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

by Eric Weiner (Author)
Key Phrases: experience machine, happiness experts, expensive pen, United States, New York, Great Britain (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Fortified with Eeyoreish fatalism—I'm already unhappy. I have nothing to lose—Weiner set out on a yearlong quest to find the world's unheralded happy places. Having worked for years as an NPR foreign correspondent, he'd gone to many obscure spots, but usually to report bad news or terrible tragedies. Now he'd travel to countries like Iceland, Bhutan, Qatar, Holland, Switzerland, Thailand and India to try to figure out why residents tell positive psychology researchers that they're actually quite happy. At his first stop, Rotterdam's World Database of Happiness, Weiner is confronted with a few inconvenient truths. Contrary to expectations, neither greater social equality nor greater cultural diversity is associated with greater happiness. Iceland and Denmark are very homogeneous, but very happy; Qatar is extremely wealthy, but Weiner, at least, found it rather depressing. He wasn't too fond of the Swiss, either, uncomfortable with their quiet satisfaction, tinged with just a trace of smugness. In the end, he realized happiness isn't about economics or geography. Maybe it's not even personal so much as relational. In the end, Weiner's travel tales—eating rotten shark meat in Iceland, smoking hashish in Rotterdam, trying to meditate at an Indian ashram—provide great happiness for his readers.
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From The Washington Post

Reviewed by 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.

From the Persian Gulf to the Arctic Circle, Weiner discovers that happiness blooms where we least expect it. Who knew that the long, dark Icelandic winter gives rise to a magical, communal culture that has done away with envy and sobriety? Or that the Thais so prize "fun" that their government has created a Gross Domestic Happiness Index to ensure they get enough of it? Or that Moldovans are miserable because they "derive more pleasure from their neighbor's failure than their own success"? Or that the wealthy citizens of Qatar lead pampered, joyless lives in a "gilded sandbox" while the poor citizens of Bhutan are cheerfully obsessed with archery tournaments, penis statues and feeding marijuana to their fat (and presumably happy) pigs?

But Weiner does more than report on the lifestyles of the delighted and despondent. He participates -- meditating in Bangalore, visiting strip clubs in Bangkok and drinking himself into a stupor in Reykjavik. These cultural forays are entertaining, but the real focus of his story is on the people he meets in cafés and on buses, the people who rent him rooms and give him directions, the people whose conversations, confessions and silences reveal the deep truths about their lands and lives.

Weiner asks an Icelander whether he believes in elves, and the man replies, "I don't know if I believe in them, but other people do and my life is richer for it," leading Weiner to conclude that Icelanders "occupy the space that exists between not believing and not not believing. It is valuable real estate." He meets a widower in Slough -- a small town outside London with little to recommend it -- who explains that he's thought about moving away but that in the end "you come home because this is where you live." Weiner realizes that when our relationships end, "the place is all that remains, and to leave would feel like a betrayal. . . . He doesn't love Slough, but he loved his wife, loved her here, in this much-maligned Berkshire town, so here he stays." Memory, like bliss, seems to have its own address.

Weiner has studied the scientific literature on happiness, too, and weaves it into his narrative, which he leavens with a steady stream of clever quips. We learn that "Bhutan has made tremendous strides in the kind of metrics that people who use words like metrics get excited about" and that "hairpin turns, precipitous drop-offs (no guardrails), and a driver who firmly believes in reincarnation make for a nerve-racking experience."

Weiner, a correspondent for National Public Radio, is an American who unapologetically indulges his ethnic stereotypes ("Watching Brits shed their inhibitions is like watching elephants mate. You know it happens, it must, but it's noisy, awkward as hell and you can't help but wonder: Is this something I really need to see?"), but if you want to wag a politically correct finger in his direction, you'll have to stop laughing first.

Weiner's book is so good that its occasional flaws stand out in sharp relief. He is smart and funny but doesn't always trust his readers to know that, which leads him to step on his punch lines and belabor his conclusions. Sometimes, he settles for clichés ("Happiness is a choice") and platitudes ("Some things are beyond measuring") instead of reaching for richer and subtler insights. And while he expertly brings us into the lives of every stranger on a train, he plays his own cards close to the chest. He tells us a lot about his obsession with satchels, for instance, but only in passing does he mention that he's a father. After traveling so long and so far together, we should know him better than that.

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.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 329 pages
• Publisher: Twelve; 1 edition (January 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446580260
• ISBN-13: 978-0446580267
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (117 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #44,912 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a rollicking good read!, December 25, 2007

By	Symbiosis (Annapolis, MD) - See all my reviews

If you're looking for a definitive answer to the book's premise, i.e., that happiness is about place, you might be disappointed. If, however, you are game for a journey about exploring that concept, Eric Weiner's book is for you. At once intelligent and witty, Geography of Bliss takes the reader to unfamiliar places to meet strangely familiar people. That's because the essence of what makes us happy (or unhappy) is basically the same everywhere, alloyed only by our culture and circumstances. It's a book that will make you think and laugh on the same page. And, it might just make you happy.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb read, December 24, 2007

By	A. M. Apostolou "Andrew Apostolou" (Washington DC, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Eric Weiner, a well known and amusing journalist, has produced one of the funniest and sharpest books on the market. The search for what makes people happy can easily become an exercise in tedious piety, a too earnest account that reads like an economic research paper. Not so with Weiner, whose deft touch amuses and enlightens, in precisely that order. By taking this wry approach, Weiner is rather more profound than he would concede, and less grumpy than he would like to appear. That is the beauty of "The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World," it is a very learned and intelligent book that wears its erudition lightly and communicates insights with skill and many wonderful laughs.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and enjoyable, January 5, 2008

By	Julia Flyte - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This travelogue by self-confessed grump Eric "Whiner" is a yearlong tour of a very unusual assortment of countries (sample: Holland, Qatar, Bhutan and Iceland), most of which have been chosen because they are home to some of the happiest resident populations in the world, (although a couple are chosen to present a contrast). There are some interesting conclusions drawn about what does and doesn't make for happiness, about the importance of democracy and wealth (so revered in the US) and how they are part of the answer but far from being the solution.

Weiner has a lovely turn of phrase (reminiscent of Bill Bryson) and although The Geography of Bliss wasn't as laugh-out-loud funny as I expected (more dryly amusing), it is both immensely readable and packed to the gills with fascinating nuggets of information. Weiner visits two countries that I have spent considerable time in (India and Switzerland), and while I felt his observations of Switzerland were pretty much spot on, I felt that he only scratched the surface of India, a country which I consider to be particularly complex. But I loved his description of Slough in England (the location for the UK TV show "The Office") as "a showpiece of quiet desperation" and I now have even less desire than ever before to visit Moldava which sounds like a hideously depressing place.

Ultimately there are no major revelations in this book - essentially, his argument is that happiness means different things to different people - but it makes for easy, thought-provoking reading. I enjoyed it.