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"The Geography of Bliss," Twelve, $25.99
In this comic travel narrative, Eric Weiner, erstwhile foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, visits 10 countries that harbor the secrets of happiness and contentment. Rather than dwell, as journalists must, on the world's "well-trodden trouble spots," Weiner surveys some of its "unheralded happy places," beginning in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, headquarters of the World Database of Happiness, where "bliss-ologists" are addressing the issue head on. Weiner tests their findings in the streets of some of the world's happiest countries, wheeling through the Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Moldava, Thailand, Britain and India.
It is a wide, amusing and ultimately quixotic quest for Shangri-La. When our curmudgeonly author returns home, he finds that his pursuit of happiness abroad has made him wiser if not happier.
The reader, meanwhile, will be made happy enough by going along on this journey, and learn whether the grass is really greener far from home.
— The Chicago Tribune
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