I've been slogging away at this book for nearly a month, which is unusual for me. Usually, if I stall on a book (as I did with three other books I started reading over the month of February), I simply put it down with a note that it's been partially read. But The Happiness Hypothesis was so compelling that I kept coming back after putting it down and letting my mind digest the material. It's a book that's designed to be read slowly.

I discovered this book through Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath, who borrow Haidt's metaphor of the mind as a rider on an elephant. Haidt asks us to imagine our mind as a rider (your conscious self) trying to direct an elephant (your subconscious self). To some extent, the rider can manhandle the elephant into doing what it wants, but things work out much better if he can train the elephant into going along the proper path. This metaphor helps explain much of the rest of the book.

Later chapters use psychology, neurology, biology, and anthropology to explain the sometimes-confusing world of our minds and our societies. Why do we feel the need to get revenge on someone, even if it doesn't bring us any personal gain? Why are we so likely to see faults in other but not ourselves? How can we find love and happiness? How can we overcome adversity? And, in the pursuit of the ultimate question, what is the meaning of life?

This is an absolutely fascinating book, and I highly recommend it. You'll start to see some of the underlying reasons behind things that might previous have been a mystery. I expect I'll come back to this book and reread it every few years, because it's just so rich with information.