The Optimist’s/Pessimist’s Handbook: A companion to hope and despair

The very first feel good/feel bad handbook, providing both inspiration and antidote with quotations, proverbs, statistics and diary extracts.

Are optimists just reckless dreamers? Are pessimists miserable doom-mongers or just erring on the side of caution? Is the glass half empty or half full?

Brilliantly compiled and beautifully written, this is a rich anthology of evidence from both sides of any argument. Covering everything from Beauty to Happiness, Patriotism to Walking, it is the perfect tool for squabbling families, a counterbalance for arguing couples and a mine of detail for the quarrelsome.

The Optimist on the Afterlife- My heaven will be filled with wonderful young men and dukes. (Dame Barbara Cartland) And the Pessimist- ‘That’s what Hell will be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead. (Samuel Beckett)