A Private History of Happiness

A Private History of Happiness PDF

Author: George Myerson

Publisher:

Published: 2014-06-10

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781933346885

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

*A Private History of Happiness* offers a fresh look at happiness that belonged to particular days as they were lived by real people--across many centuries and from around the world--and shows how these women and men experienced their varied moments of joy. From many written sources, notably personal diaries, letters, memoirs, and other life records, it presents a selection of ninety-nine vivid moments that really were happy. Each passage, each voice is different, full of a particular life with all its lights and shadows, and we are invited by these individuals to share what was specific to their joyful experiences--a place, a time, a relationship. The ninety-nine moments of happiness are arranged by themes--Morning, Friendship, Garden, Family, Leisure, Nature, Food and Drink, Well-Being, Creativity, Love, and Evening--and each is followed by a brief description and commentary that encourages further reflection and exploration. The passages come from writers in North America and Europe, as well as in China and Japan, North Africa and India, and they remind us of the universal side of our being and our common capability of happiness. Instead of advocating the latest guide or formula to achieve happiness, *A Private History of Happiness* presents a wider perspective on everyday moments of joy in different times and cultures--and invites us to discover the happiness in our own lives that can be found right here and now.

A Private History of Happiness: 99 Moments of Joy from Around the World

A Private History of Happiness: 99 Moments of Joy from Around the World PDF

Author: George Myerson

Publisher: Anima

Published: 2019-02-07

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781789541472

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From the bliss of lingering in a warm bed on a winter morning, to a bracing springtime walk by the seaside, A Private History of Happinessoffers the reader a wealth of delightfully fresh perceptions of where and how happiness may be found. These 99 moments of happiness are arranged by theme - Morning, Friendship, Garden, Family, Leisure, Nature, Food and Drink, Well-being, Creativity, Love and Evening - and each is followed by a brief description and commentary that sets the extract in context and encourages further reflection. Drawing on a wide and international range of literary sources - from Ptolemy to Tolstoy - George Myerson reveals that small, unpretentious joys have been shared by human beings across cultures and over thousands of years. He invites us to discover the happiness in our own lives that can be found here and now.

The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era

The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era PDF

Author: Carli N. Conklin

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2019-03-20

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0826274277

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Scholars have long debated the meaning of the pursuit of happiness, yet have tended to define it narrowly, focusing on a single intellectual tradition, and on the use of the term within a single text, the Declaration of Independence. In this insightful volume, Carli Conklin considers the pursuit of happiness across a variety of intellectual traditions, and explores its usage in two key legal texts of the Founding Era, the Declaration and William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. For Blackstone, the pursuit of happiness was a science of jurisprudence, by which his students could know, and then rightly apply, the first principles of the Common Law. For the founders, the pursuit of happiness was the individual right to pursue a life lived in harmony with the law of nature and a public duty to govern in accordance with that law. Both applications suggest we consider anew how the phrase, and its underlying legal philosophies, were understood in the founding era. With this work, Conklin makes important contributions to the fields of early American intellectual and legal history.

Gross National Happiness

Gross National Happiness PDF

Author: Arthur C. Brooks

Publisher:

Published: 2008-04-22

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The author analyzes evidence and empirical research to determine which groups are the happiest in America; and offers suggestions on how the government can help individuals maximize their happiness.

Personal History

Personal History PDF

Author: Katharine Graham

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2011-02-09

Total Pages: 951

ISBN-13: 0307758931

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PULTIZER PRIZE WINNER • The captivating inside story of the woman who helmed the Washington Post during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of American media: the scandals of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate In this widely acclaimed memoir ("Riveting, moving...a wonderful book" The New York Times Book Review), Katharine Graham tells her story—one that is extraordinary both for the events it encompasses and for the courage, candor, and dignity of its telling. Here is the awkward child who grew up amid material wealth and emotional isolation; the young bride who watched her brilliant, charismatic husband—a confidant to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson—plunge into the mental illness that would culminate in his suicide. And here is the widow who shook off her grief and insecurity to take on a president and a pressman’s union as she entered the profane boys’ club of the newspaper business. As timely now as ever, Personal History is an exemplary record of our history and of the woman who played such a shaping role within them, discovering her own strength and sense of self as she confronted—and mastered—the personal and professional crises of her fascinating life.

The Routledge History of Happiness

The Routledge History of Happiness PDF

Author: Katie Barclay

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-05-09

Total Pages: 641

ISBN-13: 1040020704

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Unmatched in originality, breadth, and scope, The Routledge History of Happiness features chapters that explore the history, anthropology, and psychology of happiness across the globe. Through a chronological approach that ranges from the Classical and Postclassical to the twenty-first century, this volume balances intellectual-history treatments and wider efforts to deal with relevant popular culture and experience, including consumerism. It explores how and why the history of happiness has emerged in recent decades, as well as psychological and social science approaches to happiness, with a history of how relevant psychological research has unfolded. Chapters examine early cultural traditions concerning happiness, including material on Buddhist and Chinese traditions, and how they continue to influence ideas about happiness in the present day. Overall, each section emphasises wide geographical coverage, with particular attention paid to East Asia, Latin America, Europe, Russia, and Africa. The Routledge History of Happiness is of great use to all undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the global history of emotions.

Blue Shoes and Happiness

Blue Shoes and Happiness PDF

Author: Alexander McCall Smith

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Published: 2010-05-28

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0307370429

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this seventh installment in the internationally bestselling, universally beloved series, there is considerable excitement at the shared premises of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. A cobra has been found in Precious Ramotswe’s office. Then a nurse from a local medical clinic reveals to Mma Ramotswe that faulty blood-pressure readings are being recorded there. And it looks as though Aunty Emang, the advice columnist in the local newspaper, may not be what she seems. It all means a lot of work for Mma Ramotswe and her inestimable assistant, Grace Makutsi, and they are, of course, up to the challenge. But there’s trouble brewing in Mma Makutsi’s own life. Her greedy uncles are demanding an extra-large bride price from her well-to-do fiancé, a man of substance, Phuti Radiphuti, and though money may buy her that fashionably narrow (and uncomfortable) pair of blue shoes, it won’t buy her the happiness that Mma Ramotswe promises her she’ll find in simpler things – in contentment with the world and enough tea to smooth over the occasional bumps in the road.

This Is Happiness

This Is Happiness PDF

Author: Niall Williams

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2019-12-03

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1635574218

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST and REAL SIMPLE A profound and enchanting new novel from Booker Prize-longlisted author Niall Williams about the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing. You don't see rain stop, but you sense it. You sense something has changed in the frequency you've been living and you hear the quietness you thought was silence get quieter still, and you raise your head so your eyes can make sense of what your ears have already told you, which at first is only: something has changed. The rain is stopping. Nobody in the small, forgotten village of Faha remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard was a condition of living. Now--just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of electricity--it is stopping. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparents' house shortly after the rain has stopped when he encounters Christy for the first time. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed. This is the story of all that was to follow: Christy's long-lost love and why he had come to Faha, Noel's own experiences falling in and out of love, and the endlessly postponed arrival of electricity--a development that, once complete, would leave behind a world that had not changed for centuries. Niall Williams' latest novel is an intricately observed portrait of a community, its idiosyncrasies and its traditions, its paradoxes and its inanities, its failures and its triumphs. Luminous and otherworldly, and yet anchored with deep-running roots into the earthy and the everyday, This Is Happiness is about stories as the very stuff of life: the ways they make the texture and matter of our world, and the ways they write and rewrite us.

How We Choose to Be Happy

How We Choose to Be Happy PDF

Author: Rick Foster

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2004-06-01

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9780399529900

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Now featuring new research and the most current information on the science of happiness, this book presents an outline of the nine choices happy people consistently make. Also included are tools for self-assessment to allow readers to measure happiness-and to find out what might be holding them back from having more of it. Insightful, intimate, and inspiring, How We Choose to Be Happy lets readers learn by example, and take substantial steps toward joining the ranks of the extremely happy.

Rationality and the Pursuit of Happiness

Rationality and the Pursuit of Happiness PDF

Author: Michael E. Bernard

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2010-10-26

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780470973103

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book reveals how the principles of rational living identified by Albert Ellis, one of the world’s most influential and popular psychologists, can be used by anyone to achieve lifelong happiness. Reveals the 11 principles of rational living that when put into practice can consistently increase levels of personal happiness Includes selected excerpts from Ellis’ writings, revealing the difference between the psychological architectures of emotional unhappiness and human happiness Presents verbatim transcripts of private counseling sessions, as well as public lectures and demonstrations with people addressing a wide range of personal issues Offers insights into how ‘rationality’ can be used by anyone to reduce the intensity of negative emotions, to increase the frequency of positive emotions and to promote life satisfaction