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

by Eric Weiner

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Book cover for The Geography of Bliss

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What makes a nation happy? Is one country's sense of happiness the same as another's? In the last two decades, psychologists and economists have learned a lot about who's happy and who isn't. The Dutch are, the Romanians aren't, and Americans are somewhere in between...

After years of going to the world's least happy countries, Eric Weiner, a veteran foreign correspondent, decided to travel and evaluate each country's different sense of happiness and discover the nation that seemed happiest of all.

*He discovers the relationship between money and happiness in tiny and extremely wealthy Qatar (and it's not a good one)
*He goes to Thailand, and finds that not thinking is a contented way of life.
*He goes to the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, and discovers they have an official policy of Gross National Happiness!
*He asks himself why the British don't do happiness?

In Weiner's quest to find the world's happiest places, he eats rotten Icelandic shark, meditates in Bangalore, visits strip clubs in Bangkok and drinks himself into a stupor in Reykjavik. Full of inspired moments, The Geography of Bliss accomplishes a feat few travel books dare and even fewer achieve: to make you happier.

  • ISBN10 0446580260
  • ISBN13 9780446580267
  • Publish Date 3 January 2008 (first published 1 January 2008)
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 7 January 2011
  • Publish Country GB
  • Imprint Twelve
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 352
  • Language English