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Summary: "Themes designed to deepen the joy of traveling"
Review: A truly remarkable book, loaned to me by a traveler friend. De Botton goes right to the heart of the matter, asking why we travel as opposed to offering more of the same tired and often untrue where to travel advice. He takes a selection of distinguished writers, artists and thinkers and parallels their experiences while traveling with his own in a novel fashion, organizing each chapter around themes designed to help us appreciate travel-and to help deepen the joy of traveling. It is the kind of book that you'll find yourself underlining apt passages and clever sections that capture ideas about the art of traveling you may have held-yet never expressed so well.
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Summary: Only a traveler discovers the art of travel
Review: Alain de Botton enlists the aid of several guides, including (among others) William Wordsworth, John Ruskin, Vincent van Gogh, and Xavier de Maistre, to instruct his readers in the art of travel. By treating topics such as anticipation, curiosity, landscapes, the sublime, beauty and habit, he develops a picture of travel that is at first appealing, but when it becomes apparent that he is not really listening to his guides, the picture soon becomes appalling.
He uses Wordsworth, for example, as a guide to the English Lake District, but when he quotes the last stanza of "I wandered lonely as a cloud," he deliberately omits the fourth line, "Which is the bliss of solitude." Without that environment of solitude, the remembrance of the dafodils along Ullswater is sorely impoverished indeed.
And it is precisely here that we feel the weakness in de Botton's book. He seems unable to endure the solitude that would allow him to absorb the enriching experiences of travel. In Arles he must have a guide (with her book of prints in hand) to point out van Gogh's scenes of beauty. In the Sinai he must join a group to trek through the desert where perhaps the most important event in ancient history was a solitary Moses' enounter with God. And when he tries to follow de Maistre's example by taking a journey around his own bedroom, he fails, and goes out to survey the neighborhood, and there he fails, too, so he gets into a bus where he is in closer proximity to people with whom he tries "to connect imaginatively." He merely overhears some conversations.
de Botton might have listened more closely to Wordsworth. He might have stepped into the light of day and let nature be his teacher. He might have developed his inward eye "which is the bliss of solitude," so that he could recollect in tranquility the emotions so greatly enriched by real travel. When he is given the opportunity to be informed by solitude, however, he sits in a Madrid hotel room without dinner, unable to enter a restaurant for fear that Spaniards will hold him in contempt for not being Spanish.
Some traveler, indeed, to be lecturing us on the art of travel.
Those wanting to know about the art of travel might better read Arthur Frommer's forty-year-old Europe on Five Dollars a Day, and be instructed to plunge into different cultures, experience them directly, enjoy them immensely.
Rating: 
Summary: Deliciously Readable philosophy
Review: Alain de Botton's book furthers his exploration of philosophical issues in our every day lives. Travelling for the author becomes a way to discuss our pursuit of happiness as well as they way our expectations affect how we live. While the questions that he raises are sophisticated and he draws on his background as an exquisitely trained philosopher for this book, the narrative is incredibly readable:his anecdotes are witty, the prose flows well, and seemingly a high school freshman could comprehend and digest much of what he is saying.By no means however does this mean that it is not a challenging and enlightening read. de Botton relates a series of his journeys from comical moments of deciding to travel thousands of miles across the globe from the inspiration of a picture of palm trees to the anxiety we experience when we discover that not only does our destination have palm trees but also dirty streets, traffic, and bureacracy. His personal experiences are sprinkled with insight from other famous travellers from european colonial painters to influential french novelists. The end result is a witty, personal, and thorough exploration of travel and what it tells us about the way we live our lives. As a side note seeing Alain de Botton read and discuss his work in Oxford displayed his depth of knowledge and comfort in his field. He is truly a philosopher who cares about communicating and discussing ideas about how we can better live our lives in an intelligent and coherent manner for any willing reader which is an admirable task. Do not pass this book up!
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Summary: Philosophical tools for a meaningful travelling experience.
Review: Alain De Botton's latest publication, ~The Art of Travel~ is a philosophical investigation, simply written, on the reasons and motivations for why we travel. The book's main thesis is that our lives are dominated by a search for that illusive and fleeting emotion or state known as happiness. Travel, he proposes, is a major activity, amongst many, where we seek-out this state of mind. Travel can possibly show us what life is about outside our routine-filled day-to-day existence. The book examines our motives for travelling, our anticipations, and expectations using the writings of various artists, poets and explorers, providing different and highly creative perspectives on the subject. Personally, I found the most rewarding and instructive chapter to be, 'On eye-opening Art', using the views and paintings of Vincent van Gogh. Just as instructive, however, is the chapter, 'On Possessing Beauty', drawing on the works of the 19th century critic and writer, John Ruskin. The message from both these individuals are quite similar. One of the tasks of art, specifically painting, is to provide us, the viewer, with new perspectives in which to view the world. Vincent van Gogh's exceedingly original style and use of colour, for example, transformed, for some of us, the way we see a sunflower, a wheat field and a Cypress tree. When viewing these works of art, or any work of art, we are inspired to travel to these places where the artist created, and experience the subject of the works first-hand. John Ruskin believed that one of our primary needs in life is beauty and its possession. He suggested that the only meaningful way to possess beauty was through understanding it: '...making ourselves conscious of the factors (psychological and visual) that are responsible for it,' (P.220) The way to attain this understanding, he suggests, is to draw and write (word paint) those things and places we come across in our travels that strike us as beautiful. A person sitting down in front of an expansive landscape, and sketching its many features, will discover aspects about the scene that would be invisible to the casual observer. When travelling, take the time to draw and write about those places and things one sees, and the experience will be much richer as a result. ~The Art of Travel~ is a helpful philosophical guide to the budding and seasoned traveller. Where other books on the subject instruct us on where to go and what to see, Alain De Botton tells us how to approach our journeys and some useful tools on achieving a much more meaningful and rewarding experience.
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Summary: Armchair Travelers Unite -- the world is your oyster!
Review: Alain De Botton, the author of How Proust Can Change Your Life delights in examining travel and the art of the vacation/holiday like no one else. A veteran traveler he shares tales of travel from his life and from those of great authors and personalities of now and past. Charming! Engaging! Fascinating! and more. You'll never look at vacation time as just 'time off' again. He hits that sweet spot for any of us who yearn to live their life like they are on vacation forever. The magic, the challenge, the opportunity....where's my airplane ticket and when does the next ship leave?
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Summary: An "examined life" continues...
Review: De Botton seems to have given his new book, like two of his previous volumes (HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE and THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY), a self-satirizing title. But like those earlier works, THE ART OF TRAVEL exhibits a strong belief in the ability of art, observation, and thinking about art to make a difference on how one experiences one's own life and place in the world. His interest in "stay-at-home" artists, first evidenced in his study of Proust, continues. THE ART OF TRAVEL is comprised of nine chapters. The first ("On Anticipation") uses the disappointment of the decadent aesthete "hero" of J.K. Huysmans's novel A REBOURS as the basis of an exploration of why the experience of travel never seems to match our expectations (at least for those of us who are well-read). Huysmans's Parisian hero had a hankering to see London after reading a Dickens novel, made preparations for his trip, but got no further than an English tavern in Paris when he "was abruptly overcome by lassitude." In the final chapter ("On Habit") de Botton identifies an author who takes Huysmans's and Proust's approach to travel to the extreme--Xavier de Maistre. The work is JOURNEY AROUND MY BEDROOM. (The man and the book exist; I checked the Internet.) De Botton, in his humorously endearing way tries to follow de Maistre's example...but his bedroom is too small (and too crowded with books, I might add...He gives us a photograph.) Instead, he uses his immediate neighborhood as a basis for seeing what there is to see when one makes up one's mind to notice the details one would notice (without prompting) in more exotic locales. Sandwiched between these two chapters are excellent essays based on an examination of the works and world views of Charles Baudelaire & Edward Hopper ("On Traveling Places"); Gustave Flaubert ("On the Exotic"); the detail obsessed Alexander von Humboldt ("On Curiosity"); the ever-peripatetic William Wordsworth ("On the Country and the City"); Edmund Burke and the anonymous author of JOB ("On the Sublime"); the late-blooming but revolutionary artist Vincent van Gogh ("On Eye-Opening Art"); and the highly articulate artist John Ruskin ("On Possessing Beauty"). As with de Botton's earlier books, there will be those who feel he has been too superficial in his examination of his sources and too quick to see their application for our lives today. But I disagree. I find that he gives the reader plenty to think about without burdening us with too much analysis. He gives us the box and opens the lid. It's the reader's job to make the connections and explore the contents. If nothing else, this book left me with the desire to read van Gogh's letters (which I own) and anything by Ruskin (which I don't own but will certainly start looking for on Amazon.com; I found Ruskin's observation about the twin purposes of art to be as true today as when he noted them: to make sense of pain and to fathom the sources of beauty, p. 233.)
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful, provoking, entertaining.
Review: De Botton's book is another that I came across at the library in which I work. I was so enamored of it that I had to own it (3 cheers for Amazon!) The book is a series of essays ("On Anticipation", "On the Exotic", "On Possessing Beauty", etc.) interspersed with black&white reproductions of paintings and photographs. Each essay/chapter contains a place/places and a "guide/guides." For example, in #2 ("On Travelling Places"), the "guides" are French poet Charles Baudelaire and American painter Edward Hopper. Using quotes from the former and paintings from the latter, de Botton evokes the romance of airports and train stations and other places of arrival & departure--how they are the stuff of hopes, dreams, inspirations. He also writes of the joy of the journey itself, where one is transported not only away from the physical familiarity of home, but into a state of suspension, where--for a time--the worries & complaints of everyday living don't exist. I have experienced this sensation as well as the joys of anonymity--an experience which can transform even a cheap motel room into a sanctuary from daily demands. Hightly recommended.
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Summary: Philosophical Work on Travel
Review: De Botton's goal is to expand the observation skills of his readers. He attempts to reach this goal through shared experiences of his own, coupled with historical analyses from other travelers from myriad times and places. His chapter on Van Gogh's Provence illustrates his approach. He uses correspondence between Vincent and his brother to establish the time and setting of the artist's more productive years. Readers are taken on something of a falshback as de Botton intersperses his own travel writing with that of the historical figures cited by him. He makes a valid point in describing the perception Alexander von Humboldt experienced as contrasted with a 21st century traveler. Humboldt was acquiring raw data and correcting misconceptions on his travels, whereas the contemporary traveler is biased in perception due to tour guides and promotional hype which package what is considered to be worthy of attention.
My major complaint about de Botton's book is that we don't share the same philosophical assumptions and some of his reflections are sermons for cynicism and fatalism although he sees himself as an advocate of freedom of thought. There's an uneasy subtext of fatalism in some of his observations and he seems blind to this fact. His interpretation of Scripture is not from a Christian perspective. So with that serious flaw identified, one can take the book for what it is, a thought provoking work that attempts to get a travler to look inward before seeking external stimulation.
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Summary: The Perfect Companion for Thinking Travelers
Review: Desperate for something new and written in English to read after several months subsisting on one guidebook as I traveled through Europe, I found "The Art of Travel" at an English-language bookstore in Vienna. Alain de Botton's book turned out to be a perfect travel companion: funny, thought-provoking, and able to stay quiet when I needed him to.
"The Art of Travel" ponders why we travel, what we may gain from it, and what we may learn as we go. At times humorous, at times philosophical, de Botton holds up the act of traveling to gentle scrutiny and invites us to share each facet of the view.
This book is not for people who need to know whether to visit Florence in August (don't!) or what train is the best one to take from Paris to Prague (there isn't one that will allow an uninterrupted night's sleep, trust me). It is a wise and witty companion for thinking travelers.
If you know that travel at its best can be a personal and spiritual journey as well as a physical one, and you want the astute company of a like mind, you will enjoy this book.
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Summary: Inspiring.
Review: Even if you have already went on a long visit to another, distant part of the world, this book is worth reading. I would assume that it is even better if you read it before... the author is inspiring. Upon finishing, the world is experienced differently, particuraly so if you have a speck of creativity/artistic soul within you.
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