Is there such thing as a “happiest place on earth?” (no, not Disneyland)

In The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner travels to both the supposedly sad and happy countries in the world in order to find out what the secret of happiness is. The countries are:

• Netherlands (for research)
• Switzerland (supposedly very happy)
• Bhutan (for the Gross National Happiness)
• Qatar (to check if money can buy happiness)
• Iceland (one of the happiest countries, according to ranking)
• Moldova (one of the unhappiest countries)
• Thailand (the land of smiles)
• Great Britain (can a location become happier?)
• India (the author loves and hates India at the same time)
• America (the author is American so it needs to be in the book to come ‘full circle’)

After all that travel, research, and one Very Expensive Pen, Weiner learns that… there’s more than one path to happiness. In general, though, we can safely say that money matters to a certain extent (but not as much as we think), envy and excessive thinking are toxic, friends and family are important, and trust and gratitude is essential to happiness. All of which sound like fairly obvious ideas about how to be happy.

Given how obvious the key lessons are, I suppose this is less of a journey on how to be happy, and more of a travel book with happiness as the theme tying the trips together. After all, what I most enjoyed about the various chapters was that Weiner tries to get at the essence of the country by interviewing locals and expats to get the insider and outsider points of view.

The writing here is easy to read. While Weiner does start by trying to do research, and he does try to talk about the history of the place (especially in Moldova), the book isn’t academic. The tone is light and Weiner tries to be funny, so this felt more like a “light” nonfiction that could be read in between heavier books.

Overall, this was a fairly enjoyable book. While I can’t say that it changed my life or my outlook on happiness, I did enjoy the exploration of various cultures and it was very easy to keep on reading until the book was finished.