Review by New York Times Review
A professed grouch travels to pleasurable destinations and analyzes their formulas for happiness. PITY the writer who attempts a treatise on happiness without resorting to shopworn philosophic quotations and the predictable shout-out to Tolstoy. Surely Eric Weiner deserves points for devising a new way to address the perennial question of what makes people happy and why. The operating conceit of this odyssey memoir is that the author, a professed grouch ("My last name is pronounced 'whiner,' and I do my best to live up to the name"), will travel to the world's happier places to explore to what degree an individual's happiness is intertwined with a shared geography and culture. To that end, he shoots off to unusual locales - Bhutan, Iceland, Qatar - and to Thailand and India, perpetual stopovers for pleasure seekers, visiting nine foreign countries altogether over the course of a year. His final chapter is about the United States, which "is not as happy as it is wealthy." Weiner's first destination is the Netherlands. He heads to something called the World Database of Happiness, where a social scientist tries to quantify and rank countries by self-reported contentment. There he learns about such happiness fundamentals as "Wealthy people are happier than poor ones, but only slightly" and "People are least happy when they're commuting to work," along with broad indicators like the East Asian Happiness Gap, which demonstrates that countries emphasizing societal obligations over individual contentment report lower levels of happiness. Over all, he discovers, the world's happiest nations are secular and homogeneous, and often report high suicide rates. Armed with this information, Weiner visits not only happy countries but also a couple that fall into the sad camp, as he puzzles out the sources of relative discontent. Chapters follow a trajectory, from initial annoyance ("Damn the efficient, competent Swiss to hell") to grudging appreciation ("Swiss toilets are indeed clean") to outright admiration ("I'm in love. The object of my amour is not a woman or even a person. It is the Swiss rail network"). He adeptly weaves his own discoveries and others' academic conclusions into his travelogue; not once does it feel as if information had been systematically downloaded into a chapter, or narrative threads elaborately woven to make data fit. And what does he learn? As Weiner says of happiness science and could easily say of his book, "The research findings are alternatively obvious and counterintuitive, expected and surprising." In general, happiness levels within a country vary less than happiness levels between countries, though not everyone's personality suits the cultural blueprint of his native land. In several places, Weiner encounters people he calls "hedonic refugees," those who realize they were born in the wrong place and bound off in search of a better "cultural fit." They may head to Thailand, where happiness seems to stem from avoidance of analysis and introspection. Or to Switzerland, where contentment means living in a democracy in which people have real power over their choices and trust others to carry them out. Yet disorienting contradictions abound. Drink brings merriment in Iceland but adds to the sorrows of Moldova Icelanders relish personal failure and "indulge in 'enjoyment of misery,' " while "Moldovans derive more pleasure from their neighbor's failure than their own success." Weiner is best in lowly Moldova, one of several post-Soviet nations dumped at the bottom of the happiness heap. Without an "abiding faith or culture on which to rely," Moldovans, Weiner writes, harbor a superstition that is "free-floating, anchored to nothing but the cloud of pessimism that hovers over this sad land." Hopping aboard a crowded bus, he observes, "Every face is frozen in an expression that is simultaneously vacant" and vaguely teed off - "an expression I came to identify as the Moldovan Scowl." This part of the book is funny, but not all of it is. The problem with "The Geography of Bliss" is one of tone. It comes across as an attempted amalgam of Paul Theroux's bleak humor, P. J. O'Rourke's caustic wit and David Sedaris's appreciation of the absurd. There's a kind of forced jocularity to Weiner's writing, as if the author were trying to affect the appropriate persona for his subject. Rather than projecting a hoity NPR-ness (Weiner was one of its foreign correspondents for a decade), he cops an attitude of faux populism, taking potshots at the Ivy League, Nietzsche and other dead white males, all of which comes across as somewhat insincere. The book is also weakened by the disconcerting fact that Weiner sometimes spends as little as two weeks in a given country. This might be O.K. if he were writing about its olive oil industry, but someone trying to tackle something as intrinsic yet amorphous as a culture's well-being could have used more time in each place. Fascinating nuggets of information are too often wedged between thunderingly obvious generalizations; pithiness occasionally veers into the trite: "The disease and the cure," reads a typical, less-than-illuminating passage. "India has it all. One-stop shopping." It's not especially clear what the reader is meant to make of the information on hand. According to a recent study, Denmark's key to happiness is lowered expectations. With that in mind, readers will find pleasure, however fleeting, in these pages. The world's happiest nations are secular and homogeneous, and often report high suicide rates. Pamela Paul is a frequent contributor to the Book Review. Her next book, "Parenting, Inc.," will be published in April.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
A self-proclaimed grump, Weiner has spent a decade as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, giving him ample opportunity to view the human condition around the world. Intrigued by the ingredients for bliss, he consulted with a Dutch professor of happiness studies, who set him off on a journey to visit places known to have happiness indexes. Iceland ranks because of its high tolerance for failure and Qatar for its extreme wealth. Weiner explores tranquility in Bhutan, the closest thing to Shangri-La, which has a government policy on Gross National Happiness. In Moldova, the former Soviet Republic in the miserable throes of recovery, he defines happiness as being elsewhere. In Britain, he finds a people put off by the American enthusiasm for happiness, and at home, he finds an endless pursuit of joy that evades us even as we are alone in status as a superpower. Grouchy or not, Weiner displays an openness to other cultures and a huge sense of humor in this absorbing, funny, and thoughtful look at notions of bliss.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly 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. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Part travelogue, part personal-discovery memoir and all sustained delight, this wise, witty ramble reads like Paul Theroux channeling David Sedaris on a particularly good day. Intent on finding the happiest places on Earth and learning what makes them that way, globe-trotting NPR correspondent Weiner discovers some surprises. Money helps, but only to a point; the happiest places tend to be racially homogenous (an unfortunate statistic for multiculturalists); the greatest obstacle to happiness is not poverty or oppression, but envy; breast-enhancement surgery appears to be a good investment, happiness-wise. The author vividly renders happily repressed Switzerland, determinedly tolerant and hedonistic Holland and culturally vibrant Iceland as models of happiness-encouraging environments. (Another surprise: Happiness flourishes in cold climates.) Excursions to Bhutan and India provide a spiritual perspective and underscore the wisdom of low expectations. For contrast, Weiner visits some decidedly unhappy spots: England's dismal Slough ("a showpiece of quiet desperation"); newly rich Qatar, choking on cash but devoid of culture; and miserable Moldova, whose citizens live by an ethos of envy, corruption, vicious self-interest and pleasure in the misfortune of others. The Moldova chapter is the book's funniest--nothing inspires comedy like misfortune and despair. But Weiner writes of the morose Moldovans with affectionate warmth and manages to find something positive to say about the country: The fruits and vegetables are fresh. Americans, despite their wealth and comfort, don't make the top ranks of the world-happiness index--they think too much, work too hard and look for satisfaction in consumer goods. The author's pronouncements on the nature of happiness are not exactly world-shaking: It depends on cooperative relationships and community; it has spiritual value; it can be attained as a conscious choice. But the author's conclusions are hardly the point--as with all great journeys, getting there is at least half the fun. Fresh and beguiling. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
