-
Seasonal Offer:
This title is part of our Seasonal Offers promotion.
The Wonderbox: Curious histories of how to live
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £2.40
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Wonderbox: Curious histories of how to live for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.40, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'A cornucopia of delights. Completely fascinating, beautifully written and brimming with insights' --Michael Wood, historian, film maker and author of 'The Story of England'
'A fascinating rattlebag of intelligent, stimulating essays on everything from work to love, time to empathy' --FT
'A fascinating rattlebag of intelligent, stimulating essays' --FT
'After reading The Wonderbox, endlessly shopping for stuff you already have will seem distinctly strange' --Reader's Digest
'Entertaining and instructive' --The Times
'A guaranteed pick-me-up for the early days of January! And a book I'm going to be returning to for years.' --BBC Radio Scotland
'Inspiration for bold experiments in living' --Oxford Times
A treasury of history and philosophy that manages also to be truly, practically motivational' --John-Paul Flintoff
'A fascinating rattlebag of intelligent, stimulating essays on everything from work to love, time to empathy' --FT
'A fascinating rattlebag of intelligent, stimulating essays' --FT
'After reading The Wonderbox, endlessly shopping for stuff you already have will seem distinctly strange' --Reader's Digest
'Entertaining and instructive' --The Times
'A guaranteed pick-me-up for the early days of January! And a book I'm going to be returning to for years.' --BBC Radio Scotland
'Inspiration for bold experiments in living' --Oxford Times
A treasury of history and philosophy that manages also to be truly, practically motivational' --John-Paul Flintoff
Book Description
What three millennia of human history can tell us about how to live today
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Roman Krznaric's Wonderbox is an amazing combination of high intellect, deep empathy and accessibility. Covering the 'big' issues, of death, family, nature, love, travel etc he draws on the wisdom of the ages and melds those ideas into something far bigger than the sum of their parts. But by setting itself such a high mark as to offer us a guide to life it is a shame that there are gaps - and my main criticism is that these gaps included some of the things that mean most to me - music and animals for example. However, this is still an exciting and entertaining book. It is one of those books that makes you feel cleverer and better about yourself on completion - and perhaps there will be another ... filling in some of those gaps ...
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is quite the best book of 'popular' wisdom I have read in a very long time and I warmly recommend it to all customers. It is superbly written, tendering well-argued and humbly offered suggestions on how one can, at the very least, perform some very useful fine-tuning of one's general outlook on life, whilst bravely confronting some of the 'big' issues. The final chapter, on Deathstyle, is masterly. There is nothing hectoring, preachy, partisan, sectarian or unrealistic about any of the conclusions the author comes to, and, whilst at 63 I do not consider myself wholly without some insight into the important elements of what constitutes a well-lived life, I wish I had been able to read it 20 years ago. It is truly an edifying read for all ages.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Secular society has failed to provide us with a guide on how to live. As Krznaric suggests, the self-help literature and the psychology of happiness seem unsatisfactory and superficial. His approach, which seems so obvious and compelling once embarked upon, is to seek guidance from history. This beautiful book draws inspiration from how those before us have made sense of the things that matter most to us: love, family, empathy, work, time, money, creativity, belief, and death. Krznaric effortlessly draws on the vast richness of how people have lived in the past. We discover that despite our many forms of progress, often those before us had far deeper conceptions of how to live. Love has a far more subtle and varied form in Confucian, Buddhist and ancient Greek thought. Time, "the tyranny of the clock" which Krznaric describes, has not always been our master. Rushing to achieve more we often succeed only in experiencing and understanding less. There are wonderful alternatives, such as the Balinese concepts of "full days" and "empty days". Nothing in this book is predictable, or dull. Intriguingly, family conversation is something we have struggled with as much in the past as the present. But the ways in which we have failed, and the examples of cultures that succeed, can provide guidance. The range of sources and relevance of this book is impressive. But Krznaric keeps his erudition hidden; his wisdom comes to the fore. This book is not just a guide on how to live. Reading this book is an end in itself. It is a deep, moving, pleasure.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Wow!
What can I say, great book.. one of those keep sakes!
A must read.. practicalities we all know, right at our face.
Thank you to the seller for a prompt delivery..
A must read.. practicalities we all know, right at our face.
Thank you to the seller for a prompt delivery..
Published 1 month ago by GJ
Enthralling
This book is brilliant. It makes you think and consider whether the way we live now is actually better than in the past. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Kitty
A Treasure Trove
Normally, books that tell me how to live an authentic life leave me cold. But this is different. It is a compendium of how learned (and sometimes unlearned) people from a different... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mr. C. J. Forse
Some of the answers we all seek?
Loved this book: I enjoyed, too, the writing style and also how the author discussed examples from his own life which added interest and gave it more grounding. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Duncurin
The chamber of surprises
Kznaric's Wonderbox is a chamber of surprising revelations, full of fascinating links between the past and the present. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Dr. Quentin Spender
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
