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

Eric Weiner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2008

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 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

If there’s one truth that emerged from reviewers’ various takes on The Geography of Bliss, it’s that happiness is subjective. Every critic seemed to find something that really irked him or her about this book: Weiner’s persona seems affected, he indulges in "psychobabble," he remains aloof about himself, he comes across as an obnoxious reporter. Yet everyone seemed to enjoy his book, admiring Weiner’s original approach to the subject, his balance of research and experience, and the characters that illustrate the lessons on happiness Weiner accumulates during his journeys. In short, all the critics’ happiness was alike, but they were also all unhappy in their own way. (Sorry, Tolstoy.) FYI: Weiner lives in Miami, Florida.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 329 pages
• Publisher: Twelve; 1 edition (January 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446580260
• ISBN-13: 978-0446580267
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (245 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #41,286 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Eric Weiner is author of the "New York Times" bestseller "The Geography of Bliss," which has been translated into eighteen languages. A former correspondent for NPR and the "New York Times," Weiner has reported from more than three dozen countries. His work has appeared in the "New Republic," "Slate," "Los Angeles Times," "Washington Post," "Foreign Policy," "The New York Times Magazine," and the anthology "Best American Travel Writing." He divides his time between Starbucks and Caribou. For more information, visit: www.ericweinerbooks.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 124 people found the following review helpful

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

By Symbiosis

Format:Hardcover

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.

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A happy read January 15, 2008

By Bookreporter

Format:Hardcover

Eric Weiner is an NPR correspondent who has reported from more than 30 countries. To write this far-reaching tome he had to travel to far-flung lands, all connected (with one exception) by a single thread: these were places where, reputedly, the citizenry is happy.

Two tiny countries offer a brilliant contrast in the principles that Weiner set out to examine. Qatar and Bhutan are relatively hard to reach. Both have inhospitable climates and a low population. Both have been altered greatly in very recent history, allowing for radical changes in the lifestyle of the citizenry.

Qatar is a pile of sand somewhere in the Middle East that became an earthly Eden when oil and natural gas were discovered there in such vast plentitude as to make work, for its extended family of Arabic inhabitants, obsolete. A Qatari will be paid to attend school, paid to marry, given a house and allowed to carelessly wreck as many cars as he sees fit. Rules no longer apply to the people of Qatar, in a broad sense, as long as they obey the dictates of their Islamic religion and stay inside, living within the bizarre hierarchy that dictates their society --- indoors because it is not possible to live very long without air conditioning in Qatar, which is basically a series of connected malls and mansions, and hierarchical because, of course, Qataris cannot do their own work. For that they import Indians, Nepalis and other lesser races.

These strictures made it difficult for Weiner to do what a journalist must do: interview the natives of the country. He was told that his American passport and Jewish name would prevent him from meeting real Qataris. So to experience the country, he had to be content with talking to expatriates and buying one "Ridiculously Expensive Pen...." Of Qatari happiness he says, "Most of us have, at one time or another, felt a strange and wholly unexpected flash of unease accompany good news...you know you should be happy, but you're not, and you can't explain why." Qatar is a big winner in the lottery of world resources, but the very lack of friction in their lives is a deterrent to happiness.

Bhutan, on the other hand, is a country committed to the process of Gross National Happiness. An economically poor but physically spectacular country high in the Himalayas, Bhutan was said by some to be the model for the fictional Shangri-La described by author James Hilton in his book (later a film) LOST HORIZON. Its inhabitants can easily recall how, no more than 40 years ago, Bhutan had no electricity, schools or hospitals. Improvements have certainly ameliorated life for all Bhutanese. One woman Weiner spoke to said that "Life is better now. Except for television." She hadn't decided if television, only recently introduced, is good or bad, and indeed many Bhutanese worry about its violent influence on their otherwise polite, quietly content young people. "If the social scientists are right, the most efficient way to make someone from Bhutan happy is to give them more money...about fifteen thousand dollars a year," Weiner suggests with some sense of irony. More than that would be too much, as he observed in Qatar. The Buddhist Bhutanese are remarkably free from envy of others, and no one seems to be asking for that fifteen thousand.

Weiner's standards for measuring happiness came from various sources, including an institute in the Netherlands devoted to its study. His visits to Switzerland indicate that people can be quite happy with lots of rules if they have a hand in directly setting the rules, which the Swiss do by voting many times a year. The English can be happy despite their bad food and dreary climate because they have a sense of their own history and a devotion to family and home. In Thailand he found that sex can make people happy, even lots of uninhibited sex, if it's delivered with genuine smiles. He keeps his narrative light but fills every page with facts, resulting in a happy read.

To validate his research, Weiner visited one extremely unhappy country, Moldova, a depressing chunk of the former Soviet Union where the best that anyone could say about their homeland was that the vegetables and fruit were fresh. Moldovan women comprise a large pool of Internet scammer brides, finding American men particularly willing to send them thousands of dollars to pay taxes on a new car or other spurious expenses. That fifteen thousand per capita would probably make a big difference in the happiness quotient in Moldova.

On his return to America, Weiner located the latest happy community, one of many that spring up periodically according to the fashions of the times. Asheville, North Carolina, with its idyllic mountain setting and proliferation of good restaurants and New Age healing spas, is enjoying a vogue as a happy place to live. As one newly arrived resident puts it, "A lot of people spin the globe and their finger stops on Asheville."

However, Weiner warns, "The problem with finding paradise is that others might find it too. And that is what is happening in Asheville." I lived in Asheville for a few glory years in the 1990s, and watched gaping as property prices soared, traffic snarl increased and the demands of the beautiful people drove local businesses under. It made me see my own search for bliss as part of the problem, so I moved away. The Asheville that Weiner visited is already a good example of the "You shoulda been there when" phenomenon. He says, "Asheville is on the cusp. It could go either way." The question is, has it already gone?

Eric Weiner went to the far corners of the earth chasing happiness. Reading his book will help you examine what you need to be happy, and how far you are willing to go to get it. Or maybe help you realize that it's closer than you thought.

--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott Read more ›

58 of 63 people found the following review helpful

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

By Julia Flyte TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

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.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Unhappy Man Has Fun Seeking Happy Place February 6, 2008

By GENE GERUE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Author, Eric Weiner, is mired in the bad-news business of journalism. As a correspondent for National Public Radio he has reported from Miami, New Delhi, Jerusalem, Afghanistan, Tokyo, and Iraq. He has covered wars and conflicts. He has won awards for coverage of Islamic issues in Asia and the tobacco industry in the U.S. He has focused on a lot of bad stuff--which often seems the modern definition of news. It is no wonder that he openly cops to being unhappy.

Weiner's quest here is to find a place and conditions that might cheer him up. He apparently considers only slightly the fact that any place he goes, he takes his unhappy self with him. The sub-title, One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World, sets the stage.

Can the conditions of place cause or at least contribute to happiness? My personal experience and letters from readers says yes. I confined my search to the contiguous 48 states; travelholic Weiner takes us to nine more countries.

First to The Netherlands and the World Database of Happiness to learn what Ruut Veenhoven, "the godfather of happiness research" knows. On to Switzerland, where the natives feel more than contentment but less than joy. Thence to Bhutan, where the king has proclaimed Gross National Happiness; Qatar, where each new husband gets a $7,000 monthly allowance, a building lot and a no-interest home loan; Iceland, where we learn that colder is happier; Moldova, "the least happy nation on the planet" according to Veenhoven's data; Thailand, where keeping the long view of life creates much joking and laughter; Great Britain, where culture hinders happiness; India, a destination happy place; and then back home to Miami, where all that sunshine leaves our author cold.

We learn that money wealth gives but a small edge.... America is the richest country the world has ever known, yet our self-help bookshelves sag. As poet-laureate, Charles Simic, noted in a recent interview: "It's an industry. It's really frightening. People need to read a book on how to be happy? It's completely an American thing."

Lucky for we readers, Weiner (pronounced whiner, poor guy) has a happy sense of humor that has survived the negative focus of journalism. The Geography of Bliss is a fun read, a lively travelogue of ideas, a mind tickler, a book that fulfills its purpose.

What I take from this entertaining tome is that a myriad of factors contribute to happiness: society, culture, community, biophilia, relationships, belonging, trust, openness, creativity, action, flexibility, unpredictability, altruism, a healthy balance of comparative feelings, hedonism, but not too much, and money, but just a bit. And, yes, place--if it allows these things.

On my writing studio wall is a framed piece of calligraphy that sums it up for me. It reads: "The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, someone to love and something to hope for." (Joseph Addison--1672-1719) Read more ›