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.

An original and searching memoir from "one of America's finest essayists" (Phillip Lopate) When Scott Russell Sanders was four, his father held him in his arms during a thunderstorm, and he felt awe—"the tingle of a power that surges through bone and rain and everything." He says, "The search for communion with this power has run like a bright thread through all my days." A Private History of Awe is an account of this search, told as a series of awe-inspiring episodes: his early memory of watching a fire with his father; his attraction to the solemn cadences of the Bible despite his frustration with Sunday-school religion; his discovery of books and the body; his mounting opposition to the Vietnam War and all forms of violence; his decision to leave behind the university life of Oxford and Harvard and return to Indiana, where three generations of his family have put down roots. In many ways, this is the story of a generation's passage through the 1960s—from innocence to experience, from euphoria to disillusionment. But Sanders has found a language that captures the transcendence of ordinary lives while never reducing them to formula. In his hands, the pattern of American boyhood that was made classic by writers from Mark Twain to Tobias Wolff is given a powerful new charge.

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 HAPPINESS offers 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.

Happy Lives, Good Lives offers a thorough introduction to a variety of perspectives on happiness. Among the questions at issue: Is happiness only a state of mind, or is it something more? Is it the same for everyone? Is it under our control, and if so, to what extent? Can we be mistaken about whether we are happy? What role, if any, does happiness play in living a good life? Is it sometimes morally wrong to pursue happiness? Should governments promote happiness through public policy? Asking and answering these questions is worthwhile not only as an intellectual exercise, but also as a means of gaining practical insight into how best to pursue a happy life.

'A timely probe into small acts of dissent, seeking out a wild tenderness and new sources of light.' Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay Bar In this highly accessible, entertaining and provocative work of non-fiction Kevin Brazil combines essay and memoir to ask one of the most pertinent questions of our current age: whatever happened to queer happiness? Exploring the lives of artists and writers from the past, current discourse around queerness and his own experiences, Brazil argues that art and literature needs to move away from celebrating the pain of queerness and embracing all the positive, ecstatic, collective joy that queer culture produces. Brazil's enlivening ideas around queerness combat the isolation of individuality and shame, instead championing collectivity, commonality, and visions of shared pleasure; offering both critique and a way of remaking the world. A timely, eminently readable and fascinating book for all readers of creative non-fiction, Whatever Happened to Queer Happiness? is a work of literature that will reverberate for years to come.