Book excerpt: Teach Yourself To Live is a self-help classic from a very distant age. Then, as now, the self-help world was dominated by energetic Americans preaching the secrets of limitless achievement. But from the off this delightfully dry, wise and pragmatic book offers something quite different - a sober, somewhat stern, but ultimately generous guide to living in a world blighted by modernity and taxes. Nostalgic, funny and charming, this book somewhat bad-temperedly insists the reader not get ideas above his or her station - yet it ends up delivering a bracing, empowering guide to knowing yourself and living well (despite it all). Oliver Burkeman called this book "a place of stability and solid ground amid the rushing omnibuses". Full of fascinating and unexpected revelations, Teach Yourself To Live flips self-help on its head and provides a marvellous insight into the way we used to feel about life and how to live it. Since 1938, millions of people have learned to do the things they love with Teach Yourself. Welcome to the how-to guides that changed the modern world.