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Practical gratitude for the win!Kristin Richmond

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Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey (TED Books) Hardcover – November 13, 2018

by A. J. Jacobs (Author)

4.4 510 ratings

Part of: TED (24 books)

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The idea was deceptively simple: New York Times bestselling author A.J. Jacobs decided to thank every single person involved in producing his morning cup of coffee. The resulting journey takes him across the globe, transforms his life, and reveals secrets about how gratitude can make us all happier, more generous, and more connected.

Author A.J. Jacobs discovers that his coffee—and every other item in our lives—would not be possible without hundreds of people we usually take for granted: farmers, chemists, artists, presidents, truckers, mechanics, biologists, miners, smugglers, and goatherds.

By thanking these people face to face, Jacobs finds some much-needed brightness in his life. Gratitude does not come naturally to Jacobs—his disposition is more Larry David than Tom Hanks—but he sets off on the journey on a dare from his son. And by the end, it’s clear to him that scientific research on gratitude is true. Gratitude’s benefits are legion: It improves compassion, heals your body, and helps battle depression.

Jacobs gleans wisdom from vivid characters all over the globe, including the Minnesota miners who extract the iron that makes the steel used in coffee roasters, to the Madison Avenue marketers who captured his wandering attention for a moment, to the farmers in Colombia.

Along the way, Jacobs provides wonderful insights and useful tips, from how to focus on the hundreds of things that go right every day instead of the few that go wrong. And how our culture overemphasizes the individual over the team. And how to practice the art of “savoring meditation” and fall asleep at night. Thanks a Thousand is a reminder of the amazing interconnectedness of our world. It shows us how much we take for granted. It teaches us how gratitude can make our lives happier, kinder, and more impactful. And it will inspire us to follow our own “Gratitude Trails.”

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Simon & Schuster/ TED
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November 13, 2018
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1501119923
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978-1501119927
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“An ambitious project…a stirring, nonpreachy sermon on gratitude.”—Kirkus

“[Jacobs's] candid tone and genuine curiosity lead to fascinating conversations and establish human connections that deliver satisfying jolts of perspective.”—Booklist

“Uplifting … full of self-deprecating humor.”—USA Today

“Moving, inspiring and laugh-out-loud funny.”—Newsweek

"[A] powerful pick-me-up."—People

"Thanks a Thousand is the loveliest book anyone has ever thought of."—John Fugelsang

"Very funny...if you love the feeling of finishing a book, you can knock this joyful one out in a night!"—The Huffington Post

About the Author

A.J. Jacobs is the author of Thanks a Thousand, It’s All Relative, Drop Dead Healthy, and the New York Times bestsellers The Know-It-All, The Year of Living Biblically, and My Life as an Experiment. He is a contributor to NPR, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly. He lives in New York City with his wife and kids. Visit him at AJJacobs.com and follow him on Twitter @ajjacobs.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Thanks A Thousand 1 The Barista and the Taster Thanks for Serving Me My Coffee
I’ve decided to do this project in reverse, starting with my local café and working my way backward to the birth of the coffee. My coffee shop is a block’s walk from my apartment. It’s called Joe Coffee and has survived for twelve years, despite two Starbucks within a three-block radius.

On a Thursday morning, I get in line, prepping myself to say the very first “thank you” of Project Gratitude. While waiting, I force myself to stash my smartphone in my pocket and actually notice my surroundings. The act of noticing, after all, is a crucial part of gratitude; you can’t be grateful if your attention is scattered.

On the wall, there’s a photo of a pink Cadillac that, for some reason, is perched on top of a tower. There are moms pushing strollers, dogs tied up outside, the frequent hiss of the espresso machine. Glowing indigo lamps the shape of doughnuts hang from the ceiling. That indigo light is lovely, I think to myself. You don’t see enough indigo lamps.

I get to the counter and am greeted by my barista, a twentysomething woman with hair gathered in a ponytail atop her head. She hands me my order—a small black coffee, the daily blend.

“Thank you for my coffee,” I say.

“You’re welcome!” she says, smiling.

And there it is. My first thank you. It’s fine, but no lightning bolts yet.

I slide my credit card to pay the three-dollar fee. (Three dollars is, of course, ridiculously expensive. But in a weird sense, as I’ll learn, it’s also wildly underpriced.)

I hold my cup of coffee and stand there, trying to figure out what, if anything, to tell the barista about my quest. I pause five seconds too long, somewhere on the border between awkward and creepy. I glance at the line of customers behind me and slink out.

A couple of days later, I’ve worked up the nerve to tell the barista about Project Gratitude. I asked her if she’d be willing to share with me a bit about what goes into making my coffee. She said she’d be happy to talk after her shift.

“Thanks again for the coffee,” I say, as we sit down at one of Joe’s small tables.

“Thanks for thanking me,” she says.

I consider thanking her for thanking me for thanking her, but decide to cut it off lest we get caught in an infinite loop.

She tells me her name is Chung. Her parents are Korean immigrants, and she grew up in Southern California before moving to New York for college.

“So . . . ,” I say. “Um . . . What’s it’s like being a barista?”

“It’s not always easy,” she says. This is because you’re dealing with people in a very dangerous condition: Pre-caffeination.

“You get some grouchy people?” I asked.

“Oh, they can be grumpy.”

Chung tells me tales of customers who refuse to even make eye contact. They just snarl their order and thrust out their credit card, never looking up from their smartphone.

She’s had customers berate her till she cried for mixing up orders (which she swears she didn’t). She’s been snapped at by a bratty nine-year-old girl who didn’t like the milk-foam design that Chung created on top of her hot chocolate. Chung made a teddy bear. The girl wanted a heart. “I wanted to tell her that she did need a heart—a real one.”

And yet, Chung says the cranky customers are the minority. Most folks are friendly, especially when Chung sets the mood by being friendly first. And man, Chung is friendly.

She is a smiler and a hugger. She’s like a morning-show host, but not forced or fake. To give you a sense: During our half-hour chat, Chung got up no fewer than five times to hug longtime customers and former coworkers.

“I first realized I might be good at customer service when I was working as an usher at my church,” she says. “I saw that it takes a certain personality.”

And like at church, when she’s at Joe Coffee, she sometimes watches as people are transformed, their faces lighting up when they get their cups. “I see my job as getting them coffee, but also making them happy.”

I ask her if she’s planning on being a barista for the long haul.

She shakes her head. “Actually, this is my last week.”

She’s moving back to California to take care of her parents. Plus, nowadays, she’s having trouble staying up on her feet her entire shift.

“Let me give you a visual of why,” Chung says.

She takes out her smartphone and swipes to a photo. It’s a startling image of her left foot, bloody, bruised, and with more than a dozen metal pins sticking out of it.

“A year and a half ago, I got hit by a bus,” she says. “I broke every toe, the heel, the ankle. The skin was gone.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t pretty.”

Chung says it’ll be sad to leave the regulars. She talks about Nancy and John, who arrive every morning as soon as the glass door is unlocked. “I always say, ‘How’s your day going?’ And John will say, ‘Now it’s going well.’?”

She’ll miss her coworkers, whom she says always have her back.

She won’t miss the occasional feeling that she doesn’t exist at all. “What’s upsetting is when people treat us like machines, not humans,” Chung says. “When they look at us as just a means to an end—or don’t even look at us at all.”

I thank Chung, and she gives me a hug (her eleventh of the day, by my estimate).

On my way home, I make a pledge. Though I probably won’t hug any other baristas, I promise to look them in the eyes—because I know I’ve been that asshole who thrusts out the credit card without glancing up. I’m not sure if I ever did it to Chung, but I know I’ve treated many others—waiters, delivery people, bodega cashiers—as if they were vending machines. I sometimes wear these noise-cancelling headphones when running errands, so that just makes me look more aloof and unfriendly.

And this is an enemy of gratitude. UC Davis psychology professor Robert Emmons—who is considered the father of gratitude research—puts it this way: “Grateful living is possible only when we realize that other people and agents do things for us that we cannot do for ourselves. Gratitude emerges from two stages of information processing—affirmation and recognition. We affirm the good and credit others with bringing it about. In gratitude, we recognize that the source of goodness is outside of ourselves.”

From now on, when I have an interaction with anyone else, I’ll try to affirm and recognize them. I’ll try to remember to treat them as humans—at least until robots take over all service jobs. I’ll try to keep in mind that they have families and favorite movies and embarrassing teenage memories and possibly aching feet.

• • •

Chung served me my coffee—but who chose what type of coffee I drank? Who selected my daily blend from the tens of thousands of varieties across the globe? The answer to that takes me one step back on the chain to a man named Ed Kaufmann, head of buying at Joe Coffee Company, which now has nineteen stores in New York and Philadelphia.

Ed agrees to meet me at the Joe Coffee Company headquarters in Chelsea. He ushers me into a back room with a round table.

“Thanks for my coffee this morning,” I say, making sure to look Ed in the eyes. I tell him I’d picked up a cup earlier at the Joe Coffee near my apartment and drank it on the way down.

“Did you like it?”

“Yes.”

“What did you like about it?”

“Well, it woke me up. And it tasted good. Bitter, I guess? I don’t have a very sophisticated palate.”

“We’ll work on that,” he says.

Ed looks a bit like a young Elvis Costello, spectacles and all. He grew up in Montana, where his parents owned a restaurant at a ski resort. It’s there that Ed first fell for coffee. “As a teenager, my friends and I would get caffeinated up and go snowboarding.”

He can’t snowboard here in New York, but Ed tells me he still likes the bracing cold.

He’s a fan of ice baths, which he says give him energy. And every morning, even on seventeen-degree January days, he jolts himself awake by biking to work without a shirt. “Actually, now I wear a T-shirt,” Ed says. “I was getting too many stares when I went shirtless.”

But Ed’s true love is coffee. He’s smitten with it, head over heels. Some proof? He spent his honeymoon taking a five-day coffee-tasting course in Massachusetts. On his days off, he goes café hopping and “gets wasted on espresso.” He talks about particular cups of coffee the way some people talk about long-lost girlfriends. “That was a meaningful cup of coffee,” he’ll say, about a cup he drank in Ecuador. He describes coffee with elaborate metaphors, sort of like an antic sommelier. “There was this one coffee—I call it the Wonka Coffee because it was like an Everlasting Gobstopper, flavor after flavor, just exploding.”

It’s only been a few minutes, but I’m grateful that Ed is so passionate about this brown liquid. I may not fully appreciate the subtleties, but on some level, I know that Ed’s wisdom in choosing the best beans benefits me. The very fact that Ed thinks so deeply about my coffee is part of the reason I don’t have to think about it at all. It’s a key reason gratitude is so difficult to maintain, and why it takes so much effort and intention: If something is done well for us, the process behind it is largely invisible.

On the table are seven brown paper bags, each labeled with a number. Ed doesn’t want to know where the coffees are from until after the tasting. He wants to be unbiased. The coffees come in from all over the world—Colombia, Ghana, the Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea.

“Okay,” he says, “here’s how you do it.”

Ed dips a spoon into one of the many coffee-filled white cups on the table and slurps the liquid. It’s a comically loud slurp, like the slurp of an Adam Sandler character sipping soup at a fancy French restaurant.

“You have to aerate the coffee so that it sprays all over the mouth,” he says. “There are taste buds everywhere—in your cheeks, even the roof of the mouth.”

I try slurping a spoonful myself, but my slurp isn’t nearly as loud—it’s more of a piccolo to his tuba.

Ed swishes the coffee around his mouth, then spits it into a black chewing-tobacco spittoon.

“What did you think?” he asks me.

“Pretty good. Maybe a little acidic?” I say, guessing.

Ed nods his head. “I tasted some citrus, but also notes of honey.” He’s carrying a Moleskine notebook and scribbles some words in it.

If Ed likes any of the coffees that we’re tasting, he might give them a much-coveted spot on the menu of the Joe Coffee chain. It’s a small but growing chain with a hipster vibe; it has lots of bearded baristas and socially conscious symbolism. The chain pays its farmers higher than fair trade prices. It markets itself as transparent, and you can often see a sign on the counter about the featured farm of the day.

I ask Ed if I can see the words he wrote down, and he shows me some. They are delightfully, hilariously specific: graham cracker, mandarin orange, pineapple upside-down cake.

Ed will describe a coffee as having notes of apple. But not just a generic apple. He’ll say, “This reminds me of a Pink Lady apple, or maybe Gala.

“I’m a sucker for baked peach and maple,” he tells me. “If I see that in my notes, I know I have a winner.”

Tasters like Ed are looking for several variables: mouth feel, a balance between acidity and fruitiness, aftertaste.

“You also want to avoid coffee that’s too vegetal or leathery,” Ed tells me.

“You don’t like leather?” I ask.

“Only on weekends,” he says, laughing. “I’m kidding.”

Like many coffee obsessives, Ed thinks Starbucks over-roasts its coffee. It’s too bitter. You can’t taste the fruitiness. “I only go to Starbucks in a coffee emergency,” he says.

Ed knows that not everyone is infatuated with the subtle flavors of coffee. He started as a barista at a coffee shop that was even more artisanal than Joe Coffee.

“People would come in and say, ‘I’d like a cup of coffee.’ And I’d say, ‘Okay, what are you looking for? What flavor notes are you interested in?’ And they’d say, ‘I don’t care. I just want my fucking cup of coffee.’?”

I understand that mind-set. Sometimes you just want the fucking coffee.

But I make a promise: I’m going to try to appreciate the flavors more. It only seems fair. Consider all the thousands of hours of attention that Ed and others around the world put into each cup of coffee—and yet, every morning, I guzzle it like a dog at a bowl.

It reminds me of a conversation I had when I started Project Gratitude. I’d called up author and researcher Scott Barry Kaufman (no relation to Ed), who taught a popular course on positive psychology and gratitude at the University of Pennsylvania. I wanted a little background on the science of thankfulness.

“Gratitude has a lot to do with holding on to a moment as strongly as possible,” Scott told me. “It’s closely related to mindfulness and savoring. Gratitude can shift our perception of time and slow it down. It can make our life’s petty annoyances dissolve away, at least for a moment.”

The point is, it’s hard to be grateful if we’re speeding through life, focusing on what’s next, as I tend to do. We need to be aware of what’s in front of us. We need to stop and smell the roses, along with the graham crackers and soil and leather.

So today, while sipping coffee with Ed, I tried to practice what psychologists call savoring meditation. I let the coffee sit on my tongue for twenty seconds, which may not sound like a long time, but I don’t want to keep Ed waiting. (And twenty seconds can be powerful if you really make each second count. Quality over quantity, right?)

I focused on the viscosity of the liquid, the acidity, the bitterness . . . Was that apricot? I still couldn’t taste the distinct flavors, but I could see a way to unraveling the threads.

• • •

Ed and I sampled the seven coffees, sipping each of them three times—while hot, while warm, and while tepid. Different temperatures reveal different tastes.

At the end, Ed says there are no superstars in the bunch. He feels the best contender is a coffee from Burundi that scored an 85 on a scale of 100.

But it wasn’t a waste of time. You never know where the next great coffee might come from, so Ed tastes anything sent to him. “People will send me a note saying, ‘This is from my grandmother’s farm in the Dominican Republic.’?” A couple of years ago, he was sent coffee with a note that said, “This coffee has been through war zones in Yemen and you can’t even taste the gunpowder.” Last year, Ed tells me, he was expecting a shipment of coffee from Papua New Guinea, but it never came because tribal warfare interfered with the harvesting.

Ed goes on an international trip every year to meet with farmers—to build rapport, sample coffee, and make deals.

“I’m going to South America in a few weeks,” he says. “You should come!”

He tells me that Joe’s house blend—which is what I order every day—contains beans from a small family farm in Colombia. He’ll be visiting that farm, and I can tag along.

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s not easy to get to. A flight, another flight, and then a four-hour drive. But you’re invited.”

And just like that, I’m going to another continent.

• • •

After the tasting, Ed and I head out for burritos near his office.

“It’s kind of odd that you’re featuring me in your book,” he says, as we sit down. “Because I’m usually more of a background guy. I’m a bassist.”

He means that literally. Ed plays bass guitar in a band called Erostratus, an alt rock group that sings songs about heartbreak and alcohol . . . “The usual,” as Ed says.

“I like being the bassist,” he says. “Everyone wants to be the lead guitarist or lead singer, and we need those. But we also need bassists. I’m necessary, but I’m background.”

On my subway ride home, I can’t stop thinking about Ed and his humble but essential bass guitar. It’s a wonderful metaphor for my project.

In our society, we fetishize the lead singers. And not just in music. The front people in every field—art, engineering, sports, food—get way too much attention. The cult of celebrity has spread into every corner. We overemphasize individual achievement when, in fact, almost everything good in the world is the result of teamwork. Consider the polio vaccine, which qualifies as a very good thing. According to the book Give and Take, by psychologist Adam Grant, Jonas Salk took all the glory for inventing the polio vaccine. He was on the cover of Time; he became the household name.

But the truth of the vaccine’s invention is more nuanced. Salk was part of a team at the University of Pittsburgh. There were six researchers who made major contributions, not to mention three scientists who figured out how to grow polio in test tubes, a crucial advance that made the vaccine possible. In other words, there were many bassists who helped conquer polio. And they were overlooked, which they rightly felt bitter about. In a 1955 press conference about the vaccine, Salk neglected to thank his collaborators. Many of them left the conference in tears.

Psychologists have a name for this failure to acknowledge and thank collaborators: the “responsibility bias.” For one thing, it causes a lot of pain and resentment among the billions of unacknowledged bass players in our world.

But its long-term consequences might be even worse. By elevating individual achievement over cooperation, we’re creating a glut of wannabe superstars who don’t have time for collaboration. We desperately need more bassists in the world. We can see this playing out in many industries, but let me stick with science for a second. Your typical scientist craves the glory of creating a bold new hypothesis, instead of the equally important but less flashy task of replicating experiments to make sure the conclusions are true. This has led to what’s called the “replication crisis.” A shocking amount of our scientific knowledge may be inaccurate because we don’t have enough bassists in lab coats doing backup.

I’m not immune to the responsibility bias. This book has my name on the cover, but its existence is the work of dozens of people. The idea of a lone author warps reality. In a more accurate world, this book would have many names on the cover, not just mine. We considered it, but my editor, Michelle Quint—one of the best bassists in publishing—thought such a cover would be too confusing and hard to read, so here I am, perpetuating the lead singer myth.

At the very least, I can do what Emmons says is the core of gratitude: affirm and recognize what I didn’t do myself. So thank you to the cover designer, the marketers, the freelance researchers, the printing plant workers, the sawmill operators . . . as you can see, this could be its own book.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster/ TED (November 13, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 160 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501119923
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501119927
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.7 x 7 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #345,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #287 in Business & Professional Humor
- #475 in Self-Help & Psychology Humor
- #3,302 in Fiction Satire

Customer Reviews:
4.4 510 ratings

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A. J. Jacobs

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A.J. Jacobs is an author, journalist, lecturer and human guinea pig. He has written four New York Times bestsellers that combine memoir, science, humor and a dash of self-help. Among his books are The Know-It-All, The Year of Living Biblically, and Thanks a Thousand, in which he travels the globe to thank everyone who had even the slightest role in making his morning cup of coffee. He is a contributor to NPR, The New York Times, and Esquire, among others. He has given several TED talks, including ones about living biblically, creating a one-world family, and living healthily that have amassed over 10 million views. His upcoming book from Crown is called "The Puzzler: One Man's Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, From Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life."

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

510 global ratings

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Customers find the book fun, interesting, and easy to read. They also appreciate the excellent reminder to be grateful and the insightful information about coffee.

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23 customers mention "Humor"23 positive0 negative

Customers find the book fun, witty, and refreshing. They also say the concept is easy to read and the author writes like a friend.

"I loved the concept of the book and it was a super easy read...." Read more

"...Good read for teens, can teach them to be a little more grateful ." Read more

"...gives it the full attention it rightfully deserves with his unique style of humor, scientific-backed research and open-hearted conversations...." Read more

"This book was fun and interesting to understand how a community across the world pulls together to bring our cups of coffee to us each morning...." Read more

12 customers mention "Enjoyment"12 positive0 negative

Customers find the book an excellent reminder to be grateful, insightful, and fun. They also say it leaves a touch of bliss.

"...But this is an interesting take on the subject, and may give you some insight into a practice you're either considering or already doing." Read more

"...roles but all in all this book is exactly as I expected it to be.... insightful, fun, and interesting!" Read more

"...and delightful, like a good cup of fair trade coffee, that leaves a touch of bliss, mindfulness, and a sense of well-being in its wake." Read more

"...Both poignant and comical at the same time, the book is already making me more aware of the benefits of seemingly small acts of gratitude...." Read more

6 customers mention "Readability"6 positive0 negative

Customers find the book super easy to read and delightful.

"...book will help anyone who needs to share more gratitude, and is an easy read!" Read more

"I loved the concept of the book and it was a super easy read...." Read more

"I like the flow of the book, is an easy read that gives you an idea how to learn to be thankful and show gratitude to people...." Read more

"What a great little book, quick read and makes you think about what goes on in everyone's daily life" Read more

3 customers mention "Length"0 positive3 negative

Customers find the book a bit short and leave them wanting more.

"...This book abet decent just feels short and less in depth than his others." Read more

"...My only complaint is that as a TED book, it was quite short and I think this is a topic he could have easily explored in more depth...." Read more

"...this author’s books and have enjoyed all of them, but this one was a bit short and left me wanting more." Read more

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A book about gratitude, thoughtfulness and empathy….

Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2022

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Jacobs a coffee lover, one day wondered what is the story and effort behind the coffee he sips for granted each morning. So, he sets out to thank every single person involved in producing his cup of coffee – from the farmers who grew the beans to the barista who serves his morning coffee at the local café.

His journey starts off with the barista at his hometown in the USA, to the makers of the coffee cups, lids & sleeves, the coffee company, the truck drivers, the roasters, the water purification plant, the quality & environmental standard inspectors; the steel plant workers; the dockyard workers, down to the farmers in at a village farm in Columbia etc.

Behind every worker he met was a person with a story, personal struggles and hopes just like everyone else. Chung, a barrister Jacobs met told him she loved when customers are mentally present when they make their orders with eye contact instead of just staring at their phones as it makes her feel irrelevant.

This book was published in 2018 way before COVID but the pandemic reminded us about the real unsung heroes in our daily lives, - the delivery truck drives, supermarket shelf stackers, the nurses, those who farm/fish our food etc.

These quotes below from the book stuck with me, I hope you find them useful too:

“If something is done well for us, the process behind it is largely invisible”.

“In our society, we fetishize the lead singers. And not just in music. The front people in every field – art, engineering, sports, food – get way too much attention. The cult of celebrity has spread into every corner. We over emphasize individual achievement when, in fact, almost everything good in the world is the result of teamwork.”

“Happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness”.

“The act of noticing, after all, is crucial part of gratitude; you can’t be grateful if your attention is scattered”.

2 people found this helpful

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Haley C

Grateful for this book!!

Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2022

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A.J. Jacobs does a great job of searching out those to thank for all the work towards his cup of coffee! This book will help anyone who needs to share more gratitude, and is an easy read!

Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2023

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I loved the concept of the book and it was a super easy read. It made think about all the people and time that goes into everything I touch each day not just coffee. The author has a way in his writing that seems he is just telling you a story in a cafe. His wit was right up my alley

One person found this helpful

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Paul Konigstein

Inspirational book

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2023

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I was so moved by this book, I am giving it to everyone on my holiday gift list this year.

One person found this helpful

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Batsheva Goldstein

Being thankful

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2020

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This book gives you an idea of how appreciative and thankful we should be not only for the big things but for the little things most of us take for granted. If we spent one minute of each day being thankful for something our mindset would change without a doubt.

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Paper or Kindle

Showing the serious side behind a New Age-y trend

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2019

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The author has made a career out of being a neurotic, obsessive person with a sense of humor, who throws himself into projects that few, if any, people would want to do, and then making his journey interesting and relevant. In this very small book (a TED book, similar to the TED talks that are so fascinating to watch on YouTube), he goes behind the New Age trend of gratitude. People are keen on keeping gratitude journals. The topic is discussed on talk shows. The science behind it is reported in newspapers. But all of that is about you being grateful. It doesn't cover the other side of the story: the people or things you're grateful to or for. Because of the size of the book, not everything can be covered, and even occasional topic points can't be described extensively. But this is an interesting take on the subject, and may give you some insight into a practice you're either considering or already doing.

9 people found this helpful

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Lucia@

Fun and entertaining

Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2021

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I like the flow of the book, is an easy read that gives you an idea how to learn to be thankful and show gratitude to people. The quest on thanking all those that are involved in bringing author’s morning cup of coffee is fun , it looked to me more like an adventure than something well organized and thought through. Good read for teens, can teach them to be a little more grateful .

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Stephanie Enslin

The gratitude we all need to share

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2018

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The proverbial dynamite in a small package! Gratitude is often so overlooked as simply a feel good temporal emotion but Jacobs gives it the full attention it rightfully deserves with his unique style of humor, scientific-backed research and open-hearted conversations.

The book is as much a journey around the world to thank the countless people involved in bringing Jacobs his morning cup of Joe, as it is an internal self reflection, a stop light to paying attention to each passing moment, and a call to arms against our predisposition towards negativity.

Jacobs writes that he wants to see gratitude as a spark to inspire action. Give this book a read and that spark will catch you before you even realise it.

Considering the nature of this book, I think it's not out of my bounds to say, "Thank-you" to its author - your work continues to amaze and entertain, and hold to Emerson's rally cry, "All of life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better".

4 people found this helpful

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tammy

Worth it

Reviewed in Canada on December 27, 2019

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Bought as a gift fast shipping good price

Steven Webb

A really nice little gratitude book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 8, 2020

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I go live on my Facebook everyday doing a meditation, talking about gratitude and other topics. I often talk about the depth of gratitude, like who is supplying the electric to warm your water in the kettle.

I was recommended this book by a friend after such a discussion. A really simple read, lots of interesting facts. The information about the water supplied to New York City is just incredible. I won't spoil it here, but that blew my mind.

Highly recommend, I like feel good reads occasionally that don't require a lot of focus. And this was perfect. If you digest the spirit of the book it will improve your life.

One person found this helpful

Michael von Prollius

Kleines Buch macht groß glücklich!

Reviewed in Germany on March 2, 2019

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Dankbarkeit – Glücksproduktion durch Entanonymisierung von Arbeitsteilung

Wie oft waren Sie in der letzten Woche dankbar? Haben Sie Ihre Dankbarkeit geäußert? Wer aus tiefem Herzen dankbar ist, lebt ein angenehmeres Leben. Wenn sie das nicht glauben, probieren Sie es aus.

Besonders intensiv hat A. J. Jacobs dieses Experiment gelebt. Der Bestsellerautor aus New York hat zwar nur ein winziges Büro, verfolgt aber großartige Ideen. Ich bin auf ihn durch ein Gespräch mit Russ Robert gestoßen. Im Podcast Econtalk berichtete Jacobs wie ihn sein kleiner Sohn dazu brachte, allen Menschen persönlich zu danken, die an der Erstellung seines Morgenkaffees direkt und indirekt mitgewirkt haben.

Wer die Geschichte von „I, pencil“ („Ich, der Bleistift“) kennt, wird nicht vollkommen überrascht sein von der unüberschaubaren Zahl der Menschen, die arbeitsteilig einen 3 Dollar Kaffee in einem To Go Becher ermöglichen. Gleichwohl lernt der Leser einige der Helden des Alltags kennen und manches über die Herstellung von Kaffee, von dem Becher und den vielen Bestandteilen.

Wie viele gute Ideen darin stecken und wie viel Aufwand betrieben wird, erstaunt letztlich doch. Das gilt zum Beispiel für die Konzeption und Herstellung des einfachen Plastikdeckels für ein bestmögliches, nippendes Trinken. Auch das Logo von Joe Coffee Company, dort kauft A. J. Jacobs jeden Morgen seinen Kaffee, ist in vielen, vielen Arbeitsstunden entstanden und bündelt die guten Wünsche und Anforderungen der Geschäftsführung.

Bis nach Kolumbien ist A. J. Jacobs gereist, um den Plantagenarbeitern zu danken. Sein Ziel, eintausend Menschen zu danken, hat er erreicht. Alle sind namentlich im Anhang des Buchs aufgeführt. Viele von ihnen haben nie Kundenkontakt, etwa diejenigen Verwaltungsmitarbeiter, die kontinuierlich die Wasserqualität der Reservoirs in den Catskill Mountains 90 Meilen nördlich von Manhattan messen. Oder die Unternehmensmitarbeiterin, die sicherstellt, dass der Kaffee keine Schadstoffe enthält. Deutlich wird zugleich, dass herausragende Personen und Stars lediglich aus komplexen Teams herausragen. Einer Anekdote zufolge über John F. Kennedy, der Cape Canaveral besuchte, antwortete ein Putzmann auf dem Flur auf die Frage des Präsidenten, was für einen Job er habe: Ich helfe mit, einen Man auf den Mond zu bringen.
Dankbarkeit ermöglicht eine positive Lebensperspektive. Dankbarkeit ist ein Weg zum Glück. Gerade weil wir Menschen auf die wenigen negativen Dinge im Alltag geeicht sind, lässt sich das Gehirn mit Dankbarkeitsroutinen austricksen – man fängt an zu glauben, was man tut. Wer sich also über etwas ärgert, darf sich über all das freuen, was ihm an guten Dingen widerfahren ist oder an schlechten eben nicht.

Ich bin A. J. Jacobs und Russ Roberts für die guten Einsichten dankbar.

P.S. Das Buch gehört zur TED Reihe und ist gleichermaßen klein wie schön.

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Cheryl

Awesome read!

Reviewed in Canada on February 28, 2019

Verified Purchase

LOVE A.J. Jacobs books, I have read them all.
This is definitely a must read. When he puts his mind to something he does it!
And I must say, his wife is a saint.

KPA

Grab a coffee and read this great book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 7, 2019

Verified Purchase

I first saw the great TedTalk that AJ Jacobs delivered and wanted to know more so bought the book, and I'm glad I did.
This is a really enjoyable and informative book, regardless of whether or not you drink coffee! Jacobs has a great writing style and I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about the coffee industry. His approach to gratitude is both entertaining but also something we can all learn from. I highly recommend buying this book.

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