Weiner (pronounced whiner), a self-proclaimed grump, is a relatively tongue in cheek narrator sprinkling his writing liberally with witticisms that are often laugh out loud funny. How can it be that one of the poorer nations of the world, Bhutan, ranks so high on the happiness scale, while Qatar, one of the wealthiest nations, scores relatively low? As Weiner travels from country to country, the characteristics that encourage happiness take shape in often surprising ways. Interestingly, these factors don't always lead to a perfect utopia.
On his global tour, Weiner explores a number of common themes we associate with happiness: sunshine, money, freedom, sense of community. Weiner explores a variety of different countries that are a bit off the beaten path including Qatar, Bhutan, Iceland, and Moldova. His mission? To find out conclusively what makes people happy! Using data from the Happiness Research Institute, Eric Weiner travels the globe to explore the world’s happiest and least happy places.
It will make you a just little more hopeful and maybe a little less miserable than you are right now.The Geography of Bliss: One grump’s search for the happiest place on earth. I found the book entertaining, informative and it broadened my understanding of different cultures. Listening to this book may be preferable to reading it, since it allows Weiner's sometimes subtle, but often times blunt, wit to shine through. Many of the people he interviews are transplants to these societies, but he mostly strives to understand why the native milieu is the way is. Still, he does not let authoritative views get in the way of his conveying different cultural viewpoints and how others around the globe feel about the world and their place in it. The author is very knowledgeable about and shares some of the scientific research on happiness, and he learns during his travels about philosophical perspectives on happiness. One grump's search for happiness leads Eric Weiner, the author and narrator, to various countries where people are happy, or where one might at least expect people to be happy, and, for contrast, to some places where people seem to strive to be pissy and glum. Wonderful, Funny, Intelligent, Informative Then it ended and, man, I was sad for a few minutes. It was refreshing that he spared us a sanctimonious lecture on happiness and instead seemed to honestly theorize that happiness is more about basics, general rules of thumb, then anything else. In the end, I felt as confused as the author. Ugliness and misery make for character I guess. The worst place was a highlight for me and the happiest places seemed far less colorful (like Switzerland). Even the Peace Corp volunteers agree (they're interviewed). Indeed, the country seems so miserable that I caught myself laughing out loud a number times. supposedly Maldova is one of the worlds unhappiest places. In his search for happy people, he decides to visit an unhappy place Maldova. It starts in the Netherlands at a hash bar and just gets more colorful from there.
Each visit, incidentally, seems to confirm the scale's validity. If anything, it is the basis for the entire book. These attributes are given good exploration at the beginning. The scale is measured on a number of attributes. Basically, Weiner, uses an academically based "Happy Scale" to find the happiest places on earth. The first countries seem to take hours to investigate, but he seems to rush through the last few places which include Florida, North Carolina, England and India.
The book starts strong and starts to lose it's intensity toward the end. He does Arab accents, new york accents, Thai, British, and it's not always good, but always funny. His narration was fun, fluid, and when he makes attempts to replicate accents, it's funny. I haven't listened to many books - but the author does a great job here.
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