Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11562 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'"Stumbling on Happiness" is an absolutely fantastic book that will shatter your most deeply held convictions about how your own mind works. Ceaselessly entertaining, Gilbert is the perfect guide to some of the most interesting psychological research ever performed. Think you know what makes you happy? You won't know for sure until you have read this book.' Steven D. Levitt, author of 'Freakonomics' 'He does for psychology what Bill Bryson did for evolution.' Scotsman 'In "Stumbling on Happiness", Daniel Gilbert shares his brilliant insights into our quirks of mind, and steers us toward happiness in the most delightful, engaging ways. If you stumble on this book, you're guaranteed many doses of joy.' Daniel Goleman, author of 'Emotional Intelligence' 'This is a brilliant book, a useful book, and a book that could quite possibly change the way you look at just about everything. And as a bonus, Gilbert writes like a cross between Malcolm Gladwell and David Sedaris.' Seth Godin, author 'All Marketers Are Liars' 'Everyone will enjoy reading this book, and some of us will wish we could have written it. You will rarely have a chance to learn so much about so important a topic while having so much fun.' Professor Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University, Winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics 'If Daniel Gilbert is right, then you are wrong ! everything you have ever thought about life choices, and about happiness, has been at the least somewhat naive and, at worst, greatly mistaken.' New York Times 'In a book that is as deep as it is delightful, Daniel Gilbert reveals the powerful and often surprising connections between our experience of happiness and how we think about the future. Drawing on cutting edge psychological research and his own sharp insights into everyday events, Gilbert manages to have considerable fun while expertly illuminating some of the most profound mysteries of the human mind. I confidently predict that your future will be happier if you read this pathbreaking volume.' Daniel L. Schacter, Harvard University, author of 'Searching for Memory' and 'The Seven Sins of Memory'

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence
‘If you stumble on this book, you’re guaranteed many doses of joy.’

Seth Godin, author All Marketers Are Liars
This is a brilliant book … that could quite possibly change the way you look at just about everything.’

Customer Reviews

An interesting but flawed book
2007 Harper Perennial reissue of 1st edition (2006), 238 pages

My view of Stumbling on Happiness upon finishing it seems to be rather different to that I had whilst actually reading it. I read most of the book in a single day, zipping straight through it, very interested in what Gilbert had to say. However, I felt disappointed after I'd finished.

That may well say more about my wish for Gilbert to distil the secrets of happiness into concentrated form for easy consumption - which, unsurprisingly, turns out to be rather unrealistic - than it does about his book.

Even so, I think he could have done a better job of the conclusion. For example, the best practical advice he gave for coping with the entire theme of his book (that humans are very poor at both predicting and remembering what makes us happy) didn't even make it into the book (except by inference). It is contained in the Q&A section at the back of the above edition:

"Q: Does what you know about how the human brain works in any way help you to be happy?
A: Knowing that people overestimate the impact of almost every life event makes me a bit braver and a bit more relaxed because I know that whatever I'm worrying about now probably won't matter as much as I think it will."

Gilbert is also clearly a man who finds himself pretty amusing. I did too - some of the time - but he often became irritating. Gilbert himself is well aware of this, as he says in the short autobiographical section at the back:
"Admirers of my book call it personal, warm and funny, and critics call it juvenile, self-indulgent and annoying. I suspect that all these adjectives describe me pretty well."

Overall, the book contains plenty of interesting material but the flaws I've described detract from it. However, I suspect that Gilbert's writing style will act as a polariser and some people will love it, whilst others will find him insufferably smug.

It's all in the imagination.
Did you ever wake up with a hangover on Sunday morning and say, "I'll never drink again," then go out and do it again the following weekend. Well, then Stumbling on Happiness can explain why that happens. I won't give away the plot though.
Happiness is hot, which is probably a good thing. Now that science can measure what really makes us happy, some excellent books are coming out on the topic and with any luck they will help us to achieve it. Mind you, this involves dismantling a hundred years worth of western beliefs. Gilbert's take on it is that we think we know what's going to make us happy in future but we invariably get it wrong. Most of us can't predict what we're going to feel like in future; we can only imagine what life is like today, right now at the exact moment.
We can only feel pain when it's there; when it's not we don't plan for having it back again and vice versa. We plan for being in love while we're in love. We buy houses by the seaside when it's sunny. We order too much food when we're hungry and get stuck half way through. And we all think we're different from everyone else.
Except me, I know I am. But that's precisely his point.
This book is intelligent, fascinating, a little distressing - but only because it's full of observations which make you kick yourself for not noticing earlier. If you do manage to learn and internalise its message, then at the very least you won't over order next time you go for a Chinese meal and you may even avoid some terrible decisions about what you imagine will make you happy in future.

Average in prospect, brilliant in retrospect
Despite being a voracious reader I would not have expected to enjoy a book on psychology.I read this book solely because it recently won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. I took as an indication of how much I might enjoy this book the opinion of the Royal society's judging panel.
If this sounds like an odd way to start a review that's because the book ends with a similarly odd conclusion. No Matter, the book is excellent. The two things that stand out from this book are firstly that Gilbert never allows the reader to build up too much scepticism about a line of argument before presenting some piece of research which causes you to accept the premise. And secondly, he punctuates the book with enough wit to keep it a lively read. In fact there is a third thing which is even more prominent. Gilbert's prose sparkles with the kind of clarity that
puts him in the first rank of science writers.

Thoroughly recommended.