The Wonderbox: Curious histories of how to live - Tapa dura

The Wonderbox is a cornucopia of delights. Completely fascinating, beautifully written and brimming with insights that challenge our entrenched and predictable ways of seeing and doing, it draws on an amazing range of stories from the history of human culture to explain how we can find true meaning in life. Every thinking home should have one! (Michael Wood, historian, film maker and author of The Story of England)

The author's enthusiasm for direct solutions to modern dilemmas is infectious. (Sue Gerhardt, author of Why Love Matters and The Selfish Society)

Think Alain de Botton meets Niall Ferguson ... a wonderful mix of social history and good ideas for everyday living. (Robert Kelsey, author of What’s Stopping You?)

A fascinating rattlebag of intelligent, stimulating essays. The Wonderbox is very much in the mould of Alain de Botton's bestsellers: densely researched but readable, wise and witty. By taking the long view to debunk some myths of modern life (house husbands are not such a new invention; family meals were never golden times of civilised conversation), Krznaric frees us from passing trends to answer the fundamental question: how should be live now? (Carl Wilkinson Financial Times)

Taking one hefty theme per chapter - such as love, work or home - Krznaric serves up a fascinating series of accounts of how we got where we are now, sifting the valuable from the worthless with an impressive indifference to current fashions. After reading The Wonderbox, endlessly shopping for stuff you already have will seem distinctly strange (Reader's Digest)

Ranging from such lofty issues as love and death to the finer points of carpentry, Krznaric offers a compendium of fascinating and quirky anecdotes and character studies, refiguring them as practical fables for everyday life. Though a pleasure to read cover-to-cover, this book lends itself perfectly to the occasional reader looking for workable solutions to any dilemma. The scope of the stories and the versatility of Krznaric's interpretations are at once fascinating and illuminating. (Emily Best We Love This Book)

This modern guide to living a good life by nurturing relationships, giving more to others, and resisting the self-imposed tyrannies of work, time, ambition and achievement, is entertaining and instructive. (Iain Finlayson, 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. (Clare English BBC Radio Scotland Book Cafe)

An intriguing upmarket self-help guide. (The Guardian)

Inspiration for bold experiments in living. (The Oxford Times)