Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile

· OUP Oxford
4.0
2 reviews
Ebook
224
Pages
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More

About this ebook

Everybody wants it. But what exactly is happiness? The pursuit of happiness has been recognized by everyone from poets to politicians as what makes the world go round. The world's largest and fastest-growing industries - alcohol, pharmaceuticals, mind altering drugs, self-help books, counselling, travel and tourism - all profit heavily from our intent to become completely happy with our lives. In the first comprehensive book to address this most basic of human desires, Daniel Nettle explores why we want to be happy, how we assess our levels of happiness, and the different ways that happiness is interpreted in different cultures. Using statistical information from the National Child Development Study, a project that has collected social and emotional data from thousands of people since 1958, Nettle shows the ways in which definitions and sources of happiness have changed over time.

Ratings and reviews

4.0
2 reviews

About the author

Daniel Nettle is Lecturer in Biological Psychology at the Open University. As well as specialist in scholarly and scientific articles, he is author of three OUP books, Vanishing Voices (with Suzanne Romaine), Linguistic Diversity, and Strong Imagination: Madness, Creativity, and Human Nature. Vanishing Voices was winner of the BAAL prize for 2001, and was described by The New Yorker as 'a superb study of endangered languages'. Strong Imagination was described as 'a fascinating, pithy little book' (Sunday Times), giving 'a critical survey of current psychiatric knowledge that is as good an overview as is available from any source' (Times Literary Supplement).

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.