Reflections on Self-Knowledge, Emotional Maturity and Calm

A 15th anniversary collection of The School of Life’s most popular and essential essays on self-knowledge, relationships, work and culture.

The School of Life is an organisation with a focused mission at its heart: to help foster calm, self-understanding and greater emotional maturity. Over 15 years, they have produced landmark essays on key topics, now gathered together for the first time. Among these, we find:

• On Confidence: a guide to throwing off inhibition and shame in the name of a more free and creative life

• Self-Knowledge: a method for knowing ourselves better in order 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

In elegant and always clear prose, the essays take us on a tour around the central topics of emotional life, leaving us enlightened, calmer and readier to greet our inevitable challenges. The book amounts to nothing less than a concise compendium of some of the wisest things we’ll ever need to know.

• A beautifully produced gift edition of 10 of our most popular and essential essays, published in celebration of The School of Life’s 15th anniversary.

• Collects the following essay titles in one volume: Self-Knowledge, On Confidence, What is Psychotherapy?, How to Find Love, The Sorrows of Love, Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person, Why We Hate Cheap Things, How to Reform Capitalism, What is Culture For?, The Sorrows of Work.

• New introduction to this special edition from The School of Life.