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Against Happiness

In Praise of Melancholy

By Eric G. Wilson

(3)

| Hardcover | 9780374240660

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Book Description

Americans are addicted to happiness. When we’re not popping pills, we leaf through scientific studies that take for granted our quest for happiness, or read self-help books by everyone from armchair philosophers and clinical psychologists to the Dalai Lama on how to achieve a trouble-free lifeContinue

Critics

Woe Be Gone

It is a short but laborious book, and it begins: “Ours are ominous times. Each nervous glance portends some potential disaster. Paranoia most mornings shocks us to wakefulness, and we totter out under the ghostly sun. At night fear agitates the darkn ... (read full critics)

nytimes published on Sat, 18 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

Spectacularly awful writing; sometimes it feels as if the writer was flipping through the thesaurus to find the most obscure word possible to say what could be said in a two-syllable word. As an apologia, the logic was sometimes faulty and the tone supercilious towards the "happy" people. But, bec ... (continue)

Spectacularly awful writing; sometimes it feels as if the writer was flipping through the thesaurus to find the most obscure word possible to say what could be said in a two-syllable word. As an apologia, the logic was sometimes faulty and the tone supercilious towards the "happy" people. But, because I'm a depressive like him, the book made me feel good. Thus the two stars.

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Lucja said on Jun 14, 2009 | Add your feedback