Happier

Book Description

2 Reviews

• 

  So far, it has helped me to read better

  “Happier” is a book about how to be happier in life with the things we already have. It is a book written by a Harvard teacher that gives a class with the same name. According to his account, every semester he has between 2 and 3 thousand students in his class. He is a great success and he has writt ... (continue)

  “Happier” is a book about how to be happier in life with the things we already have. It is a book written by a Harvard teacher that gives a class with the same name. According to his account, every semester he has between 2 and 3 thousand students in his class. He is a great success and he has written this book so those who don’t have the opportunity to go to Harvard, have a chance to apply his techniques and listen to his advice. The book is divided in three parts. In the first one he tries to define what happiness is and why we want it so hard, and how se mistake some other things and confuse their meaning to happiness (for example, we believe that being successful in a personal goal is the same as being happy, but he doesn’t think the same way). The first part is very good because it provides the reader with some exercises that are interesting and invite to think and meditate. I found some of the exercises very heavy and mechanical, and therefore I didn’t apply them, but from a general standpoint, the first part is really helpful. Then comes the second part which tries to explain what the author and so many other respectable philosophers and scientists understand by happiness and well being, and it is up to us the readers to take all those definitions and apply them to real life. In part number three, he provides us with some final thoughts about what is it to be happy and how are we really doing to achieve the goal; he calls it the “meditations” part of the book, and it has some beautiful thoughts. A very good thing about this book is that it has a lot of references to interesting works from other authors, philosophers and scientists and it makes the book a reliable source for good further reading. The second good thing about the book is that it contains what the author calls the “time-in” breaks. This “breaks” are tools inside the book that invite the reader to stop for a moment and meditate on what he has just read; often asking questions such as “when was the last time you have an experience like the described above?. This tool is a fantastic way of attaining one of the most important (if not the only important) goals in any reading process: the construction of a new meaning from what the author was intended to mean and what the reader already knows. I really liked the book and I already checked out the “even happier” book from the same author. I want to see not only what else he has to say, but also find out more interesting references for further reading.

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  ariadna73 said on May 31, 2010 | Add your feedback

• A good read, and I remember recommending it to a couple of friends... but 4 months on, I can't seem to remember a thing about it, nor its key points. However, I've no desire to read it again. Seems to almost be the definition of "not very sticky".

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  Michael Rogero said on Apr 5, 2008 | Add your feedback

Book Details

• Rating:
  (8)
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• English Books
• Hardcover 224 Pages
• Edition: 1
• ISBN-10: 0071492399
• ISBN-13: 9780071492393
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Pub date: May 10, 2007
• Dimensions: 1355 mm x 903 mm x 129 mm Just how big is that?
• Also available as: Others

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