For Alain de Botton philosophy seems the natural place to seek answers to the riddles of human unhappiness, promising a way to 'change one's life for the better, to become a somewhat less disturbed, paranoid, inadequate, lovesick and panicked individual'. Here he pairs six philosophers - Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - with six everyday problems to which he feels they can give the most helpful and fascinating solutions.