<p>Any Baedeker will tell us <i>where</i> we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us <i>how</i> and <i>why. </i>With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to <b>How Proust Can Save Your Life</b><i>, </i>de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow. <br><br>Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. <b>The Art of Travel</b> is a wise and utterly original book. Don't leave home without it.<br><br><i>From the Trade Paperback edition.</i>