Philosophy Books

This feels like a book you live with rather than simply finish. David Whyte writes with a calm, searching wisdom that turns ordinary moments, family love, travel, loss, and belonging into something quietly profound. If you like poetry that feels human, spacious, and returning, this is the kind of collection readers keep close and revisit when life shifts.

Considering a trip to lush, vibrant Costa Rica? This thorough guide from 1996 might make for nostalgic reading or provide historical insights into how the country's sights and offerings have evolved. It details travel tips, accommodation overviews, restaurant suggestions, shopping spots,and cultural activities—everything you might want reviewed before embarking on a Costa Rican journey.

Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow. Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don’t leave home without it.