Entertaining, informative, amd funny

books:


	• The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World Eric Weiner Twelve, 2008 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 68 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Geography of Bliss

Excellent reading!!! Bypasses all the acedemics, the statistics, the historians, the perceptions - goes straight to the people who experience their bliss or lack of it.

What a laugh!

I loved this book. I am the grumpy type Weiner describes in the book...the type who needs to laugh both for his health and for his happiness. I laughed out loud, snorted and hooted throughout the book. My wife was constantly asking me to pipe down and not wake the babies. Also, I learned a ton. Weiner has done an excellent job of synthesizing the research on happiness into a digestable and hilarious product.

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A Pied Piper Approach ...

Sharp. Witty. Provactive. Weiner travels the globe, ostensibly to discover the "happiest" country in the world. But like the Pied Piper he mesmerizes us with his lyrical insight, until the question in our hearts becomes at last, not what makes the REST of the world happy, but what in fact makes US happy. (Here's a clue fellow Americans: It's not more money!) I was happy reading this book. I'll be equally happy, I'm sure, reading it again.

Do Not Be Deceived By The Title

Do not be deceived by the subtitle "One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World". Mr. Weiner begins his one year quest to find the happiest places in the world in The Netherlands, where he analyzes professor Ruut Veenhoven's "World Database of Happiness". This database comprises numerous countries ranked based on responses to happiness surveys. Listed in the top five are Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and Finland, only two of which the author travels to; Switzerland and Iceland. Clearly, this is hardly a search for the happiest places on earth, especially given the fact that Mr. Weiner includes countries such as India (ranked 45-46) and Moldova (ranked 93) in his itenirary. Moldova leaves him depressed for weeks following the conclusion of his trip there.

Mr. Weiner's true objective is to define happiness and how to achieve it by visiting a mix of uber happy countries (e.g. Switzerland, Iceland, The Netherlands), middle range happy countries (India, Thailand), and the bottom (Moldova....Molwhat?), and to that end, he offers excellent advice on universal rules of happiness.

Thanks to his credentials as an NPR journalist who has traveled to more than 30 countries to report on human misery and suffering (Iraq and Afghanistan included), Mr. Weiner arranges meetings with key individuals in each country to solicit their opinion on happiness.

Weiner's witty and informative book will appeal to a wide range of audiences including travel enthusiasts, self-help junkies, the philosophical minds, and basically everyone else excluding the Boston Celtics who will face the L.A. Lakers for the 2008 NBA championships following their game 6 win against Detroit last Friday.

For pictures that serve as an excellent supplement to the chapter on Bhutan, visit Eric Weiner's web site.

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Entertaining, informative, amd funny

"The Geography of Bliss" is a very enjoyable read. The author travels to several different countries to try to determine how high (or low) the overall level of happiness of a particular country is and how a country's culture defines happiness. I'm a little wary of someone drawing conclusions that may seem to stereotype entire nations, so I took this book with the proverbial grain of salt. That being said, "The Geography of Bliss" is both very interesting and quite funny; I laughed out loud several times. Weiner is a self-admitted grump who isn't a particularly happy person himself, which made Weiner's journey not just academic, but personal as well.
Each chapter of the book covers a particular country visited by Weiner. I especially enjoyed the chapter on Moldova, which may be a bit ironic as Weiner found it to be an extremely depressing place. Weiner also interweaves his experiences with theories on happiness from philosophers through the ages, and with current scientific research on "selective well being." It is also interesting to learn how governments have gotten involved in the happiness "business." Many of Weiner's conclusions as to what makes people happy may be common sense, but others may surprise you. If you like travel, learning, and laughing, give "The Geography of Bliss" a try.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the reader from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness." The book uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is. Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Qatar, awash in petrodollars, find joy in all that cash? Is the King of Bhutan a visionary for his initiative to calculate Gross National Happiness? Why is Asheville, North Carolina so damn happy? With engaging wit and surprising insights, Eric Weiner answers those questions and many others, offering travelers of all moods some interesting new ideas for sunnier destinations and dispositions. (2007)

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