A humorous and philosophical trip through life from the Sunday Times bestselling author

A philosophical trip through life filled with warmth, humour and wise words – and including a new postscript written exclusively for this edition

What is the art of living well? Do you ever feel like Reinhold Niebuhr when he wrote the words “Every time I find the meaning of life, they change it”? Well you’ve come to the right place, because Daniel Klein once did too.

Fifty years ago, Klein began filling a notebook with short quotations from the world’s greatest thinkers – from Epicurus and Emerson to Camus and Beckett. Now he revisits the wisdom he so relished in his youth, bringing with him the wealth of rich experiences that eight decades of life have bestowed upon him. With his inimitable charm and insight, Klein gives us a delightful meditation on existence and all its possible meanings, making philosophy resonate with our everyday lives as only he can.

“Every time I find the meaning of life, they change it.” The words of Reinhold Niebuhr provide the title and set the tone for what is a wryly humorous look at some of the great philosophical pronouncements on the most important question we can face.

Daniel Klein’s philosophical journey began fifty years ago with just this conundrum; he began an undergraduate degree in philosophy at Harvard University to glean some clue as to what the answer could be. Now in his seventies, Klein looks back at the wise words of the great philosophers and considers how his own life has measured up. Told with the same brilliantly dry sense of humour that made Travels with Epicurus a Sunday Times bestseller, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It is a pithy, dry, and eminently readable commentary on one of the most profound subjects there is.