The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

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Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
Weiner spent a decade as a foreign correspondent reporting from such discontented locales as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Indonesia. Unhappy people living in profoundly unstable states, he notes, inspire pathos and make for good copy, but not for good karma. So Weiner, admitted grump and self-help book aficionado, undertook a year's research to travel the globe, looking for the "unheralded happy places." The result is this book, equal parts laugh-out-loud funny and philosophical, a journey into both the definition of and the destination for true contentment. Apparently, the happiest places on earth include, somewhat unexpectedly, Iceland, Bhutan, and India. Weiner also visits the country deemed most malcontent, Moldova, and finds real merit in the claim. But the question remains: What makes people happy? Is it the freedom of the West or the myriad restrictions of Singapore? The simple ashrams of India or the glittering shopping malls of Qatar? From the youthful drunkenness of Iceland to the despond of Slough, a sad but resilient town in Heathrow's flight path, Weiner offers wry yet profound observations about the way people relate to circumstance and fate. Both revealing and inspirational, perhaps the best thing about this hilarious trip across four continents is that for the reader, the "geography of bliss" is wherever they happen to find themselves while reading it. (Spring 2008 Selection)

Daniel Gilbert

In the last two decades, psychologists and economists have learned a lot about happiness, including who's happy and who isn't. The Dutch are, the Romanians aren't, and Americans are somewhere in between. Eric Weiner—a peripatetic journalist and self-proclaimed grump—wanted to know why. So with science as his compass, he spent a year visiting the world's most and least happy places, and the result is a charming, funny and illuminating travelogue called The Geography of Bliss…One of the ineluctable laws of travel is that most companions are beguiling at the beginning and annoying by the end. Weiner's company wears surprisingly well. It takes a chapter or two to decide you like him, and another to realize that you like him a lot, but by the time the trip is over, you find yourself hoping that you'll hit the road together again someday. The Geography of Bliss is a journey too good to be rare.
—The Washington Post

More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews

From The Critics

Weiner visits not only happy countries but also a couple that fall into the sad camp, as he puzzles out the sources of relative discontent. Chapters follow a trajectory, from initial annoyance ("Damn the efficient, competent Swiss to hell") to grudging appreciation ("Swiss toilets are indeed clean") to outright admiration ("I'm in love. The object of my amour is not a woman or even a person. It is the Swiss rail network"). He adeptly weaves his own discoveries and others' academic conclusions into his travelogue; not once does it feel as if information had been systematically downloaded into a chapter, or narrative threads elaborately woven to make data fit.
—The New York Times

The Barnes & Noble Review

As a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, Eric Weiner has spent much of his career traveling to some of the world's least happy places -- Iraq and Afghanistan among them. It bummed him out. Undertaking his first book, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World, he decided it was time for a change of approach. "What if, I wondered, I spent a year traveling the globe, seeking out not the world's well-trodden trouble spots but, rather, its unheralded happy places?" he writes. "Places that possess, in spades, one or more of the ingredients that we consider essential to the hearty stew of happiness: money, pleasure, spirituality, family, and chocolate, among others." So he set about seeking a variety of Shangri-Las: testing tolerance and Moroccan hashish in the Netherlands; learning to accept loss and relinquish regret in Bhutan; contemplating the lavish wealth and lack of culture (and taxes) in Qatar; marveling at the darkness, drunkenness, and remarkable creativity in Iceland; eschewing introspection and embracing fun in Thailand; looking for contrast in miserable Moldova, "the world's least happy country." Along the way, Weiner gathers insights from many wise and well-traveled people, relates the latest findings in the field of happiness research, and turns enough pleasing phrases to keep even the surliest reader...happy. --Amy Reiter

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780446580267
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication date: 1/3/2008
Pages: 352
Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.10 (h) x 1.30 (d)

Meet the Author

Eric Weiner, an award-winning foreign correspondent for NPR and a former reporter for the New York Times, has written stories from more than three dozen countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Indonesia. His commentary has appeared in The New Republic, The International Herald Tribune, and The Los Angeles Times, and he writes the popular "How They Do It" column for Slate. He has lived in New Delhi, Jerusalem and Tokyo.

Read an Excerpt

The Geography of Bliss

By Eric Weiner

Twelve

Copyright © 2007 Eric Weiner
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-446-58026-7

Introduction

My bags were packed and provisions loaded. I was ready for adventure. And so, on a late summer afternoon, I dragged my reluctant friend Drew off to explore new worlds and, I hoped, find some happiness along the way. I've always believed that happiness is just around the corner. The trick is finding the right corner.

Not long into our journey, Drew grew nervous. He pleaded with me to turn back, but I insisted we press on, propelled by an irresistible curiosity about what lay ahead. Danger? Magic? I needed to know, and to this day I'm convinced I would have reached wherever it was I was trying to reach had the Baltimore County Police not concluded, impulsively I thought at the time, that the shoulder of a major thoroughfare was no place for a couple of five-year-olds.

Some people acquire the travel bug. Others are born with it. My affliction, if that's what it is, went into remission for many years following my aborted expedition with Drew. It resurfaced after college with renewed fury. I desperately wanted to see the world, preferably on someone else's dime. But how? I had no marketable skills, a stunted sense of morality and a gloomy disposition. I decided to become a journalist.

As a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, I traveled to places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia. Unhappy places. On one level, this made perfect sense. Unconsciously, I was observing the first law of writing: Write about what you know. And so, notebook in hand, tape recorder slung over my shoulder, I roamed the world telling the stories of gloomy, unhappy people. The truth is that unhappy people, living in profoundly unhappy places, make for good stories. They tug at heart strings and inspire pathos.

They can also be a real bummer.

What if, I wondered, I spent a year traveling the globe seeking out not the world's well-trodden trouble spots but, rather, its unheralded happy places? Places that possess, in spades, one or more of the ingredients that we consider essential to the hearty stew of happiness: money, pleasure, spirituality, family, chocolate, among others. Around the world, dozens of what-ifs play themselves out every day. What if you lived in a country that was fabulously wealthy and no one paid taxes? What if you lived in a country where failure is an option? What if you lived in a country so democratic you voted eight times a year? What if you lived in a country where excessive thinking is discouraged? Would you be happy then?

That's exactly what I intended to find out, and the result of this admittedly harebrained experiment is the book you now hold in your hands.

I was born in the Year of the Smiley Face: 1963. That's when a graphic designer from Worcester, Massachusetts named Harvey Ball invented the now ubiquitous yellow grinning graphic. Originally, Ball's creation was designed to cheer up people who worked at, of all places, an insurance company, but it has since become synonymous with the frothy, quintessentially American brand of happiness.

Ball's cheery icon never worked its magic on me. I am not a happy person, never have been. As a child, my favorite Winnie-the-Pooh character was Eeyore.

For most of human history, I would be considered normal. Happiness, in this life, on this Earth, was a prize reserved for the gods and the fortunate few. Today, though, happiness is not only considered possible for anyone to attain, it is expected. Thus I, and millions of others, suffer from the uniquely modern malady that historian Darrin McMahon calls "the unhappiness of not being happy." It is no fun at all.

And so, like many others, I've worked at it. I never met a self-help book I didn't like. My bookshelf is a towering, teetering monument to existential angst, brimming with books informing me that happiness lies deep inside of me. If I'm not happy, they counsel, then I'm not digging deep enough.

This axiom of the self-help industrial complex is so deeply ingrained as to be self-evident. There's only one problem: It's not true. Happiness is not inside of us, but out there. Or, to be more precise, the line between out there and in here is not as sharply defined as we think.

The late Harvard professor Alan Watts, in one of his wonderful lectures on Eastern philosophy, used this analogy: "If I draw a circle, most people, when asked what I have drawn, will say I have drawn a circle or a disc, or a ball. Very few people will say I've drawn a hole in the wall, because most people think of the inside first, rather than thinking of the outside. But actually these two sides go together-you cannot have what is 'in here' unless you have what is 'out there.'"

In other words, where we are is vital to who we are. By "where," I'm speaking not only of our physical environment but also our cultural environment. Culture is the sea we swim in. So pervasive, so all consuming, that we fail to notice its existence until we step out of it. It matters more than we think.

With our words, we subconsciously conflate geography and happiness. We speak of searching for happiness, of finding contentment, as if these were locations in an atlas, actual places that we could visit if only we had the proper map and the right navigational skills. Anyone who has taken a vacation to, say, some Caribbean island and had flash through their mind the uninvited thought "I could be happy here" knows what I mean.

The word lurking just behind the curtain is, of course, that tantalizing, slippery concept known as paradise. It has beguiled us humans for some time now. Plato imagined the Blessed Isles, a place where happiness flowed like the warm Mediterranean waters. Until the 18th century, people believed that Biblical paradise, the Garden of Eden, was a real place. It appeared on maps, located, ironically, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now modern-day Iraq.

European explorers prepared for expeditions in search of paradise by learning Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. I set out on my journey, my search for paradise, speaking not Aramaic but another obscure language, the modern liturgy of bliss spoken by the new apostles of the emerging science of happiness. I brush up on terms like "positive affect" and "hedonic adaptation." I carry no Bible, just a few Lonely Planet guides and a conviction that, as Henry Miller said, "One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things."

And so, on a typically steamy day in Miami (itself some people's concept of paradise), I pack my bags and depart my home on what I know full well is a fool's errand, every bit as foolish as the one I tried to pull off as a peripatetic five-year-old. As the author Eric Hoffer put it, "The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness." That's okay. I'm already unhappy. I have nothing to lose.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner Copyright © 2007 by Eric Weiner . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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PixieRM

Posted May 9, 2009

Great topic, fun facts about happiness

Suggested to me in the steam room after mentioning that I had recently returned from living in Switzerland, I bought the book a week later. Not only did I thrill to see that the Swiss contacts were our friends, but I got hooked on wondering what made each country unique and "happy". The research on happiness (and learning that it is a verifiable academic discipline) was a pleasant finding and the reasons different countries self-assessed as "happy" ranged widely. The author's quirks intrude a few too many times; his likes and dislikes made this reader wonder if she might have found more to like about the countries than he did, more willingness to participate and not stand back and judge.

It is a light read and a satisfying one, despite the above statement. Iceland was clearly a favorite -- of the author; thus, also of the readers. Friends who had worked in Moldova and learned to love the resiliance of the people would have presented a very different picture of the country than the author did as he rushed to put it behind him.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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missliz

Posted September 7, 2009

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Great, Clear Read

Really enjoyed this book. Eric Weiner both cracks me up and intrigues me-- and the reader can most definitely tell what his favorite countries may have been (Bhutan and Iceland) because his writing shines in these chapters. I found it to be well researched and it seems like he really tried to meet with people who would help him to understand each country better. Already loaned the book out. I most definitely recommend it.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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KalieLyn

Posted October 24, 2011

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Excellent Read!

We all want to know the "secret of happiness" and where we should move to find this "bliss", yet where do we begin? Uprooting his own life for the quest, The Geography of Bliss author, Eric Weiner, takes his readers on an adventure to the happiest - and not so happy - countries of the world. Written with humor, knowledge and unashamed candor, this book is hard to put down.

Readers will enjoy the different countries that are featured. For each country, Eric Weiner explores the elements and people of the country, what makes it a happy or unhappy place, and asks its citizens one simple question: "are you happy?". His wit and description of his travels have some similarity to that of Bill Bryson's and yet, Weiner stands out as a travel writer on his own.

While one more "unhappy" country could have been explored, the 9 places that were featured are ones that are seldom in other travel stories. It was very interesting to read about Moldova, Qatar and Iceland, along with all of the other countries.

The Geography of Bliss is a recommended read. It is funny and thought-provoking and will be a book that you pass on to others.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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SuzeJones

Posted May 17, 2010

I Also Recommend:

Amusing EPL From a Guy

I really liked this book...it's the kind of book that kept me glued to the pages, reading for hours. I would have read it one setting if it weren't for my family!

'Geography' is a guy's rendition of EPL (Eat, Pray, Love...Elizabeth Gilbert},i.e. the search to soothe one's soul MINUS THE DRAMA! It even features the obligatory stay at an ashram in India. Thoroughly enjoyable and permeated with a sense of the wry.

I especially enjoyed the visits to those cultures whose happiness seems just beyond the means of ordinary working folks (like me!).

Just as enjoyable as the reports on the ordinary happy cultures are the contrasts with other types of cultures.

I'm happy I read this book, which means it really must have done its job, considering it is about seeking out bliss.

I'm happy to recommend The Geography of Bliss!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted May 5, 2010

Inspiring!

I loved this book - I found it so thought provoking. Interesting process to figure out where the happiest place on earth might be - and makes you think about what makes people happy and why. I've given it as a gift several times since I read it and everyone loves it. Highly recommend.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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DarcyBeeKind

Posted April 26, 2010

A Different Kind of Geography Lesson

Eric Weiner, a self-described "grump," hops around the globe in a yearlong search of how people of various countries embody happiness. The Geography of Bliss is a travelogue with an appealing twist - to "search for the happiest places in the world." The reader travels along with Weiner to ten different countries. At each stop in his journey, Weiner provides the reader with entertaining descriptions as he works to understand what makes people of a particular country.happy. Happiness takes on many definitions throughout his travels; however, the author does not always find this bliss during his stops. In fact, the description of his experiences in one country left me feeling downright depressed, until I pulled my head out of the book and readjusted to my beautiful surroundings (I read this book while on a three-month stint in southern Germany - quite a happy place with those Bavarians and their Weissbeir).

Weiner organizes The Geography of Bliss with each chapter dedicated to a single country - he visits the Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Moldova, Thailand, Great Britain, India, and his home country of the United States. Your country is not on the list? Please do not let this discourage you from picking up the book! Each chapter is a chance to understand another culture and to explore a different route to your own personal happiness. Weiner notes "Culture is the sea we swim in - so pervasive, so all-consuming, that we fail to notice its existence until we step out of it." You can learn more about how happiness is exemplified within your own culture and countrymen by stepping out of it - all without leaving your favorite reading chair.

Fair warning for readers from counties included in this book: These are Weiner's observations of HIS experience, in your country, over a short period of time. This is a grand opportunity to view the chapter on your country as constructive criticism from an outsider looking in, to consider this new perspective on your homeland for all it has to offer. Even though Weiner is an insider to my country - the United States - I agree with many of the seemingly negative points he makes. Even with the increase in material possessions (a constant drive for happiness here), the United States is no happier than in the 1950s when we had much less - an interesting point and something from which to learn. My dear friend, who is Indian, read the chapter on India and disagreed with much of Weiner's observations. We both, however, agreed with the majority of Weiner's notions on Switzerland, having both recently traveled there.

Weiner's search for bliss is rewarding and eye-opening. He reveals to the reader some of the peculiarities, the issues, and the assets of the countries visited - making our world a little bit smaller. At the end of his journeys, Weiner sums up his search for happiness with a bit of advice about where to find it - and, as you can guess, it is not found on a map.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted December 14, 2009

What a laugh

We read this for a book club. It is hilarous. Especially the rotten shark. I had never heard of it before. I love the insight on happiness for others in places and way I could never imagine.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted July 5, 2009

Easy fun read

great book to read on vacation. great for discussion in book clubs. covers an intersting topic of happiness

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Thiscarolina

Posted May 3, 2009

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Not "enlightning", but an easy and fun reading

In this book the author takes us along a search for happy places based on resarchers' findings on what countries score higher on happy scales. It is an interesting perspective for an (mostly cranky) American in search for happiness, trying to find the secret to it. It takes us to countries scoring high and one example of a country consistently scoring low. I particularly enjoyed reading about Bhutan and Iceland, both examples of countries scoring high. Sometimes the author seems too narrow in his view of places and cultures, in spite of being a person who has worked and lived outside of the US. The are no big revelations, but it is easy to read and allows you to put in perspective your own happiness and the factors that may be related to it. I would definetively recommend it to my friends not as a part of their spiritual journey, but as a fun book to read this summer.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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ReviewYourBook.com

Posted March 11, 2009

What is happiness..

The Geography of Bliss
One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
Eric Weiner
ISBN: 9780446698894
Hachette, 2008
Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for ReviewYourBook.com, 02/09
4 stars
What is happiness..
What an odd time for this book to show up in my mail box. Just the night before I had turned off the news in disgust; I was tired of listening to bad things in the world. I even suggested that we need a new network-- GNN, Good News Network.
How do you define happiness? Eric Weiner is a self-declared grump. As a foreign correspondent, Weiner has traveled the world. Most of the stories he has covered were rather depressing. In his search for a definition of happiness, he traveled the world to 10 different countries. Happiness is different things to different people. The reader has the privilege of tagging along on as Weiner takes the reader with him on his quest for the Holy Gail, happiness. The Geography of Bliss will bring a smile to your face and maybe give you a different perspective on true happiness.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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GarudaSkyMiami

Posted September 9, 2011

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A most happy read

A happy find while browsing the aisles at a local bookstore. If I had to go on a trip, I'd like to go with Eric Weiner. His wry sense of humor and observations, would keep me laughing all the way. After a sample chapter about searching for happiness in the Netherlands, I decided to download and continue reading. Mr. Weiner's travelog is a delight. I found myself reading chapter after chapter hoping to go place and meeting people who kept me up late into the night. The chapters on Bhutan and India were fascinating. One day, I must make my way to Iceland. Ultimately, as Eric asserts, "Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It's conjunction. Connective tissue." And where's home? Where your heart is!
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MELKI

Posted August 10, 2011

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BLISSFUL READING

It's a fun book by a witty author. So I can say, this was one HAPPY reading!
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contradictionofsorts

Posted October 26, 2010

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Bravo To The Self-Proclaimed Grump For Trying.

Probably one of the best books written on the search of happiness without getting too technical, too scientific, too repetitive, too spiritual, too bias. Well-written and interesting throughout, the book is filled with mini epiphanies, insightful contradictions, humbling observations, cultural curiosities and wonderments. With a generous heap of clever wittiness (a bit odd from a self-proclaimed grump). Toward the end of the book, the author somehow temporarily digresses from all the happiness talk and simply writes about his travels. But overall, this read will inspire - either realization or pursuit of one's own happiness.*
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www.LindaBallouAuthor.com

Posted October 25, 2010

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Kiss my Bliss

The right to pursue happiness is guaranteed us in our constitution, but it seems most of us have chosen goals that don't bring us to that blissful state. Eric Weiner made it his mission to understand why and to figure out what constitutes happiness in different cultures about the globe. It seems American's for all their wealth and creature comforts are among the least happy of peoples and the Moldovans, a group I'd never heard of, are the most miserable. I looked forward to curling up with this fun, thought provoking romp each night before going to sleep. Weiner admits he falls back on generalizations about cultures, but he does it with self-deprecating humor. Be here "now" is the accepted mantra for happiness these days. The Thais say it more simply "Don't' think too much." The Dane's, declared the most content since there are no expectations in a socialized country, are not included in this journey. Perhaps, Mr. Weiner, a self-proclaimed grump, will take us there next time he explores what makes us glow from the inside out.
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Karl_Kindt_4

Posted August 12, 2010

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I Also Recommend:

Weiner's ignorance is bliss

This materialist/atheist goes a long way to (re)discover what Jesus taught in Mark 12:31, "'Love your neighbor as yourself,'" which is the second of the two great commandments he gives to us humans. Of course, Weiner completely disrespects and disregards Christianity and so ignores the greatest commandment, to "'Love the Lord your God...'." He does just what you expect from a former NPR liberal drone: He feigns humility and populism while telling you how much smarter he is than you. In reality, he writes this from the spiritual level of a 13-year-old boy who thinks he knows more than his parents. Sad little book, that I only give three stars to because it gave me perspective on other countries and how condescending and pathetic and racist modern "liberals" can be. The image that will most stick with me is the two-year-old daughter of the author who he describes as clinging to his leg trying to get his attention while he wrote this book.

0 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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llamamia

Posted June 16, 2010

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Happiness if where you find it:)

I found this book under the genre of "travel essays" but it could easily fall under "self help," "humor" or "philosophical musings," if there was such a category. An absolutely delightful read with lots of information thrown in that should make even the most skeptical stop & think about, what else, happiness. As Weiner points out, there are so many facets to this equation. As an extensive traveler and sometimes, just an armchair traveler, I love the vicarious experience of visiting places I would never get to physically. "The Geography of Bliss" not only got me thinking about what makes certain places happy but I reminisced about where & when I have felt the happiest. Lots of surprises! Highly recommended.
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stephj

Posted April 12, 2010

Interesting Concept

I picked this book up from the bargain books section because of the title. Once I received the book i realized it was right up my alley. Who doesn't want to know the secret to happiness? The style is witty with some funny bits intertwined into the research. Some are so funny that I've laughed out loud while reading. The style is definitely similar to listening to NPR (the author is an NPR correspondent) so if you like NPR, you will probably like this writing style. The content is really interesting because it looks at happiness in terms of facts and stereotypes, constantly asking the question, what makes people happy? Money? Love? Nature? Government? It's by no means a quick read but the interesting concpet keeps me reading.
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TheReadingWriter

Posted March 13, 2010

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NPR commentator, self-described grump, seeks the happy place

The subtitle of this book is One Man's Search for the Happiest Places in the World, and I am going to cut to the chase and discuss his conclusions. You're going to want to read the book anyway, to figure out how it can be true that a very unlikely country comes in first in the happiness lottery. But do get the audio of this book. The author reads it, and as an NPR commentator, talking is his trade. He is very good at it, and is as funny as David Sedaris in parts of this reading.

"Happiness is one hundred percent relational," is the conclusion of the author, who quotes Karma Ura, Bhutanese scholar and cancer survivor. We can only be happy with other people, because happiness does not exist in a vacuum. We knew this, but we need to be reminded, perhaps. And there may be basic ingredients that compose happiness, but the final composition will vary around the globe. The author compares happiness to the atom carbon: arrange it one way and it is coal. Arrange it another, and it is a diamond.

I think this (audio)book is a great gift. It makes one laugh and think. It's cheaper than a therapist, safer than drugs or alcohol, and a lot more fun, perhaps, than doing the trip oneself. Although I just might buy a ticket to that place I wouldn't have expected to find on top of the list...
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Anonymous

Posted December 5, 2009

informative and funny

I enjoyed this book very much. I am not a big non-fiction reader, but I found this book to be interesting, funny, and informative.
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FeatheredQuillBookReviews

Posted November 3, 2008

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A wonderous armchair traveler's adventure

Author Eric Weiner makes a Clint Eastwood-esque double dare to the world: Go ahead. Make me happy. Then he sets off on a continent-hopping voyage to see if the source of a person¿s happiness is the same as the source of good real estate: location, location, location. Is it true that the inhabitants of some countries are happier than those living elsewhere? What makes people universally happy? Are there shared commonalities between the happier places? And what is happiness and how can it be measured? These and many other thought-provoking questions wrestle for attention in Weiner¿s mind as he jaunts from The Netherlands to Bhutan to Qatar to Iceland and beyond.

Reading The Geography of Bliss is like taking off the year after graduation to go backpacking around the world with the funniest curmudgeon in your class. With a decade of experience as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, Weiner makes the perfect traveling companion. He knows how to find the most unique places to stay, meets the most interesting people, and ends up in the most bizarre circumstances. He¿s the guy brave enough to sample the local culinary delicacies (Rotten shark meat anyone?). Best of all, he is really hilarious, so you¿ll spend most of this literary trip cracking up at his snarky observations. For instance, in Switzerland he contemplates the beauty of the Swiss army knife: ¿If only every army in the world was best known for something like the Swiss army knife. As far as I know, no wars have been waged with Swiss army knives, no international commissions established to discuss their dangerous proliferation.¿ If you¿re looking for a globe-trotting cohort, a finely-tuned and self-depreciating sense of humor would be the number one quality to look for, and Weiner delivers the goods with generosity.

However, like most traveling companions, Weiner does grate on the nerves every now and then. In each chapter, he insists on persistently turning to, as he calls them, ¿those dead, white, and unhappy philosophers.¿ I found it unpleasantly jarring to go from, say, a cozy London flat sharing wine and interesting conversation with a couple of Weiner¿s lovely friends to a cold, cerebral lecture on Thomas Jefferson, utilitarianism, and Jeremy Bentham¿s treatise on ¿felicific calculus.¿ Despite myself, I often would find the discourses to be intellectually compelling once I gave in to them; however, I wonder if Weiner later went back and inserted his philosophical research into the chapters as a way to add some substantive bulk to the book. Though I¿m sure his NPR colleagues were duly impressed by the references to the philosophers Betrand Russell, Alan Watts, and John Stuart Mill, I found myself wishing that Weiner would skip the lectures and get on with the show.

Nevertheless, the journey through this book was highly enjoyable, enlightening, and stimulating. The Geography of Bliss certainly delivers happiness to the reader. You¿ll be hard pressed to read it without contemplating the state of your own happiness as well as that of your countrymen. Does Weiner ultimately find the happiest place in the world? Of course, I won¿t spill the beans. But I will leave you with the author¿s acute observation: ¿The word `utopia¿ has two meanings. It means both `good place¿ and `nowhere.¿ That¿s the way it should be.¿

Quill says: Read it to be entertained or educated. Either way, it¿s a wondrous armchair traveler¿s adventure across the globe and into our minds.
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The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

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The Geography of Bliss

Twelve

Introduction

Rating Distribution

Great topic, fun facts about happiness

Great, Clear Read

Excellent Read!

Amusing EPL From a Guy

Inspiring!

A Different Kind of Geography Lesson

What a laugh

Easy fun read

Not "enlightning", but an easy and fun reading

What is happiness..

A most happy read

BLISSFUL READING

Bravo To The Self-Proclaimed Grump For Trying.

Kiss my Bliss

Weiner's ignorance is bliss

Happiness if where you find it:)

Interesting Concept

NPR commentator, self-described grump, seeks the happy place

informative and funny

A wonderous armchair traveler's adventure