"The incisive and often hilarious story of one of our most interesting cultural phenomena: boredom. It's the feeling your grandma told you was only experienced by boring people. Some people say they're dying of it; others claim to have killed because of it. It's a key component of depression, creativity, and sex-toy advertisements. It's boredom, the subject of [this book], a delightful and at times moving take on the oft-derided emotion and how we deal with it. Deftly wrought from interviews, research, and personal experience, [this book] follows Mary Mann's search through history for the truth about boredom, spanning the globe, introducing a varied cast of characters. The Desert Fathers -- fourth-century Christian monks who made their homes far from civilization -- offer the first recorded accounts of lethargy; Thomas Cook, grandfather of the tourism industry, provided escape from the mundane for England's working class; and contemporarily, we meet couples who are disenchanted by mono