Used book – Traité de l'agitation ordinaire, Philippe Trétiack

If you find yourself talking on the phone while driving, using a crackling fax machine and mobile phone, burning your fingers in the microwave, slamming on the accelerator, experiencing sudden bursts of excitement, worrying about fads, looks, and trends, running from morning till night, jumping from a TGV to a plane, or having one, two, or more relationships simultaneously, then look no further: you are a Manic.

Is this serious?

No, because if agitation is a drug, our fin-de-siècle ailment, it is also a source of intense jubilation.

This Treatise on Ordinary Agitation is a guide for all those burning with an excess of energy. It is a hymn to intoxication, to movement, to swing, to dervish style.

Philippe Trétiack is a senior reporter at Elle. An essayist, he is the author of, among other works, La Vie blindée (1992) and L'Amérique de Warhol (1997).