The Geography of Bliss

Amazon lists some 270,564 publications that have something to do with Happiness, the preponderance of which are serious, in-depth, carefully researched explorations of what has become the science of Positive Psychology. I've read several many of such books, but it wasn't until I found Eric Weiner's book, The Geography of Bliss that I felt truly happy about the study of happiness - mostly because Weiner is the first "happiness author" I've encountered that actually has fun researching and writing about happiness.

Weiner, a correspondent for NPR in New York, Miami and, currently, Washington, D.C., begins his search for happiness in Holland, where he meets with Ruut Veenhoven, the intrepid researcher and compiler of the World Database of Happiness. Veenhoven's database identifies the relative happiness of citizens of different nations. Weiner visits some of those nations (Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Moldova, Thialand, Great Britain, India and even the United States), hoping to discover how happiness manifests itself in each.

The result is spiritual travelogue, a funny, personal, and revealing exploration of the "states of happiness," so to speak, as it were.

I don't want to tell you where he found the greatest happiness, personally or politically, because that discovery is the heart of the book, and that's where you will probably reach the most provocative and profound conclusions about the state of your own happiness.

The Geography of Bliss is a study of the politics of joy. Revealing, honest, entertaining, fun to read, fun to think about. A profoundly rewarding travel book that is probably the happiest book on happiness you've ever read.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith