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

Eric Weiner (Goodreads Author)

3.83 · Rating details · 30,014 ratings · 3,465 reviews

Weiner spent a decade as a foreign correspondent reporting from such discontented locales as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Indonesia. Unhappy people living in profoundly unstable states, he notes, inspire pathos and make for good copy, but not for good karma. So Weiner, admitted grump and self-help book aficionado, undertook a year's research to travel the globe, looking for the ...more

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Paperback, 335 pages

Published January 28th 2008 by Twelve (first published 2008)

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Nov 28, 2019 Adina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, audiobook

Eric Weiner used to work as a conflict zone reporter which meant he was usually sent to less fortunate places. Moreover, he wasn't a happy person himself, more on the opposite side. One day he decides to visit the happiest countries in the world in order to find the sources of bliss, write a book about it and maybe find the key to his own elation.

The country he visited in his journey were The Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Thailand, Great Britain, India. He also visited the ...more

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May 30, 2008 Jenny rated it really liked it

Recommended to Jenny by: travelers, self-help, geography buffs

This was a very interesting book. It's about happiness, a subject that I never realized I thought about so much. Most of my thinking is subconscious, but throughout this book I kept questioning myself and trying to decide if I agreed with most of the major ideas. I did. Here's a few of the highlights:

"Extroverts are happier than introverts; optimists are happier than pessimists (shocking!); married people are happier than singles (certainly in Utah), though people with children are no happier This was a very interesting book. It's about happiness, a subject that I never realized I thought about so much. Most of my thinking is subconscious, but throughout this book I kept questioning myself and trying to decide if I agreed with most of the major ideas. I did. Here's a few of the highlights:

"Extroverts are happier than introverts; optimists are happier than pessimists (shocking!); married people are happier than singles (certainly in Utah), though people with children are no happier than childless couples (surprising); Republicans are happier than Democrats (I'll have to ask Jeff about that one); people who attend religious services are happier than those who do not; people with college degrees are happier than those without, though people with advanced degrees are less happy than those with just a BA (damn that MBA); people with an active sex life are happier than those without (no comment); women and men are equally happy, though women have a wider emotional range; having an affair will make you happy but will not compensate for the massive loss of happiness that you will incur when your spouse finds out and leaves you; people are the least happy when they're commuting to work (I could have told you that); busy people are happier than those with too little to do (could have told you that too); wealthy people are happier than poor ones, but only slightly (surprising)."

Most of all this book made me want to travel. I'd love to really spend some time in different countries, and get to know the people and their culture. My brief stay in London taught me invaluable lessons (some of which shall not be named here), but one major lesson I learned was that people in foreign countries think differently. I knew they dressed differently, ate differently, talked differently, but realizing that they THOUGHT differently was an important revelation. It's made me more tolerant.

Another particular point that stood out was the concept of thinking. We certainly believe that thinking and analysis are important, but the Thais don't think so. One of their expressions is "Don't think too much." I like this concept. I know, I'm a teacher, I should encourage thinking. And I do. I think that examining ideas, literature, cultures, politics, etc. is very important. I'm grateful to my higher level math classes for helping me to think through complex topics. However, I think many of us have taken it too far. Think just a minute about Seinfeld. The show drives me crazy. I know everyone everywhere loves this show, but it just makes me tense. They spend the entire show talking about nothing, nitpicking every detail of everything. And they're miserable. You know they are. We're told that the examined life is a good life, but I think that can go too far. I'm not advocating ignorance, stupidity, or small-mindness; I'm just saying that most of what we spend our lives thinking and worrying about doesn't really matter. As a side note, they don't sell a lot of self-help books in Thailand, or England, or anywhere else really other than the U.S.

Here were Weiner's conclusions: "Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude....Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or a verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue."

I like that. I put this book down with a sigh and thought "That was a good book." I'll try not to overthink it now. ...more

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Dec 09, 2011 Jason Koivu rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, humor

A sourpuss Weiner travels the world and wonders why the frick everyone's so dang happy. And I thought I was a grump!

This was actually a very fun way to "travel the world," by piggybacking Weiner on his quest to discover what might be the reason(s) one nation of people is generally happier or more depressed than another.

A good deal of the book is about the author's own discovery. Some of that is personal and un-relatable, but unless you're the most worldly person of all-time, there will be ...more

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Jun 10, 2008 Jessica rated it it was ok

Shelves: geography, nonfiction

Okay, not really fair to post a review, since I'm just more than halfway through (it has to go back to the library now). But: I've read enough to know that I find the book too superficial for my taste. The author covers several countries (so far: Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar), but there is nothing probing in his method. He stays a few weeks, talks to natives and to ex-pats and forms conclusions. Maybe the topic itself is irritating to me: talk enough about it, and it disappears. This ...more

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Mar 20, 2008 Andy rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

I will admit that I was initially put off by the title of NPR correspondent Eric Weiner’s engaging, highly readable travelogue, The Geography of Bliss. That conjunction of the global and the delightful conjured visions of a frequently flying chick lit heroine named, without irony – you guessed it. Thankfully (happily?), the book’s title is a minor bump along the road to an otherwise largely satisfying read.

While the author’s self-confessed grumpiness kills any chance of a candy-colored happily I will admit that I was initially put off by the title of NPR correspondent Eric Weiner’s engaging, highly readable travelogue, The Geography of Bliss. That conjunction of the global and the delightful conjured visions of a frequently flying chick lit heroine named, without irony – you guessed it. Thankfully (happily?), the book’s title is a minor bump along the road to an otherwise largely satisfying read.

While the author’s self-confessed grumpiness kills any chance of a candy-colored happily ever after, the nature of Weiner’s project insures against the opposite extreme: “What if,” Weiner writes in his introduction, “I spent a year traveling the globe, seeking out not the world’s well-trodden trouble spots but, rather, its unheralded happy places?” Candace Bushnell might not have signed up for the journey, but neither would William T. Vollmann have.

That year of traveling keeps Weiner zigzagging over an impressive swath of the Northern hemisphere, with junkets to nine countries spread across various geographic regions of Asia and Europe before return to the United States. Along the way, Weiner examines the pithy conventional wisdom on happiness – that it can’t be bought, and so on – and recent findings on the emotional state. Though Weiner hits enough global-travel clichés (a hashish bar in the Netherlands, a sex show in Thailand, an ashram in India) to make his journey recognizable, the best passages aren’t the ones that evoke place or custom but those in which the author taps locals’ minds for interpretation of their cultures’ emotional well-being. In the chapter on Switzerland, “Happiness Is Boredom,” the ongoing dialogue the author conducts with himself, his Swiss contacts and the more canonical wisdom of such thinkers as Bertrand Russell leads to these insights: the urbane Swiss owe no small part of their collective happiness to their relationship with nature, their lack of envy and ostentation to the small town-like close knitting of their social fabric. Whether or not Swiss happiness truly is boredom is another question, one whose cultural components are indirectly alluded to in the image of an ex-pat Hollywood agent nervously thumbing her Blackberry, and surprise from the Swiss that, statistically speaking, they are happy.

The further Weiner travels, geographically and culturally, the more perspicacious his book seems to become about happiness in the United States. This is partly due to the range of farther flung countries he visits. In India, though Weiner does visit that ashram and socialize among the Indian middle class, he of course glimpses that country’s endemic poverty – and concludes that, in certain fundamental ways, it is less grinding than extreme poverty in the United States, the Indian “houseless” (as Weiner refers to the indigent of India) maintaining strong social and familial ties all but unknown among the American homeless. On the other hand, the oil kingdom of Qatar is, in Weiner’s analysis, a Wahhabite Brave New World whose dry cultural well is greased with Starbucks coffee. Happiness isn’t, it seems, a reserve of iced mocha vast enough to caffeinate the world for the next hundred years.

But Weiner’s a-ha moment in an exotic country comes during a conversation with Karma Ura, who runs Bhutan’s most important think tank (which, as Weiner notes, “also happens to be Bhutan’s only think tank”). “I have achieved happiness,” Ura tells Weiner, “because I don’t have unrealistic expectations.” This perspective is so opposite Weiner’s own (“In America,” he writes, “high expectations are…the force behind our dreams and, by extension, our pursuit of happiness”) that Ura’s expounding temporarily disarms Weiner of his personal guardedness. He drops his guard to tell Ura the story of a recent visit to the hospital, scheduled by the author after be began experiencing numbness in his extremities and shortness of breath; MRI results confirmed that these symptoms were brought on by a panic attack, by hypochondria. “You need to think about death for five minutes every day,” Ura responds. “It will cure you, sanitize you.” His rationale? Human beings must be prepared for death, as most Westerners are not. Ura then reveals that he was once a cancer patient.

“Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so,” wrote John Stuart Mill. Indeed, Weiner’s findings mostly confirm the old adage about the preferability of existing as a happy Forrest Gump rather than as an unhappy Socrates. Weiner relates the story of his firing from the New York Times, which came a few weeks after the paper’s executive editor labeled his work “naïve and unsophisticated.” It is only in Iceland, where “being naïve is okay because you can always start over,” as it’s put by a relatively young music producer on his career, that Weiner finally gets over the insult. “The world, I now conclude, would be a far better place with a bit more naïveté,” writes Weiner.

But Weiner’s book suffers less from simplicity than from not treading certain paths. His travels begin in the Netherlands, with a visit to the Dutch professor who compiles the World Database of Happiness. The ostensibly scientific focus is, for all intents and purposes, mostly forgotten once the WDH has been left behind. And that’s a shame. Some of the most interesting, and promising, recent neurology research has focused on the relationship between the brain’s structure and its functioning. Could happiness be a well-wired brain? Is it possible to rewire one’s brain and thus recalibrate the happiness gauge of one’s psyche? That Weiner devotes almost no space to such questions is understandable on the one hand – it’s the geography, not the neurology, he’s after – and puzzling on the other: as Sharon Begley describes in her book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, neuroscientists are now beginning how meditation practice actually changes the brain’s physiology; two of the nine countries Weiner visits are predominantly Buddhist; another the birthplace of the Buddha himself. And geography, like all received stimuli, influences the way we think.

The Geography of Bliss ultimately begs larger questions about the nature of happiness. To what extent is happiness a function of culture, and vice versa? And does happiness translate easily from one culture to another? Weiner’s findings suggest a negative answer to the latter, as he admits that much of what accounts for the happiness of other cultures would be an acquired taste for most in the United States.

It’s not a giveaway to say that nowhere does Weiner find utopia. The happiness he does encounter reflects in the book itself: imperfect but charming, and as stimulating for the questions it raises as for those it answers. ...more

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Nov 06, 2009 Trish rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, adventure, audio, totally-unexpected

The subtitle of this book is One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World, and I am going to cut to the chase and discuss his conclusions. You're going to want to read the book anyway, to figure out how it can be true that a very unlikely country comes in first in the happiness lottery. But do get the audio of this book. The author reads it, and as an NPR commentator, talking is his trade. He is very good at it, and is as funny as David Sedaris in parts of this reading.

"Happiness is ...more

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Sep 15, 2009 Rachel rated it did not like it

Shelves: non-fiction, travel

I wanted to throw this book in a lake (unfortunately, it's a library book). At times it was funny, sure, and it was kind of interesting. But I couldn't get over its shortcomings and so I didn't finish it (maybe you think that makes me unqualified to form an opinion of it, but I don't). First off, a real gripe I have with this these pop science (I use science loosely here, because I couldn't think of another way to describe the genre) books is that they never seem to have a bibliography, or I wanted to throw this book in a lake (unfortunately, it's a library book). At times it was funny, sure, and it was kind of interesting. But I couldn't get over its shortcomings and so I didn't finish it (maybe you think that makes me unqualified to form an opinion of it, but I don't). First off, a real gripe I have with this these pop science (I use science loosely here, because I couldn't think of another way to describe the genre) books is that they never seem to have a bibliography, or always cite their sources. I mean, the author is no researcher, but still he quotes a whole lot of other works, which it would be nice if he had collected them at the back (and not, dare I say, too hard). In addition, he showed moments of extreme cultural insensitivity. Clearly, the question "are you happy" is not always an appropriate one to ask. Take when he was in Qatar. He even knew it was an inappropriate question, but asked it anyway.

Weiner is also ridiculously ethnocentric. When he talks about culture, he is referring to the American definition of 'high culture', not the definition that you should be using when doing cross-cultural research. The claim that Qatar has no culture is absurd! There is no place without a culture. Sure, it might not have its own arts, literature, music, etc., but those things are not equivalent to culture. He criticizes, ridicules even, parts of some of the cultures he visits. For instance, he sees the Bhutanese use of phalluses as an apotropaic symbol (they ward off evil spirits) and makes fun of it. This would be uncalled for and really offensive even if it was a uniquely Bhutanese custom. But no, he doesn't seem to realize that the use of the phallus to ward off evil is fairly common, and dates back at least as far as the ancient Romans.

Finally, Weiner expects to know all there is to know about a culture's view of happiness by going for a week or two and talking to a few people. This is completely outrageous and presumptious. You can't come to such broad conclusions after a week as a tourist. Basically, thanks to my being an anthropology major, I could not take anymore of this. So, I urge you to be suspicious while reading this book. If you can enjoy it, by all means, do. But don't believe that it's necessarily very true. ...more

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Feb 13, 2009 David rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2009

This is a late entry in the glut of “science of happiness” books that peaked a couple of years ago. The best among those books was Daniel Gilbert’s “Stumbling on Happiness” and, while this book is not without a certain charm of its own, it poses no serious threat to Gilbert’s supremacy. It might seem as if this ground has already been covered more than adequately, but Weiner is smart enough to have come up with a reasonably appealing, and effective, gimmick. Instead of just giving yet another ...more

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Feb 13, 2008 Kristen rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Anyone

I laughed my way--out loud--through most of this book. It was clever, very funny, and totally enjoyable. It's written by an NPR correspondent who travels the globe searching for the place, or source, of happiness. What makes us happy, and what doesn't make us happy? It was insightful and hilarious, peppered with quotes from philosophers (from Russell to Nietzsche), scholars, and spiritual leaders.

************

Just read it again for book club and enjoyed it the second time, though I was much more ...more

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Apr 11, 2018 Susan Johnson rated it really liked it

Shelves: in-person-book-club

I was surprised at some of the happiest places on Earth and not surprised at others. I remember when I first read Alexander McCall Smith's Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency and was surprised at how happy they were in Botswana. It just goes to show that there are many factors that make people happy. I mean both Qatar and Bhutan are two of the happiest places and they are very different. Its an interesting perspective.

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Dec 12, 2008 sal rated it it was amazing

I want to be Eric Weiner and travel the world and talk to people and learn about happiness and learn about culture (and lack there of) and learn about ... everything.
I don't want this book to end, I love it so much. And that's saying something, considering it's nonfiction.
-----------------------------------------------------

I am contemplating buying 10 or so copies of this book, wrapping them with a ribbon, and passing them out to people I encounter as an altruistic Christmas present. I think ...more

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Feb 09, 2009 Karen rated it it was ok

Shelves: unfinished

I could not finish this book. Weiner takes a tone that grated on my nerves. Yes, the topic of happiness is fairly high stakes, and instead of treating it with gentleness and respect, he takes a flippant tone. He seems less interested in educating us about the various cultures he studies and more interested in showing off how witty, well traveled, sarcastic and self-deprecating he can be. After reading the intro chapter and the chapter on the Swiss, I felt as though I was stuck at a dinner party ...more

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Mar 14, 2009 Bettie rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: room-101

What's the chances of this - three raspberries in a row!

How can the only stop in Holland be Rotterdam to give an anaylsis that the Netherlands is not where you would find bliss!

Meh.

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Jul 08, 2013 Sarah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I absolutely loved this book. Not only is Weiner brutally honest (and laugh-out-loud funny because of it), he is a great storyteller but never, ever tells you what to think. There were times that I questioned my own beliefs and wanted to have a bigger conversation. This is a good read for anyone. Highly recommend!

A few words of wisdom gleaned from the pages:

"Maybe happiness is like this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else. Maybe it is simply ...more

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Feb 11, 2009 Helynne rated it really liked it

I loved American journalist Eric Weiner's dry humor as he describes his recent romp around the world researching different societies and their philosophies on happiness. During his travels to the Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Quatar (Persian Gulf), Iceland, Moldova, Thailand, India, Great Britain and finally back to the USA, he learns so much about various ethnic groups and what is and is not important to their overall contentment. My favorite chapter happened to be the visit to Iceland I loved American journalist Eric Weiner's dry humor as he describes his recent romp around the world researching different societies and their philosophies on happiness. During his travels to the Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Quatar (Persian Gulf), Iceland, Moldova, Thailand, India, Great Britain and finally back to the USA, he learns so much about various ethnic groups and what is and is not important to their overall contentment. My favorite chapter happened to be the visit to Iceland where, despite the months of neverending darkness, the people are upbeat and creative, great contributors to their culture in terms of writing and music, and fiercely proud of their language ("the pure speech of the Vikings") and identity. In short, there is a correlation between creativity and happiness. The most downbeat chapter is the discussion of Moldova, a poor country between Romania and the Ukraine, which has virtually no culture, no optimism, and no desire to reach out to make other people's lives better. The one thread that runs through this psychological study is that there is a definite link between altruism and happiness. "The part of the brain linked to altrusim is also the part linked to food and sex," Weiner notes. "We're hardwired for altruism, not just faking it (202-203). He also states that "People engaged in the highest altruistic professions--nurses, clergy, physical therapists, and firemen report the greatest happiness (211). While in Quatar, Weiner says that Jean-Paul Sartre was wrong in his famous quote from "No Exit" that "Hell is other people." He says, "Hell isn't other people. Seventy percent of our happiness rests on our relationships with other people" (114). He also notes that materialistic people are not as happy as non-materialistic people. As for us Americans, we have more money today than Americans ever have had, yet we are not as happy. The self-help movement actually makes this worse "by telling us that happiness lives inside of us just when we should be looking outward; not to money, but to other people, to commmunity and to the human bonds that so clearly are the sources of happiness" (310). Lots to be learned here from a cultural and psychological point of view! ...more

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Jan 21, 2008 Hilda rated it really liked it

Recommended to Hilda by: Michelle

I really enjoyed "The Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner. In the book Weiner, an NPR correspondent, travels across the world to understand why people are happy or unhappy. In the process he ponders on his own happiness or lack thereof. You will do the same when you read it.

Far from a dry, scholarly sociology study, the book is totally readable and at times very, very funny. In addition to the "happiness studies" we learn a little history and a lot of culture about the various countries. We also ...more

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Jan 16, 2013 Christina rated it it was amazing

A book everyone should read. It's not sappy, lame or filled with useless information. It's not the kind of book where for ten minutes I feel awesome and then forget about it. It's a re-evaluation of happiness. Happiness is transient and complicated. It's fleeting, yet in our field of vision at all times. If I may use such a cliché, this is a profound study of what makes us happy; and right now, it's a cup of coffee and my dog. That's all I need at this very moment. Who knows what it will be in ...more

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Oct 27, 2010 K.D. Absolutely rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: essays, travel

What makes people happy?

This basically is what this book tries to answer. It does not offer solution to unhappiness. As the author Eric Weiner puts it, he only hopes his reader to have something to "chew on". Boy, Weiner offers a lot of stuff that his readers could chew and afterwards either swallow or spit out. They are so many that I did not know which to one to pick, remember or forget.

The reason why they are so many is that Eric Weiner, an American, is a foreign correspondent for ...more

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Mar 23, 2015 Julie Reynolds rated it really liked it

I wanted to read this book not to find the happiest place on Earth but to try and improve my abysmal grasp of world geography. I ended up learning something about both the world and happiness. I even underlined things. The grouchy, world-weary Eric Weiner is clearly searching for his own bliss and this is sometimes tiresome, but often very funny and occasionally inspirational (hence the underlining). There is some science in this book, and it turns out the secret to happiness isn’t really a very ...more

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Jan 29, 2017 Cheryl rated it liked it

Thanks GR for reminding me about this. I don't remember much, but I do remember it was interesting.

ETA 2012 - ironically, I do remember even now some general principles that Bliss discusses that I wish more people understood and implied. Some of the ideas keep coming up in many of the psych books I've been reading since. For example, 'the paradox of choice' principle - we get frustrated if there's more stuff out there than we can use, because of the feeling that we must be missing out on ...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Larry H rated it really liked it

I don't know what appealed to me most about this book--the concept of a traveler scouring the globe for the happiest places in the world, or the fact that the author is a self-labeled "grump." This was a terrific concept, well-researched and captivating from start to finish. Eric Weiner thoroughly investigates what makes people happy in a number of different countries, from the Netherlands and Switzerland to Bhutan and Thailand, and even stops in a "miserable" country along the way. I learned ...more

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Sep 15, 2012 Chrisl rated it liked it

Shelves: travel, asia, dew01-499, 2000s

Recently started re-read in large print. Didn't get far. Deducting star.
***
4-stars first time through, when book was new.
***
5 - stars for quote:

"When the last tree is cut,
When the last river is emptied,
When the last fish is caught,
Only then will Man realize that he can not eat money"

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Apr 28, 2019 Shay Dawn rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

There are a lot of good things about this non-fiction book. The reader travels through many different countries and experiences many different cultures. The people that Eric Weiner talks to are interesting, with complex pasts.

But there are many, many negatives. It's hard to like Eric Weiner (pronounced Whiner), who also travels to these countries with you. The way he talks about women... his wife probably read the book a blushed in multiple parts. He describes, very detailed, the breasts of a ...more

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Jan 22, 2008 Chrissie rated it really liked it

Shelves: travel, kirkus, humor

This book makes an attempt to figure out what makes people happy and if perhaps some countries are more conductive to happiness than others. Can happiness be equated with living in a democratic, safe societies? How does money, power, family and friends, religion, trust, homogeneous versus heterogeneous cultural surroundings influence happiness. Some of the conclusions are not as straightforward as one would think. To what extent are people influenced differently? What seems to works in Thailand ...more

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Jul 12, 2008 Sarah Sammis rated it it was ok

Shelves: released

Inspired by research done in the Netherlands on the World Database of Happiness (page 7), NPR correspondent and self proclaimed grump Eric Weiner decided to travel to the happiest countries in the world to see if he could figure out the secret of happiness.

Weiner's tour included The Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Moldova, Thailand, Great Britain, India and home to the United States (Florida). Like so many recent travelogues the book quickly stops being about the research and ...more

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Dec 10, 2016 Shawnie rated it really liked it

Shelves: library, non-fiction

This travel memoir had me laughing. It was interesting hearing how different cultures in the world define and seek happiness.

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Apr 28, 2016 George rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: lacpl-ebook, non-fiction

ENTERTAINING FUN CUM GRUMPY BLISS.

“The World Database of Happiness [in Rotterdam] is the secularist’s answer to the Vatican and Mecca and Jerusalem and Lhasa, all rolled into one”. (p. 7)

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World, by Eric Weiner, is the second of his themed travelogues that I’ve read; and I loved it almost as much as the first (The Geography of Genius). Perhaps neither for their profundity, as much as for their interesting, informative, ...more

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May 04, 2008 Annie rated it it was ok

Shelves: travel, memoir

Granted, I read this book right after Tales of a Female Nomad, but I spent most of the travels wondering when this author would actually connect with the people he was trying to figure out. Now granted, he kept falling back on the "but I'm a journalist, so naturally I can't too connected," excuse, but frankly it got old. I guess if I was supposed to read it as a lay-person's explanation of the science of happiness that's been more and more popular lately instead of his actual search for ...more

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Apr 28, 2008 Turi rated it liked it

Shelves: immersion-journalism, microhistory, travel

The Geography of Bliss wasn't quite what I expected. I picked it up because one of the blurbs on the back compared it favorably to Bill Bryson's writing, and I was in a mood to laugh. Didn't make me laugh more than a few chuckles, but it did make me think.

Eric Weiner travels around the world, exploring the concept of "happy places," places where the inhabitants are considered "happy." He hits some places that are supposed to be among the happiest, like Denmark and Bhutan, and some on the other ...more

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Sep 13, 2013 Kelly rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book, library-loan, recommended-read, book-reviews

Being a cynic myself, I loved the title of the book. The author, an NPR correspondent, provides a humorous and witty account of his travels around the world in search of the happiest places in which people live. His goal was not to find what makes people happy but rather locating the geographic area where there appears to be an abundance of happiness. The author's witty sarcasm is better appreciated listening to the audio version. I found it a laugh out loud informative book.

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About Eric Weiner

Eric Weiner

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Eric Weiner is the author of The New York Times bestseller THE GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS as well as two other books, and the soon-to-be released THE SOCRATES EXPRESS.

His books have been translated into 20 languages. A number of high schools and universities have incorporated them into their curricula. Weiner is the recipient of the Borders Original Voices Award, and a finalist for the Barnes & ...more

Books by Eric Weiner

The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine

The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers

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“Money matters but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.” — 144 likes

“So the greatest source of happiness is other people--and what does money do? It isolates us from other people. It enables us to build walls, literal and figurative, around ourselves. We move from a teeming college dorm to an apartment to a house, and if we're really wealthy, to an estate. We think we're moving up, but really we're walling off ourselves.” — 66 likes

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