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The Pursuit of Happiness: And Why It's Making Us Anxious

The Pursuit of Happiness: And Why It's Making Us Anxious

by RuthWhippman (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2016

    $3.37
Synopsis

Are you happy? Right now? Happy enough? As happy as everyone else? Could you be happier if you tried harder? As your average cynical Brit, when Ruth Whippman moves to California, it seems to her that the American obsession with finding happiness is driving everyone crazy. But soon she starts to get sucked in. She meditates and tries 'mindful dishwashing'. She attends a self-help course that promises total transformation (and learns that all her problems are her own fault). She visits a strange Nevada happiness dystopia (with one of the highest suicide rates in America), delves into the darker truths behind the influential 'science of happiness', and even ventures to Utah, where she learns God's personal secret to eternal bliss. Ultimately she stumbles upon a more effective, less self-involved, less anxiety-inducing way to find contentment. Fantastically fresh, funny and honest, this is an eye-opening look at what happiness really means.

$3.37

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 288
 Publisher: Hutchinson
Published: 10 Mar 2016
ISBN 10: 0091959152
ISBN 13: 9780091959159
Book Overview: A very funny debunking of our obsession with achieving happiness, which will appeal to readers of Bill Bryson, Louis Theroux and Pamela Duckerman.

Media Reviews
I LOVED this book. I found it SO WELL WRITTEN, so witty and funny and reading it I was often envious of Ruth Whippman's facility with language. It is a hugely engaging read, accessible and so relevant ... I really, really, really, really enjoyed it and am quite evangelical about it. -- Marian Keyes, author of THE WOMAN WHO STOLE MY LIFE
Like Bill Bryson, Whippman has a willingness to play up cultural differences to comic effect ... She also has Bryson's sharp ear for language ... With warm wit and chilling logic, The Pursuit of Happiness shows that the human desire for contentment can be manipulated and distorted until it is barely recognisable ... A whip-smart British Bill Bryson. * Sunday Times *
[Ruth Whippman] writes with sharpness and wit * Evening Standard *
Ruth Whippman is my new favorite cultural critic, and her book was such a joy to read that I temporarily forgot about all my neuroses. It's a shrewd, hilarious analysis of why a country obsessed with happiness is so darn unhappy. -- Adam Grant, author of GIVE AND TAKE, ORIGINALS, and OPTION B (coauthored with Sheryl Sandberg)
Those wanting to understand the complex reality of our personal quest for happiness might usefully turn to Ruth Whippman's The Pursuit of Happiness - the lively memoir of a British journalist in California, on the hunt for that elusive but, as she sees it, increasingly sought-after, American ideal of happiness ... Whippman - whose narrative voice is an unlikely mix of Kathy Lette's and Louis Theroux's - has followed her husband to Silicon Valley to start a new life ... Whippman argues persuasively that happiness is something that emerges from the quality of relationships we have with others ... The Pursuit of Happiness also sheds light on the link between religion and happiness. * Times Literary Supplement *
Author Bio
Ruth Whippman is a British writer, journalist and documentary film-maker. Before moving to the US in 2011, she produced and directed numerous documentaries and current affairs programmes for the BBC. Her essays and comment pieces have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, the Independent and the Huffington Post amongst other places. She lives in California with her husband and two young sons. This is her first book.