Alain de Botton has had an epiphany. In a post-lapsarian world, humankind is wont to turn towards some higher power to search for salvation; where religion once provided all the answers, we now have news. de Botton has compiled a “little manual that briefly tries to complicate” that which appears to have become “too normal and harmless for our own good.”

de Botton splits the news into six sub-categories: Politics, World News, Economics, Celebrity, Disaster and Consumption. In each of these spheres, the general sentiment is one of regret at the human condition: why, de Botton laments, are we not more interested in the corruption of the Ugandan government? Why is the economy so important, and yet so boring?

The answer to all of these questions lies in the media. Newspaper headlines ignore everyday life in favour of sensationalising anomalous misfortunes. This makes us anxious, and skews our perspective of the beauty of the world; newspapers should strive to improve the human condition, not to narrate it. De Botton even suggests that journalists should be more creative: “falsifications may occasionally need to be committed in the service of a goal higher still than accuracy.”

This sentiment is at the core of all that is wrong with the book: an almost wilful misunderstanding of reality. Were de Botton’s benevolent dictatorship to be put into place, we would all be living in a state of serene zen, rendering the news obsolete. Thanks to the measured delivery of good news and beauty provided by de Botton’s media monopoly, we would cease to look elsewhere for titbits of cerebral stimulation.

However what de Botton lacks in pragmatism he makes up for in prose. Few can churn out poetic sound bites as successfully as he: “A clear conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination,” he tells us. While his manual may not help us understand our news, this compendium offers a prosaic repose from the continuous media that feeds our daily anxieties. It is, fundamentally, a call to stop and smell the roses, and it has even provided us with the bouquet.

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