During the National Hockey League lockout in early 2005, Toronto-based sports journalist David Timmins has little to write about until baseball player Jose Canseco releases his book on steroid abuse, and Timmins boss sends him on a steroid scandal of his own to spring training in Florida. He receives a romantic surprise on the plane ride; absorbs a career shock on the Ides of March; requires his sisters New York condo couch for a night; spends Easter in a rural Ontario town he has never been in before; and yes, he solves the NHL lockout problem with the aid of an inspired cheese maker- of course.

Dawdler. "Layabout. Shit-heel. Loser. For as long as mankind has had to work for a living, which is to say ever since the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, people who work have disparaged those who prefer not to. This glossary, which closely examines the etymology and history of hundreds of idler-specific terms and phrases (whether pejorative, positive, or simply descriptive), aims not merely to correct popular misconceptions about idling, but to serve as a preliminary foundation for a new mode of thinking about working and not-working. It is intended to be specifically useful for journalists, who will never again have any excuse for describing an indolent person as languid, Epicurean behaviour as dissipated, or an idler as a slacker. Mark Kingwell's introduction offers a thoughtful but playful defence of the idler as the highest form of life, enlisting support from literary and philosophical sources (Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Russell, Bataille) as well as making some key distinctions: leisure vs. 'leisure time'; idler vs. slacker; not doing vs. failing to do. Kingwell also makes note of some lurking problems, such as the Idler's Conundrum, whereby dedicated idling succumbs to a form of work ethic, and Positional Goods Creep (per Veblen), whereby idling becomes a shorthand for social status and wealth. The Idler's Glossary is destined to become the Devil's Dictionary for the idling classes, necessary reading for any and all who wish to introduce more truly free time into daily lives.

An irresistible invitation to reject the work ethic and enjoy life's simple pleasures (such as laughing, drinking and lying in the open air), Robert Louis Stevenson's witty and seminal essay on the joys of idleness is accompanied here by his writings on, among other things, growing old, visiting unpleasant places and the overwhelming experience of falling in love. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are