He pleaded with me to turn back, but I insisted we press on, propelled by an irresistible curiosity about what lay ahead. Not long into our journey, Drew grew nervous. I’ve always believed that happiness is just around the corner. And so, on a late summer afternoon, I dragged my reluctant friend Drew off to explore new worlds and, I hoped, to fi nd some happiness along the way. My bags were packed and my provisions loaded. Change your place, I believe, and you can change your life. How place-in every aspect of the word-shapes us, defines us. That is what The Geography of Bliss is about. There is wisdom to be found in the least likely of places. We Americans, it turns out, have no monopoly on the pursuit of happiness.
You will, however, find much to chew on and, perhaps, some unexpected inspiration. You will find no easy answers in these pages. Is this a self-help book? Perhaps, but not like any you’ve read before. I roam the world in search of answers to the pressing questions of our time: What are the essential ingredients for the good life? Why are some places happier than others? How are we shaped by our surroundings? Why can’t airlines serve a decent meal? While I do log thousands of miles in researching the book, The Geography of Bliss is really a travelogue of ideas. Is this a travel book? Yes, but not a typical one. In my quest for the world’s happiest places, I eat rotten Icelandic shark, smoke Moroccan hashish and intervene to save (almost) an insect in distress. I travel to Switzerland, where I discover the hidden virtues of boredom to the tiny-and extremely wealthy-Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, where the relationship between money and happiness is laid bare to India, where Westerners seek their bliss at the feet of gurus to Thailand, where not thinking is a way of life to a small town outside London where happiness experts attempt to “change the psychological climate.” I am no dispassionate observer. As I make my way from Iceland (one of the world’s happiest countries) to Bhutan (where the king has made Gross National Happiness a national priority) to Moldova (not a happy place), I call upon the collective wisdom of “the self-help industrial complex” to help navigate the path to contentment. Using the ancient philosophers and the much more recent “science of happiness” as my guide, I travel the world in search of the happiest places and what we can learn from them. But for The Geography of Bliss, I decided to tell the other side of the story by visiting some of the world’s most contented places. It is all of those things, and more.įor years, as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, I covered a multitude of catastrophes, natural and man-made.
I like to think of it as a philosophical humorous travel memoir. The Geography of Bliss is a tough book to nail down.
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