Self-Help : Stumbling on Happiness
The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom | 
 | 80% Recommended by our customers.
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Manufacturer: Vintage
Release Date: 2007-03-20
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List Price: $15.95
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- ISBN13: 9781400077427
- Condition: New
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 Skip to the Last Chapter
A long haul. The author never really fulfills his mission. He never adequately summarizes his points although the last chapter comes close. He tries too hard to by cute. He forgets that most people aren't as wealthy as him loses sight of the fact that experiences he portrays as day-to-day events would be luxuries to most readers. Just read the last chapter and you have most of the value of the book. The rest is longwinded filler.
 Overwritten and Disappointing
I give this book 2 stars because the author's achievement fell so short of his evident credentials to write about this subject. First, the writing. One of the blurbs accurately describes Mr. Gilbert's style as falling somewhere between Gladwell and Sedaris. Mr. Gilbert simply tries to hard to be entertaining on every page, sometimes every paragraph, every sentence. The result is a chatty logorrhea that often dumbs down the underlying science. He also feels it necessary to devote far too much space to rather obvious points (such as the use of statistics in science).
The substantive points of the book are worth making, but they could have been presented with greater depth and fidelity to the background research. They can also be summed up with other reviewers' observations that our ideas about our happiness, others' happiness, future and past happiness are based on misunderstandings or misperceptions of the concept. Mr. Gilbert rather facilely sidesteps the question of what happiness is or might be or whether there are different things confusingly tagged by the single word. Pace, professor, but the elusive nature of what we or others might mean by it cannot be brushed aside by saying you know it when you feel it.
You could get a lot more on this subject by taking an elderly relative to dinner and listening to them discourse about the subject at random.
A cynics eye on happiness
In fairness, I haven't managed a thorough read yet. So far, my impression is that skepticism is the starting place and test frame for this author's survey of happiness as a state and a practical possibility. I like his effort. I take a much different approach and you should feel free to do so as well.
Worth the read... if you don't mind your assumptions being challenged
I just finished reading the book by Daniel Gilbert. While I firmly enjoyed reading it, let me say this much: this book is not for everyone. The basic notion of the book is too look at why we are such poor predictors of our own happiness. This book explores how what we think will make us happy does not feel like we thought it would, and how is it that we do not learn from that.
The book uses a good balance of humor and a casual tone to make what could be an abstract and heady discussion fun and enjoyable. While perhaps not 'light summer reading' I definitely found it thought provoking, and at times funny. However, the author pulls no punches in teasing apart the lies we tell ourselves. He looks at typical biases, common misconceptions and assumptions, errors in judgment, subjectivity in perception and memory, unrealistic expectations, and even outright self-delusions. He humbly admits that he is as susceptible to these errors as anyone else.
So if you are the kind or person who is unsettled by having your worldview questioned, you may not enjoy this book. If, on the other hand, you can tolerate or even like the opportunity to expand your understanding of your own perceptions, and how they shape your experiences, then I would highly suggest this book.
-Jamie Rishikof, Clinical Psychologist
Stumble through the book ... You'll be happy you did.
This book brings up an important and useful piece of knowledge about the human psyche: we often rely on our own present and past experiences to make decisions about our future--decisions that many times wind up not leaving us any more satisfied than we were when we made them in the first place.
Through an exhaustive battery of anecdotes, Gilbert makes a strong case for why it's important to reach out to others who have been through the challenges and/or experiences we face in life, and look to them for a clearer picture of how things are likely to go for us. Simply put, he argues that each of us believes we are more different from human beings than we actually are, and that there are plenty of good reasons for us to actually listen to and take into account words of wisdom from those who have been down the roads we are eying.
If you are curious about the workings of the human mind, and why we spend so much time thinking and hoping about the future, this may be just the book for you. However, I believe you can get just about as much from "stumbling" through it--e.g.: reading the introduction, skimming the middle chapters, and paying extra close attention to the final chapters' conclusions--as you can from reading every word.
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