by David Malouf (Get the Book)Even as we lament a sluggish economy, economic uncertainty, or even global warming, we are free of the kind of illness and famine common to earlier eras. So why aren't we happier? Why doesn't the good fortune of the times outweigh the bad? Australian author Malouf offers a penetrating meditation on happiness, quoting thinkers and philosophers from Kant to Plato, from Aristotle to Locke. He gives close examination to Thomas Jefferson's thinking in developing the Declaration of Independence with its famous evocation of the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the significance of that evocation at the time and since. Malouf draws on etymology, psychology, religion, and philosophy to explore the meaning of happiness in a developed society, when greater freedom and leisure afford the luxury to ponder what makes us truly happy. In this slim volume, Malouf eloquently weighs the appeal of material goods and well-being against the heft of morality and individual longing for something we can't always articulate.
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