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Books : The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
Product Description: 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)
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Don't Worry! Be Happy!
After the self-described "grump" Eric Weiner had roamed the globe for ten years as an NPR correspondent, he wondered what he'd find if he spent a year just traveling from happy country to happy country. Or to not-so-happy country. He wanted to see what makes the people tick. Or be ticked off, as the case may be.
And so he began his journey, resulting in this witty, sharp travelogue of ideas, "The Geography of Bliss."
He set out from Miami to Holland, where there is a World Database of Happiness. The people there are very happy, but Mr. Weiner is not finding bliss in a place where anything goes. He needs freedom from all the freedom. Then again, it's not Moldova.
Switzerland! They have direct democracy and vote seven or eight times a year on large and small issues. The Swiss cantons (states) that had the most democracy were the home of the happiest people. And yet, 21 pages after first entering the country of the clocks with birds, chocolate-eating, efficient, punctual, wealthy Swiss, Mr. Weiner decides that they may not be actually happy but know how to enjoy themselves.
Then we have Bhutan. They have towering mountains, a benevolent king, mystics and an actual government policy of Gross National Happiness. On their houses and throughout the land are painted huge colorful...things...to ward off evil spirits. If I had one of these things painted on the side of my house, the local government would have a collective fit, as would everyone in my town. But the Bhutanians are proud of them. And the people trust each other. Several studies (there are lots and LOTS of studies on happiness) have shown that trust may be the biggest factor in determining our happiness.
Here is Iceland. The very word sounds cold and dreary. In some studies, dark and icy Iceland ranks #1 in happiness. Mr. Weiner's friends told him that in order to understand what makes them tick, he needed to observe them in their natural state: PICKLED. "It's perfectly acceptable to drink yourself comatose on the weekend, but so much as sip a glass of Chardonnay on a Tuesday night and you're branded a lush."
"Creativity," the author states, "is rampant in Iceland." Either in spite of or because of the bleak landscape, the people are poetic and happy.
Tiny Qatar is loaded, but not like the Icelandic people on weekends. It's the wealthiest country on earth. However, the women are covered from head to toe. But they ... Read More
Rating: - Flawed (of necessity) but Deeply Entertaining
An entertaining book ostensibly about how place impacts happiness. Weiner's approach is far from comprehensive. He draws conclusions on whether certain places are happy based on very brief interactions with two or three people per country; had he selected different interviewees, his judgments may have been completely different. Plus, Weiner visits far too few and quite random locations. So, though it is flawed as serious research, the book is a lot of fun (and serious research doesn't seem to be the point anyway).
Rating: - 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. Eric Weiner is like that freshmen-year roommate who seemed like a total dork at first, but then started to grow on you until he became one of your best friends and most trusted accomplice. 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." Weiner ruminates on the lack of sunlight in Iceland: "Icelandic darkness is in a category of its own, a stingy darkness that reveals nothing, and if it could talk, would probably do so with a thick New York accent: `Yo, ya gotta problem with Mista Darnkess, bub?'" On his high-speed motorcycle taxi ride through Bangkok: "It smells like everything. Freshly cooked pad thai, freshly cut marigolds, freshly produced human excrement. A feast for the nostrils." 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 ... Read More
Rating: - Amusing and insightful
I read this a few months ago. A friend asked me what I read recently and it took me a while but I remembered this book. It made quite an impression on me. If you are an NPR fan, you would probably enjoy this book. It has similar tone, language, cadence and sense of humor. It is casually intelligent and skeptical but insightful and amusing.
Rating: - Great Book
I bought this book for a school project about the happiest places in the world and this book was awesome! Reads like a novel. Weiner did a qualitative study on the happiest places in the world starting off with quantitative data from the world's happiness database. If you are looking for a great, informative, and witty book to read then Bliss is the one. If you are looking for more quantitative research on the subject of happiness with charts and citations etc. this book is not going to give that to you. Hope this helps.
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