“Why are you so unhappy?” That’s the question that Zeke Pappas, a thirty-three-year-old scholar, asks almost everybody he meets as part of an obsessive project, “The Inventory of American Unhappiness.” The answers he receives—a mix of true sadness and absurd complaint—create a collage of woe. Zeke, meanwhile, remains delightfully oblivious to the increasingly harsh realities that threaten his daily routine, opting instead to focus his energy on finding the perfect mate so that he can gain custody of his orphaned nieces. Following steps outlined in a women’s magazine, the ever-optimistic Zeke identifies some “prospects”: a newly divorced neighbor, a coffeehouse barista, his administrative assistant, and Sofia Coppola (“Why not aim high?”). A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders of strangers, a quixotic renegade when it comes to the federal bureaucracy, and a devoted believer in the afternoon cocktail and the evening binge, Zeke has an irreverent voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit and heart-on-sleeve emotion, underscored by a creeping paranoia and made more urgent by the hope that if he can only find a wife, he might have a second chance at life.

From the author of Please Don't Come Back from the Moon, a charming, disturbing, and funny story of a more-than-slightly deluded young man's quest to find a bride.

In this haunting debut novel, Michael Smolij and his friends are unable to leave the blue-collar Detroit neighborhoods abandoned by their fathers. They stumble through their teens into their 20s until the restlessness of the fathers blooms in them, threatening to carry them away.

In early 2000 the bottom dropped out of the life of writer David Denby when his wife decided to leave him. Propelled to make some money quickly, and seized by the 'irrational exuberance' of the stock market, then approaching its peak, Denby enthusiastically joined the investment frenzy. Over the next few months he listened raptly to bullish stock analysts, dreamy hi-tech gurus and boastful heads of companies. He plunged into a season of mania and was swept forward on currents of hope, greed and hucksterism - with cataclysmic results. American Sucker is a mesmerising account of those years of madness. What begins as a money chase and an engagement with rampant capitalism soon becomes an encounter with such timeless issues as love, envy, true value - and life and death itself. This is a classic tale of the bubble related not by a market guru or an investment professional but by a witty, perceptive and eloquent outsider.

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.

Myrna Blyth, former editor-in-chief of Ladies' Home Journal, was part of the Spin Sisters media elite for over twenty years. In Spin Sisters, she tells the truth about the business she knows so well---its power and influence, its manipulations, and frequently misguided politics. Spin Sisters is an eye-opener that will change the way you think about a major influence on your life---and about yourself.

"Explores how industry has manipulated our most deep-seated survival instincts."—David Perlmutter, MD, Author, #1 New York Times bestseller, Grain Brain and Brain Maker The New York Times–bestselling author of Fat Chance reveals the corporate scheme to sell pleasure, driving the international epidemic of addiction, depression, and chronic disease. While researching the toxic and addictive properties of sugar for his New York Times bestseller Fat Chance, Robert Lustig made an alarming discovery—our pursuit of happiness is being subverted by a culture of addiction and depression from which we may never recover. Dopamine is the “reward” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we want more; yet every substance or behavior that releases dopamine in the extreme leads to addiction. Serotonin is the “contentment” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we don’t need any more; yet its deficiency leads to depression. Ideally, both are in optimal supply. Yet dopamine evolved to overwhelm serotonin—because our ancestors were more likely to survive if they were constantly motivated—with the result that constant desire can chemically destroy our ability to feel happiness, while sending us down the slippery slope to addiction. In the last forty years, government legislation and subsidies have promoted ever-available temptation (sugar, drugs, social media, porn) combined with constant stress (work, home, money, Internet), with the end result of an unprecedented epidemic of addiction, anxiety, depression, and chronic disease. And with the advent of neuromarketing, corporate America has successfully imprisoned us in an endless loop of desire and consumption from which there is no obvious escape. With his customary wit and incisiveness, Lustig not only reveals the science that drives these states of mind, he points his finger directly at the corporations that helped create this mess, and the government actors who facilitated it, and he offers solutions we can all use in the pursuit of happiness, even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Always fearless and provocative, Lustig marshals a call to action, with seminal implications for our health, our well-being, and our culture.

A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we’re so lousy at predicting what will make us happy – and what we can do about it. Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to look backward in time, so does imagination play tricks when we try to look forward. Using cutting-edge research, much of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into accepting the fact that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. Among the unexpected questions he poses: Why are conjoined twins no less happy than the general population? When you go out to eat, is it better to order your favourite dish every time, or to try something new? If Ingrid Bergman hadn’t gotten on the plane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off? Smart, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.

This book approaches David Foster Wallace not only as a fiction writer but also as a cultural critic and a moral philosopher whose formal innovations were intended as "therapies" for the pervasive dis-eases of our time.

In the sweltering heat of one summer in Grinnell, Iowa, Claire and Don Lowry discover that married life can fall apart seemingly overnight. Don, the town's most successful real-estate agent, is hiding the fact that their home is in foreclosure from his wife, Claire. She has secrets of her own: she's bored, lonely and lusts after Charlie Gulliver, a failed actor who has returned home to sort out his father's affairs. As the summer lingers and the temperature rises, the town's adults grow wilder and more reckless while their children grow increasingly confused. Claire, Don, and their neighbours and friends find themselves on an existential odyssey, exploring the most puzzling quandaries of marriage and maturity. When does a fantasy become infidelity? When does happy routine become boring monotony? Can Claire and Don survive everything that befalls them in this one summer, forgive their mistakes, and begin again? Summerlong is a deft and hilarious exploration of the simmering tensions beneath the surface of a contented marriage that explode in the bedrooms and backyards of a small town over the course of a long, hot summer.