The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom By Jonathan Haidt NYU-Stern School of Business
This is a book about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world’s civilizations - to question it in light of what we now know from scientific research, and to extract from it the lessons that still apply to our modern lives. It is a book about how to construct a life of virtue, happiness, fulfillment, and meaning.
“For the reader who seeks to understand happiness, my advice is: Begin with Haidt.” --Martin E. P. Seligman, Professor of psychology, University of Pennsylvania, author of Authentic Happiness
Useful features:
Using the Happiness Hypothesis to increase your happiness. (It's not a self-help book, but you can make it one)
My second book, The Righteous Mind, uses the rider and elephant to understand morality, politics, and religion. It picks up where The Happiness Hypothesis left off in the concluding chapter -- about the need to look for wisdom in the minds of those with whom you disagree.
I talked with Bill Moyers about the new book, here.
