The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
Selected Book Details
- Paperback
- Edition: Reprint
- Author: Eric Weiner
- Publisher: Twelve
- Release Date: January 2009
- ISBN-10: 044669889X
- ISBN-13: 9780446698894
- List Price: $13.99
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryPart 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) |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Is Happiness an Inside Job?
Rating:
Eric Weiner has managed to weave a travelogue, an academic review of serious scientific studies about happiness and his own tales of woe into a delightful and entertaining book. I highly recommend this book. It begs the question - is happiness an inside job?
Truly worth the read!!
Fantastic insight into people and places!
Rating:
This book is fantastic! I'm usually a very quick reader and I found myself perusing very slowly through this book to make sure I didn't miss anything.
Good condition - delivery way too long
Rating: 
This book was in great condition and also a wonderful read.
I requested a quick delivery and it still took over
a week to receive. Way too long for the extra money I
had to pay.
Highly Recommend
Rating:
Well, I'm only three chapters into it, but I love it so far. Weiner is a really great writer, balancing fascinating stories and history, with a pointed wit that is not overused either.
It's broken ...
More down into about 10 chapters, each a different location that apparently ranks high on the world happiness levels. He goes to each and tries to discover what contributes to the happiness at each place and finds excellent explanations. Highly informative, and very entertaining as well.
I highly recommend this book, so far....
Intriguing insights but falls short in the end
Rating:
Weiner came up with a fascinating question to explore: how much is happiness related to place. But this book is more a collection of interviews with some interesting (and some not-so-interesting) people in about a dozen countries ranging from Switzerland (happy in their neutrality and limited expectations, says Weiner) to Bhutan, where they index Gross National Happiness. Given that Weiner is a radio corresponent for NPR, it's not surprising the book's focus is interviews. But the focus on individuals overlooked one of the central sources of happiness: a sense of belonging or community.
Another glaring omission: In his global travels, Weiner never visits Africa! I won't overgeneralize, as Weiner ofter does, but in my travels in Africa I've found that many people are remarkably happy and joyful despite overwhelming hardship. This would have been worth exploring. And his section on the US, just 4 or 5 pages about Asheville and his brief note on Florida, seem like an afterthought. I would have appreciated a deeper exploration of happiness in the US, where we have so much material wealth but where the pursuit of individuality leads to so much isolation and loneliness.
I did enjoy parts of this book and found some comments illuminating, and Weiner has done his homework and shares some intriguing nuggets of research. But in the end "Bliss" felt like a trifle when, if executed well, it could have been immensely satisfying.
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