Small pleasures

There is no simple set of instructions that can guarantee sanity, but if you want to overcome emotional difficulties and become happier, psychotherapist Philippa Perry argues that there are four cornerstones to sanity you can influence to bring about change. By developing your self-observation skills, examining how you relate to others, breaking out of your comfort zone and exploring new ways of d...

The Great Thinkers is a collection of some of the most important ideas of Eastern and Western culture - drawn from the works of those philosophers, political theorists, sociologists, artists and novelists whom we believe have the most to offer to us today. We've worked hard to make the thinkers in this book clear, relevant and charming, mining the history of knowledge to bring you the idea...

Choosing a partner is one of the most consequential and tricky decisions we will ever make, and the cost of repeated failure is immense. This book explains why we have the ‘types’ we do, and how our early experiences give us scripts of how and whom we love. It sheds light on harmful repetitive patterns and the extent to which we are not always simply choosing people who can make us happy. We learn...

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. This book starts from a different premise: that love is a skill to be learnt, rather than just an emotion to be felt. It calmly and charmi...

View your sex life in a different light and learn how it can make you happier. Sex is the most intimately human experience there is. It can also be the most confusing. Our desire to be together conflicts with our desire to avoid vulnerability and appear "normal", leaving us detached, desensitised or embarrassed. Covering topics including adultery, lust, pornography and impotence, Alain de Botton a...