Product Description
Utilizing sophisticated methodology and three decades of research by the world's leading expert on happiness, Happiness challenges the present thinking of the causes and consequences of happiness and redefines our modern notions of happiness. shares the results of three decades of research on our notions of happiness covers the most important advances in our understanding of happiness offers readers unparalleled access to the world's leading experts on happiness provides "real world" examples that will resonate with general readers as well as scholars Winner of the 2008 PSP Prose Award for Excellence in Psychology, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 14 reviews)

A comprehensive, well-researched manual by Beth Cholette (Upstate NY USA)

4 Stars
August 25, 2009
This book is written by a father-son team, Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener. Both have done extensive research in the happiness field, with latter collecting data--often in a fairly unconventional manner--from around the world. They chose to focus their book on the concept of psychological wealth, which includes not only happiness but also additional factors such as one's attitude towards life, social support, material resources, and other influences. The authors lay out their book in several parts. Part I simply expands on the concept of psychological wealth and the principles that define it. Parts II and III form the core of the book: in Part II, the authors make the case that happy people function better, particularly in the areas of health, social relationships, and work, and in Part III, they examine the specific causes of happiness. Finally, the last section of the book, Part IV, involves putting everything together, including summarizing the previous concepts and providing various measures of psychological wealth. The authors write in a style that is clear and accessible to a general audience; furthermore, they frequently infuse humor into their work. But less than halfway through the book, I found myself to be surprisingly bored. One of the main ways in which the authors lost me is that they tend to overstate their case to the readers; often I found myself having a reaction along the lines of "yes, yes, I get it already!" In fact, in Chapter 13, "Living Happily Ever After," the authors offer short summaries of each of the key chapters from Parts II and III of the book, and I found these brief synopses sufficient to convey the most salient and necessary points. Another issue I had is that I'm not sure who, exactly, is the appropriate audience for this book. For the mental health professional like myself (I'm a clinical psychologist), the authors do offer a few new insights into the factors which contribute to psychological wealth, but as mentioned above, they are quite slow to make their points. For the more general reader, the authors provide little in the way of practical applications of their research, with the exception of their AIM theory, or how one chooses to direct one's attention. Unfortunately, the AIM model does not seem significantly different from the concept of Learned Optimism introduced by the founder of positive psychology, psychologist Martin Seligman, well over 15 years ago. I certainly respect Diener and Biswas-Diener as well as admire the amount effort they have each put into their life's work. Unfortunately, however, I think that this book fails to truly convey the importance and excitement of that work to the reader. Therefore, my final rating is 3 1/2 stars.

What makes people happy? by M. Antwi (brampton,ON. Canada)

4 Stars
April 10, 2009
What makes people happy? Does it really matter? Some people are satisfied with just being content. Before reading this book I though it was a step-to-step process in how to be a happy person. Yet after reading it, I'm more confused. There are so many things involved in achieving happiness and many paths you can take to get there. Throughout their research Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener are insisting that there are many important aspects that affects the psychological wealth of individuals. The definition used in this book is quite broad referring to social support, material recourses, attitudes towards life, spiritual development, health, and activities. A chapter each elaborates on each of these aspects, explaining how they can influence one's psychological wealth. One great advantage of this book is that although it is scientific and involves empirical research; the authors explain the concepts in a fashion easily understood by the average person. Preconceived opinions on happiness are either refuted or supported. This book is fun to read, and has many witty comments. It should to be read at least more than once to gasp all of its essential moments.

Arguably the most important 21st century book to date, or perhaps of the whole century by Leonard Zane (California)

4 Stars
April 06, 2009
Do you want to be happy? Of course you do! This remarkable work is the result of decades of scientific research and professional insights on the nature of happiness. - What happiness is. - What psychological wealth is and how to measure it. - Characteristics of happiness. - Efficacy of happy people, in everything from relationships to material well being. - Happiness and health. - Happiness and religion and spirituality. - Happy people can be materially destitute. - What thwarts happiness. - How unhappy people and societies fare. - How to go about achieving and securing more happiness. - Why to achieve and secure more happiness. - Optimum, not maximum, levels of happiness. I would have joined other reviewers in giving this easily read book an enthusiastic 5 stars. Except I've regrettably not been able to, because of one curious and important neglect by the authors. I say, "curious and important neglect" because they at least broached the issue, and scientific investigations are readily at hand that easily summarize findings and answers. But the authors simply did not follow through -- and so their book received my 4-star rating. The book's neglect concerns religiosity. The authors found, at least in America, that: (1) "religious people are on the whole happier than the nonreligious." [p. 114.] (2) "When we examined the Gallup World Poll [2006], we noticed that the happiness of people who attend religious services depended on where they lived. In some societies, they were more satisfied with life, and in other societies less so. We are not certain how cultural context plays into the religion-happiness question, but it is possible that there are historical or social factors that add to or detract from the potential power of religion in various nations. Whatever the reason, religion does not seem to equal happiness everywhere." [p.114.] (3) "An important emotional benefit of organized religion is the social support that frequently comes with being a member of a congregation." [p.119.] SO INVESTIGATORS SHOULD EXPLORE FURTHER why certain cultures or nations are happy despite lack of religious faiths or beliefs. But the Dieners don't do that -- even though both their cited Gallup Poll and other contemporary international studies -- rate Denmark as the world's happiest country, for instance. AND YET, ACCORDING TO ANOTHER PROMINENT STUDY [Zuckerman, Phil. "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns," chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. by Michael Martin, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK (2005)], Denmark has the 3rd highest proportion of atheists and agnostics in the world, estimated at 43% to 80% of the population -- even though 82% of Danes are Lutheran church members, and most Danes attend churches for weddings, baptisms and funerals. So this appears to confirm the value of social support rather than religious faith per se -- and the Dieners could easily have investigated, communicated and clarified this in time for publishing the book. [ [...] According to the Dieners and the information they provide: "Research shows that most people are happy most of the time...only a few are ecstatic or depressed...People on the average are moderately happy, but never perfectly happy." [pp. 129-130.] In line with this, a story comes to mind from Epicurus, who devoted his philosophy to discovering what it takes to be happy. STUDENT (to Epicurus): Maestro, I'm just not happy. EPICURUS (concerned): Oh. I'm very sorry to hear that. Are you in pain? STUDENT: Wellll...not exactly, no. EPICURUS (putting a hand on the student's shoulder and gently smiling): You're happy. Now, aside from a one-star demerit for inadequately analyzing and citing the types and effects of religiosity on happiness -- including perhaps being alienated and punished by lack of being religious in a religious society -- DO GET AND STUDY THIS IMMENSELY VALUABLE BOOK!! - Happy people aren't terrorists. - Happy people don't start wars. - Happy people have more energy. - Happy people live longer. - Happy people are easy and harmonious to be with. - Happy people are more reasonable and joyful. - Happy people are more able to solve their own and the world's problems. So please do study the Dieners' work, and find out more about science's discoveries on how to get and stay happier! :)

It's Really Not That Mysterious by Alan Gettis (River Edge, NJ USA)

5 Stars
April 04, 2009
The beauty of this book is that it takes all the theory of positive psychology and shows you how to take it off the pages and begin living it. It is a remarkable contribution to the growing literature on both happiness and positive psychology. Psychological wealth is an interesting and useful concept that correlates with well-being much more than does material wealth. This book is useful for therapists and patients.

Excellent scientific/ humanistic assessment of happiness research by Eric Levy (Seattle, WA)

5 Stars
February 24, 2009
(for anyone wondering where I'm coming from with this review, my Ph.D. is in marketing and psychology) Usually I'm a bit skeptical of these sorts of books- even top notch researchers tend to "dumb down" the material for general audiences, and the research findings can get lost in the stories. Not here, however. Dr. Diener does an excellent job of describing the current state of psychological research on happiness, in a way that both laypeople and scientists can appreciate. Short on jargon, and interwoven with informative personal stories, the book makes for a great read. The one thing I disliked was the lack of references within the text; sometimes I had to guess what the cite referred to by scanning the references in the back of the book. I won't get into all the specifics, as other reviewers have addressed the content of the book. However, it was really cool to see a balanced and nuanced treatment of controversial questions such as "does money buy happiness?", and how one can go about increasing his or her own happiness without buying into the latest fad. Of all the books I've looked at about "happiness", I'd strongly recommend this one both to laypeople interested in how they can improve their own happiness, as well as academic researchers looking for cool research ideas.

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