I’ve been insufferable since I started this book. Just ask my husband. I can’t shut up about it. I highlight passages like a type-A student prepping for a big exam. I quote from it at the coffeehouse. I twitter my favorite factoids. I’m as smitten as Jared Bibler, the loveable 20-something expat from Boston the author meets in Iceland.
Equal parts travel, humor and self-help,The Geography of Bliss is as funny as it is enlightening. Weaving together analytic statistics with keen observation, Eric Weiner, a longtime foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, presents an intelligent and entertaining look at the cultural habits that contribute to, or detract from, the happiness of its citizens.
As you may imagine, defining happiness is tricky business, but Weiner lets the people he meets across four continents tell what it means to be happy in their particular corner of the globe. Even in Moldova, a decidedly unhappy place, Weiner’s dry wit has us laughing with the Moldovans, not at them.
Learn more, read the rest of my book review published online at ATravelersLibrary.com
Ellen Barone is an American writer and wanderer. She co-founded and publishes the group travel blog YourLifeIsATrip.com and is currently at work on her first book "I Could Live Here".