The News: A User's Manual Hardcover – February 11, 2014

Reading De Botton is like visiting a monastery, the beautiful sentences flow gradually, the thoughtful and peaceful architecture of the book is revealed and the reader discovers all sorts of insights he never thought of. Having said this, I quickly add that I do not agree with many of De Botton's Utopian prescriptions for a more enlightening world of news. As long as he dissects why we spend so much time with the news, he is marvelous at revealing our foibles. When he becomes a philosopher who wishes that our daily ingestion of news serve to better us, to teach us the good life, to improve our awareness of the real world, his prescriptions are not good sociology. For example, when he suggests the news writer manipulate his material to make it more artistic and therefore more educative (page 82), he inadvertently tangos with a prescription for propaganda. So the central question of this review remains: should you read this book? By all means. De Botton is a very gifted writer, consequently you always learn from him. Like your visit to a marvelously preserved monastery, you may not want to take the vows, but the visit enriches you.

I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is you'll come away wondering if you should ever believe anything you read in the news again. The good news is you'll be better prepared to interpret whatever news you choose to read. There are subjects De Botton covers where you'll probably find yourself saying, "Eh, I don't know about that," but overall he shows how the various sections of newspapers/magazines; e.g., political, business are designed to convey their message. One of the more interesting things to me personally was his statement that bias in reporting is not always a bad thing, that if you know the bias of a particular news organization, you can learn to interpret it and decide whether or not that bias is correct or not, depending on your own bias of course. <g>

As someone that is suffering from “infoxication” on a daily basis, I picked up Alain’s book hoping to get both an explanation and a different perspective on why I’m more and more unable to care about the stream of information that hits me every hour. Now that I've finished reading, it has fulfilled my expectations completely, with the addition of providing some hints and advice on how the news should change in the way they deliver facts to us. I am now seeing things related to the news system from a slight different perspective than before, but that subtle change has greatly reduced the stress I was feeling before. Alain’s revision of how the news are deliver to us and his analysis of the flaws of that delivery has been very refreshing, in the sense that once you see some of his explanations it becomes evident why you felt like you did, and at the same time it’s been motivating to try and consume information in other ways and with different perspective than before. For some areas, it even has been a relief and a excuse why I shouldn’t be bothered to grasp what’s going on every hour or so.The book is divided in chapters which mirror the usual sections you find in a newspaper to group news together: Foreign Affaires, Celebrities, Economics, etc. In each, the author uses real life examples to make his point and ends with a recommendation on how news could be improved in that specific section. The language is sometimes so rich that it can be a bit hard to follow for a non-english person like me, so certain pieces need a second read. Apart from that, I’ve enjoyed the book very much and do recommend it to others interested in information consumption.

Continuing my consumption of Alain de Botton non-fictions brings me his book called "The News". Essentially a philosophical take on how the news came about along with its importance and impact on population.De Botton as per usual takes you on a journey through the various facets of a newspaper such as politics, economy, world news, celebrity, disaster etc. He provides many examples and demonstrates the both conscious and subconscious impacts do the way behave in both the short term and long term.It certainly wasn't one of the best de Botton books that I have read. However, given I'm a big consumer of written news, it was interesting to challenge my beliefs and reactions to the written word in tabloids and determine whether I should read it differently going forward. A user manual indeed!Three key takeaways from the book:1. Two emotions in which we’re likely to become extremely well acquainted the longer we spend with the news are fear and anger.2. For all their talk of education, modern societies neglect to examine by far the most influential means by which their populations are educated; the news.3. The impulse to admire is an ineradicable and important feature of our psyches. Ignoring or condemning it won’t kill it off; it will simply force it underground, where it will lurk untended and undeveloped, prone to latch on to inappropriate targets. Rather than try to suppress our love of celebrity, we ought to channel it in optimally intelligent and fruitful directions.

Alain de Botton offers us again an innovative and amusing philosophical review of a current phenomenon, this time the impact of the news on our lives. He is very effective in analyzing our emotions and the unconscious forces that play in us when we expose ourselves to the news. He also takes the opportunity to analyze some fundamental facts about modern human life. This is the only philosopher that manages to make me laugh, with his well selected examples and style.

Started off well comparing the role of news to the traditional roles of religion. Most of the book is then commonplace observations about various news contents and highly idealistic advice (to the news?) on how to improve things. Entertaining though.

Anyone can lament the news but changing it is another matter

Thought provoking but a tad repetitive.

What starts off as an attempt to point out the ridiculous and sometimes disturbing reliance on and interest in the News, descends into an unbalanced and rather paternalistic essay. However, as usual, the author succeeds in provoking thought.

This book is the kind of redux the digital age really needs. It's all you need to know about to how to build cognition out of information overload. Very well played Alain de Botton.