Myself and Other More Important Matters

The author of The Age of Unreason, The Empty Raincoat, and The Elephant and the Flea shares more of his bestselling brand of wisdom concerning the big choices we have to make in life.

In Charles Handy’s most ambitious book yet, the well-known business guru draws on the lessons of his own life to help us map out the main stages of our lives, and shows us how to navigate through the tough decisions we have to make at every phase. He gives us his personal thoughts on life’s big questions and turning points, mining his own experience to tell us what he’s learned along the way.

From lessons his father taught him at the Vicarage in Kildare where he grew up, to what he learned in Borneo in his days working for Royal Dutch Shell, and later, in America, where corporate scandals have shaken our understanding of what is ethical and what is acceptable in business, and finally in Italy, where on a whim he decided to buy and fix up an old house in Tuscany.

Throughout the book, he asks us to look at what we value — is it money? Family? Time? What is the role of work in our life? What do we find fulfilling? As our working lives blend ever more into the rest of who we are, Charles Handy has emerged as an invaluable social thinker. It is hard to imagine a better or wiser guide to life’s big questions.