The School of Life has put together an ideal library that can speak helpfully to our individual needs and longings. Ranging across history and drawing on world literature, offering the same essential thing: true friends through the complex places of life with kindness and wisdom.

There are about 130 million books in the world – and they are being added to at a rate of 4 million a year or so. Which ones, therefore, should we really read? What are the books that count? Which ones are going to make a real difference to us in the limited time we have?

This is The School of Life's answer: a definitive list of the 100 books that we feel should truly matter to anyone who cares about their development and growth, a 100 books that are guaranteed to inspire, console and uplift us. We find books from all over the world, some very well known, others fascinatingly unfamiliar, united by a common ability to help us grow into the best versions of ourselves and to combat anxiety, despair and loneliness.

This book answers one of the great questions we all face: how to assemble the perfect set of books with which we can acquire self-understanding, calm and emotional maturity; how to build ourselves a true library for happiness.