratings, 9 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still
learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Summary
Read More
Format: Hardback
TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK
Please add to wishlist to be notified when back in stock
Sorry, we're currently out of stock of The School of Life: Collected Essays. Please add to your Wishlist and we'll send you an email as soon as it's back in stock.
Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
Latest News
A Court of Splintered Harmony: How to Get Your Copy on Release Day
A Court of Splintered Harmony is almost here, and we have some exciting news for...
Pick up a Graphic Novel for Halloween
Wanting something different for spooky season? Try a horror themed graphic novel! Lizzy has rounded...
The ACOTAR Countdown Is On, But We Need to Talk…
Last week, things started taking a dark turn. The excitement surrounding the release was suddenly...
Even More New Board Games Just Arrived!
It's been another busy week at Book Hero, with heaps of new board games and...
The Book Briefing 21/10/2026
Welcome back to another edition of 'The Book Briefing', your weekly round-up of all the...
See more
A 15th anniversary collection of The School of Life's most popular andessential essays on self-knowledge, relationships, work and culture.
A 15th anniversary collection of The School of Life’s most popular and essential essays on self-knowledge, relationships, work and culture.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
The School of Life: Collected Essays is an essential compilation from an organisation dedicated to fostering calm, self-understanding, and greater emotional maturity. With over 15 years of influential work, these landmark essays are gathered together for the first time.
Among these insightful essays, you will discover:
On Confidence: A guide to overcoming inhibition and shame, paving the way for a more free and creative life.
Self-Knowledge: A method for better knowing ourselves to make optimal choices in love and work.
Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person: A paradoxically hopeful and wry survey of the trials and joys of marriage.
Written in elegant and clear prose, these essays navigate the central topics of emotional life, leaving readers enlightened, calmer, and better prepared to face inevitable challenges. This book serves as nothing less than a concise compendium of some of the wisest insights we will ever need to know.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781915087102
Publisher: The School of Life Press
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 26 October 2023
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: The School of Life Press
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 145.0mm
Height: 197.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 512
About the Author
The School of Life is here to help you learn, heal and grow. We are devoted tobringing you calm, self-understanding, better relationships, deeper friendships,greater effectiveness at work and more fulfilment in your leisure time.
We do this via our books, our app, our films, our therapeutic services and ourcorporate offering.
The School of Life Press brings together the thinking and ideas of The School ofLife creative team under the direction of series editor, Alain de Botton.
Also by The School of Life
View all-
19% offThe School of Life: Relationships
Few things promise us greater happiness than our relationships, yet few things more reliably deliver misery and frustration. Our error is to suppose that we are born knowing how to love and that managing a relationship might therefore be intuitive and easy. The School of Life: Relationships starts from a different premise: that love is a skill to be learnt,...Paperback$2200Elsewhere:$2999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
18% offThe School of Life: On Being Nice
Many books seek to make us richer or thinner. This book wants to help us to be nicer: less irritable, more patient, readier to listen, warmer and less prickly. Niceness may not have the immediate allure of money or fame, but it is a hugely important quality nevertheless, and one that we neglect at our peril. On Being Nice gently...Paperback$3100Usually:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
18% off
Small Pleasures
So often we exhaust ourselves and the planet in a search for very large pleasures, while all around us lies a wealth of small pleasures, which, if only we paid more attention, could bring us solace and joy at little cost and effort. Small Pleasures is a book to guide us to the best of life's small pleasures: the distinctive...Paperback$3100Usually:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Secrets of Successful Relationships
It can sometimes seem a mystery why some couples stay together and thrive – while many more split up or drag on scratchily. Fortunately, though we might ascribe happy love to chance, there are a range of identifiable secrets that underpin all good relationships and that we can learn and put into practice. The Secrets of Successful Relationships teaches us...Hardback$4499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
How to Think More Effectively
We know that our minds are capable of great things because, every now and then, they come out with a very brilliant idea or two. However, our minds are also tantalisingly unpredictable, spending worryingly large stretches of time idling or distracting themselves. How to Think More Effectively is a book about how to optimise these beautiful yet fitful instruments so...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Secrets of Successful Friendships
Few things promise as much potential happiness as friendship, yet the challenge of finding and maintaining meaningful connections remains one of life's great struggles. Drawing on psychology, philosophy and cultural history, The Secrets of Successful Friendships offers a thoughtful exploration of why friendship is both more complex and more rewarding than we typically imagine. It examines why we get lonely,...Hardback$4495Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The School of Life: On Mental Illness
We accept without shame that most organs in our bodies might at some point develop problems and could need a bit of help. We should not make an exception of our minds. Our lives are so complicated and so filled with burdens, we should be completely unsurprised if, at some point, we felt a need to pull up a white...Hardback$3799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Big Ideas for Curious Minds
Children are, in many ways, born philosophers. Without prompting, they ask some of the largest questions: about time, mortality, happiness, and the meaning of it all. Yet sadly, too often, this inborn curiosity is not developed, and with age, the questions fall away. Big Ideas for Curious Minds is a book designed to harness children's spontaneous philosophical instinct and to...Hardback$4999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
On Being Nice
Most books that want to change us seek to make us richer or thinner. On Being Nice wants to help us to be nicer: that is, less irritable, more patient, readier to listen, warmer, less prickly. Niceness may not have the immediate allure of money or fame, but it is a hugely important quality nevertheless and one that we neglect...Hardback$2999Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
What Are You Feeling?
What Are You Feeling? is the first in a series of books that aims to develop emotional literacy for children aged 5-8 years. It is a book about finding interesting words for interesting feelings. It explores what lots of feeling words really mean and which words best describe the many feelings a child may have. The book discusses 20 different...Hardback$2899Elsewhere:$3699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Confidence Workbook
The difference between a successful and a disappointing life often comes down to a critical ingredient that we overlook at our peril: confidence. The Confidence Workbook is a book with a practical purpose: to take us through exercises that help us rediscover the confidence we already have inside us — the confidence that we have neglected out of habit, fear...Hardback$4499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
15% off
The School of Life: Calm
Nowadays, almost all of us wish we could be calmer; it is one of the distinctive longings of the modern age. Across history, people have sought adventure and excitement, however, a new priority for many of us is a desire to be more tranquil. This is a book designed to support us in our endeavours to remain calm against all...Paperback$2300Elsewhere:$2999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
More from Philosophy & Psychology
View all-
Atomic Habits
Atomic Habits by James Clear is a transformative guide that demonstrates how tiny, incremental changes in behaviour can fundamentally reshape your life. Rather than urging sweeping transformations, Clear advocates for the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions. Whether it’s performing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes earlier, or making a brief, focused phone call, these minuscule adjustments,...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$4000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseHow Lucky Am I
The first full book featuring social media sensation Mr. Skelly, with over 5 million global followers, a skeleton who teaches us that life is a gift to be treasured, reminding us how lucky we all are to live in this present moment. For readers of The Book of Gifts and The Little Frog’s Guide to Self Care. In this poignant,...Hardback$4299Elsewhere:$5500Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Creative Act
Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day and then ages out. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed...Hardback$4400Elsewhere:$5500Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Winner's Formula
The Neuroscience of Peak Performance, Success, and Happiness Why do some people win all the time? Why do others languish? From Olympians to Formula 1 drivers, addicts to billionaires, cognitive neuroscientist Dr Kerry Spackman has spent decades working to help people understand how to succeed. In The Winner's Formula, Kerry explains what goes on in your brain when you are...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Strangers
The must-read memoir of the end of a marriage and the start of a personal revolution, based on the iconic Modern Love essay in the New York Times and perfect for fans of Glennon Doyle. "A beautifully written eulogy for the loss of a relationship" — Joyce Carol Oates How do we go on when a loved one betrays us?...Paperback$3299Elsewhere:$4000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
23% off1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four
In the drab and oppressive world of 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell introduces us to Winston Smith, a man haunted by the omnipresent surveillance and control exercised by the Party and its enigmatic leader, Big Brother. Winston works diligently at the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to alter historical records to fit the ever-changing narrative dictated by the...Paperback$1000Usually:$1299Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
21% offAroha
Aroha by Dr Hinemoa Elder is an enlightening exploration of timeless Maori wisdom, intricately woven into a contemporary context. This top-selling non-fiction title from New Zealand in 2021 introduces readers to 52 traditional Maori proverbs, known as whakataukī, each offering a profound lesson for every week of the year. Dr Elder, a respected Maori psychiatrist, delves into these powerful sayings...Hardback$1900Elsewhere:$3000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Lessons on Living
Bestselling author Nigel Latta's simple psychological toolkit for life's ups and downs. Over thirty years working as a clinical psychologist, Nigel Latta assembled a personal toolkit based on three simple principles. These principles helped him to be more resilient, joyful, and attuned to what matters most. The same principles have helped him through some difficult times as well, such as...Paperback$2900Elsewhere:$3999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Eat Your Ice Cream
The New York Times bestseller that presents a bold new vision for living well and ageing with purpose from a world-renowned health expert THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From a leading doctor and world-renowned health expert, the simple, uplifting and practical guide to cutting through the wellness noise, living well and ageing with purpose. ‘Essential reading for anyone who...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$4000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Better Never Stops
The Art and Science of Continuous Improvement From delinquent to doctor, Paul Wood knows first-hand how far we can take our lives if we address what holds us back. At the age of 18, Wood was sent to New Zealand's toughest prison. Almost 11 years later, in 2006, he walked out a free man, escaping his past and becoming a...Paperback$2700Elsewhere:$3999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Courage to be Disliked
The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga presents an enlightening and thought-provoking dialogue between a philosopher and a young man disillusioned with life. In a series of conversations, the philosopher introduces the principles of Alfred Adler's psychology, advocating for personal empowerment and mental freedom. Through this engaging dialogue, the young man learns to confront the societal...Paperback$2500Elsewhere:$2999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The DOSE Effect
The DOSE Effect offers small habits to boost your brain chemistry. "This book will help you find more motivation, create deeper connections, energise your body, and destress your mind," says Jay Shetty, author of Think Like a Monk. Life can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Today’s fast-paced world leaves many of us struggling with extreme emotional highs...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
Why buy from us?
Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!
Service & Delivery
Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.
Auckland Bookstore
We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.
Our Gifting Service
Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.
