Happiness in World History traces ideas and experiences of happiness from early stages in human history, to the maturation of agricultural societies and their religious and philosophical systems, to the changes and diversities in the approach to happiness in the modern societies that began to emerge in the 18th century. In this thorough overview, Peter N. Stearns explores the interaction between psychological and historical findings about happiness, the relationship between ideas and popular experience, and the opportunity to use historical analysis to assess strengths and weaknesses of dominant contemporary notions of happiness. Starting with the advent of agriculture, the book assesses major transitions in history for patterns in happiness, including the impact of the great religions, the unprecedented Enlightenment interest in secular happiness and cheerfulness, and industrialization and imperialism. The final, contemporary section covers fascist and communist efforts to define alternatives to Western ideas of happiness, the increasing connections with consumerism, and growing global interests in defining and promoting well-being. Touching on the experiences in the major regions of Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America, the text offers an expansive introduction to a new field of study. This book will be of interest to students of world history and the history of emotions.

An intellectual history of man's most elusive yet coveted goal. Today, we think of happiness as a natural right, but people haven't always felt this way. Historian McMahon argues that our modern belief in happiness is a recent development, the product of a revolution in human expectations carried out since the eighteenth century. He investigates that fundamental transformation by synthesizing two thousand years of politics, culture, and thought. In ancient Greek tragedy, happiness was considered a gift of the gods. During the Enlightenment men and women were first introduced to the novel prospect that they could--in fact should--be happy in this life as opposed to the hereafter. This recognition of happiness as a motivating ideal led to its consecration in the Declaration of Independence. McMahon then shows how our modern search continues to generate new forms of pleasure, but also, paradoxically, new forms of pain.--From publisher description.

Much interest currently revolves around happiness in America, so much so that one could reasonably argue that there is a “happiness movement” afoot. The wide range of arenas in which happiness intersects reflects the subject’s centrality in everyday life in America these past one hundred years. Happiness in America charts the course of happiness within American culture over the past century, and concludes that most Americans have not had success becoming appreciably happier people despite considerable efforts to do so. Rather than follow a linear path, happiness has bobbed and weaved over the decades, its arc or trajectory a twisting and unpredictable one. Happiness has also both shaped and reflected our core values, with its expression at any given time a key indicator of who we are as a people. The book thus adds a missing and valuable piece to our understanding of American culture. Beyond serving as the definitive guide to happiness in this country, Happiness in America offers readers a provocative argument that challenges standard thinking. Despite popular belief, Americans have never been a particularly happy people. Our perpetual (and futile) search for happiness indicates widespread dissatisfaction and discontent with life in general, something that will come as a surprise to many. The image of Americans as a happy-go-lucky people is thus more mythology than reality, an important finding rooted in the inherent flaws of consumer capitalism. Our competitive and comparative American Way of Life has not proven to be an especially good formula for happiness, Samuel argues, with external signs of success unlikely to produce appreciably happier people. Given these findings, he suggests readers consider abandoning their pursuit of happiness and instead seek out greater joy in life.

The revolution of 1905 challenged not only the social and political structures of imperial Russia but the sexual order as well. Throughout the decade that followed-in the salons of the artistic and intellectual avant-garde, on the pages of popular romances, in the staid assemblies of physicians, psychiatrists, and legal men—the talk everywhere was of sex. This eagerly awaited book, echoing the title of a pre-World War I bestseller, The Keys to Happiness, marks the first serious attempt to understand the intense public interest in sexuality as a vital dimension of late tsarist political culture. Drawing on a strong foundation of historical sources—from medical treatises and legal codes to anti-Semitic pamphlets, commercial fiction, newspaper advertisements, and serious literature—Laura Engelstein shows how Western ideas and attitudes toward sex and gender were transformed in the Russian context as imported views on prostitution, venereal disease, homosexuality, masturbation, abortion, and other themes took on distinctively Russian hues. Engelstein divides her study into two parts, the first focusing on the period from the Great Reforms to 1905 and on the two professional disciplines most central to the shaping of a modern sexual discourse in Russia: law and medicine. The second part describes the complicated sexual preoccupations that accompanied the mobilization leading up to 1905, the revolution itself, and the aftermath of continued social agitation and intensified intellectual doubt. In chapters of astonishing richness, the author follows the sexual theme through the twists of professional and civic debate and in the surprising links between high and low culture up to the eve of the First World War. Throughout, Engelstein uses her findings to rethink the conventional wisdom about the political and cultural history of modern Russia. She maps out new approaches to the history of sexuality, and shows, brilliantly, how the study of attitudes toward sex and gender can help us to grasp the most fundamental political issues in any society.

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.

Weaving together lyrical history and personal memoir, Virdi powerfully examines society’s—and her own—perception of life as a deaf person in America. At the age of four, Jaipreet Virdi’s world went silent. A severe case of meningitis left her alive but deaf, suddenly treated differently by everyone. Her deafness downplayed by society and doctors, she struggled to “pass” as hearing for most of her life. Countless cures, treatments, and technologies led to dead ends. Never quite deaf enough for the Deaf community or quite hearing enough for the “normal” majority, Virdi was stuck in aural limbo for years. It wasn’t until her thirties, exasperated by problems with new digital hearing aids, that she began to actively assert her deafness and reexamine society’s—and her own—perception of life as a deaf person in America. Through lyrical history and personal memoir, Hearing Happiness raises pivotal questions about deafness in American society and the endless quest for a cure. Taking us from the 1860s up to the present, Virdi combs archives and museums to understand the long history of curious cures: ear trumpets, violet ray apparatuses, vibrating massagers, electrotherapy machines, airplane diving, bloodletting, skull hammering, and many more. Hundreds of procedures and products have promised grand miracles but always failed to deliver a universal cure—a harmful legacy that is still present in contemporary biomedicine. Blending Virdi’s own experiences together with her exploration into the fascinating history of deafness cures, Hearing Happiness is a powerful story that America needs to hear. Praise for Hearing Happiness “In part a critical memoir of her own life, this archival tour de force centers on d/Deafness, and, specifically, the obsessive search for a “cure”. . . . This survey of cure and its politics, framed by disability studies, allows readers—either for the first time or as a stunning example in the field—to think about how notions of remediation are leveraged against the most vulnerable.” —Public Books “Engaging. . . . A sweeping chronology of human deafness fortified with the author’s personal struggles and triumphs.” —Kirkus Reviews “Part memoir, part historical monograph, Virdi’s Hearing Happiness breaks the mold for academic press publications.” —Publishers Weekly “In her insightful book, Virdi probes how society perceives deafness and challenges the idea that a disability is a deficit. . . . [She] powerfully demonstrates how cures for deafness pressure individuals to change, to “be better.” —Washington Post

Created by the seventeenth-century philosopher and mathematician Pascal, the essays contained in Human Happiness are a curiously optimistic look at whether humans can ever find satisfaction and real joy in life – or whether a belief in God is a wise gamble at best. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

When a cultural movement that began to take shape in the mid-twentieth century erupted into mainstream American culture in the late 1990s, it brought to the fore the idea that it is as important to improve one's own sense of pleasure as it is to manage depression and anxiety. Cultural historian Daniel Horowitz's research reveals that this change happened in the context of key events. World War II, the Holocaust, post-war prosperity, the rise of counter-culture, the crises of the 1970s, the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and the prime ministerships of Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron provided the important context for the development of the field today known as positive psychology. Happier? provides the first history of the origins, development, and impact of the way Americans -- and now many around the world -- shifted from mental illness to well-being as they pondered the human condition. This change, which came about from the fusing of knowledge drawn from Eastern spiritual traditions, behavioral economics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and cognitive psychology, has been led by scholars and academic entrepreneurs, as they wrestled with the implications of political events and forces such as neoliberalism and cultural conservatism, and a public eager for self-improvement. Linking the development of happiness studies and positive psychology with a broad series of social changes, including the emergence of new media and technologies like TED talks, blogs, web sites, and neuroscience, as well as the role of evangelical ministers, Oprah Winfrey's enterprises, and funding from government agencies and private foundations, Horowitz highlights the transfer of specialized knowledge into popular arenas. Along the way he shows how marketing triumphed, transforming academic disciplines and spirituality into saleable products. Ultimately, Happier? illuminates how positive psychology, one of the most influential academic fields of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, infused American culture with captivating promises for a happier society.

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.

Renowned Harvard scholar and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has written a strikingly original, ingeniously conceived, and beautifully crafted history of American ideas about life and death from before the cradle to beyond the grave. How does life begin? What does it mean? What happens when we die? “All anyone can do is ask,” Lepore writes. “That’s why any history of ideas about life and death has to be, like this book, a history of curiosity.” Lepore starts that history with the story of a seventeenth-century Englishman who had the idea that all life begins with an egg, and ends it with an American who, in the 1970s, began freezing the dead. In between, life got longer, the stages of life multiplied, and matters of life and death moved from the library to the laboratory, from the humanities to the sciences. Lately, debates about life and death have determined the course of American politics. Each of these debates has a history. Investigating the surprising origins of the stuff of everyday life—from board games to breast pumps—Lepore argues that the age of discovery, Darwin, and the Space Age turned ideas about life on earth topsy-turvy. “New worlds were found,” she writes, and “old paradises were lost.” As much a meditation on the present as an excavation of the past, The Mansion of Happiness is delightful, learned, and altogether beguiling.