Review of The Disease of Boredom: From Ancient Philosophy to Modern Psychology. By Josefa Ros Velasco. Princeton University Press. 232 pp. $32.

Drawing on verses from Proverbs, St. Augustine warned Christians, including those “who had escaped the dangers of ignorance and concupiscence,” to “watch out, for weariness and boredom may kill you.” When asked how saints spend their time in heaven, however, Augustine declared that “none of us must imagine it’s going to be so boring there.” Work will not be toilsome, nor rest slothful, and no one shall want. Joy and happiness will be fully realized, and “there shall be praise of God without surfeit and without stint.”

In The Disease of Boredom, Josefa Ros Velasco (a professor at Complutense University of Madrid and the founder and president of the International Society of Boredom Studies) draws on an army of clergy, philosophers, and writers from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, and Romantic eras to demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, neither “pathologies” of boredom nor distinctions between different forms of it are modern creations. She then examines........

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