SOURCE: Kobak, Annette. “Financial Alarm under the Palms.” Times Literary Supplement (31 May 2002): 32.

In the following review, Kobak places The Art of Travel within de Botton's literary oeuvre and praises his unconventional approach to his subject matter.

“Bad art”, Alain de Botton suggests in The Art of Travel, “could be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.” By this criterion, de Botton's own writing is getting to be better and better art. In his last three books, How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy and now The Art of Travel, he has shed the sometimes gawky concern about “where it's at”, and the fiction where philosophy kept breaking out, like Dr Johnson's cheerfulness, to create a form of belles-lettres which is unique to him: polished, contemporary, full of wit and intelligence, helpful and above all illuminating.

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