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The Cult of Happiness

Author : James A. Flath

Publisher : UBC Press

Page : 233 pages

File Size : 32,70 MB

Release : 2011-11-01

Category : Art

ISBN : 0774842342

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Book Description

History and art come together in this definitive discussion of the Chinese woodblock print form of nianhua, literally "New Year pictures." James Flath analyzes the role of nianhua in the home and later in the theatre and relates these artworks to the social, cultural, and political milieu of North China as it was between the late Qing dynasty and the early 1950s. Among the first studies in any field to treat folk art as historical text, this extraordinary account offers original insight into popular conceptions of domesticity, morality, gender, society, modernity, and the transformation of the genre as a propaganda tool under communism.



Fuck Happiness

Author : Ariel Gore

Publisher : Microcosm Publishing

Page : 137 pages

File Size : 19,9 MB

Release : 2020-05-12

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 162106641X

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Book Description

Happiness is big business. Books, consultants, psychologists, organizations, and even governments tout happiness secrets that are backed by scientific findings. The problem is that all of this science is done by and for cis white men. And some of the most vocal of these happiness experts were announcing that women could become happier by espousing "traditional" values and eschewing feminism. Skeptical of this hypothesis, Ariel Gore took a deep dive into the optimism industrial complex, reading the history, combing the research, attending the conferences, interviewing the thought leaders, and exploring her own and her friends' personal experiences and desires. Fuck Happiness is a nuanced, thoughtful examination of what happiness means and to whom, how it's played a role in defining modern gender roles and power structures, and how we can all have a more empowered relationship with the pursuit of joy in our lives.



The Kingdom of Happiness

Author : Aimee Groth

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 336 pages

File Size : 17,68 MB

Release : 2017-02-21

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1501129929

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Book Description

Fearless gonzo journalism—an insider’s look at the enigmatic and successful CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, and his quest to create his own version of utopia in the center of Las Vegas. In 2010 Tony Hsieh was introduced to many as a visionary modern business leader. Under Hsieh’s leadership, Zappos became the world’s largest online shoe company by championing satisfied customers and a valued workforce. After his company was purchased by Amazon, even as he continued as its CEO, Hsieh engaged his energies and considerable fortune toward a much larger goal: building a new and more socially conscious Silicon Valley in the heart of downtown Las Vegas, all within his five-year plan. Hsieh challenged business and technology journalist Aimee Groth to uproot her life and participate in his social engineering experiment. Beginning with couch surfing, moving to a Downtown Project crash pad, and then living in Zappos corporate housing above the Gold Spike bar, Groth had a front-row view of Hsieh’s efforts to build his ideal society. With interviews from insiders on all ends of the Zappos spectrum—like the “broken dolls” who gravitate toward Hsieh’s almost cultlike personality and make up some of his inner circle, to the Zapponians who live and work on campus, to players in the top echelon of Silicon Valley—Groth offers a unique view of a world few people know much about, and sheds a new light on this complex, eccentric man. The Kingdom of Happiness is the story of one man’s quest to create his own nirvana in the desert based on his exacting design and experimentation with lessons he’s gleaned not only from the incredible success of Zappos, but also from rave culture and Burning Man. Is it the business model of the future or a cautionary tale of hubris?



Perpetual Euphoria

Author : Pascal Bruckner

Publisher : Princeton University Press

Page : 256 pages

File Size : 40,60 MB

Release : 2020-03-31

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 0691204039

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Book Description

How happiness became mandatory—and why we should reject the demand to "be happy" Happiness today is not just a possibility or an option but a requirement and a duty. To fail to be happy is to fail utterly. Happiness has become a religion—one whose smiley-faced god looks down in rebuke upon everyone who hasn't yet attained the blessed state of perpetual euphoria. How has a liberating principle of the Enlightenment—the right to pursue happiness—become the unavoidable and burdensome responsibility to be happy? How did we become unhappy about not being happy—and what might we do to escape this predicament? In Perpetual Euphoria, Pascal Bruckner takes up these questions with all his unconventional wit, force, and brilliance, arguing that we might be happier if we simply abandoned our mad pursuit of happiness. Gripped by the twin illusions that we are responsible for being happy or unhappy and that happiness can be produced by effort, many of us are now martyring ourselves—sacrificing our time, fortunes, health, and peace of mind—in the hope of entering an earthly paradise. Much better, Bruckner argues, would be to accept that happiness is an unbidden and fragile gift that arrives only by grace and luck. A stimulating and entertaining meditation on the unhappiness at the heart of the modern cult of happiness, Perpetual Euphoria is a book for everyone who has ever bristled at the command to "be happy."



The Happiness Industry

Author : William Davies

Publisher : Verso Books

Page : 323 pages

File Size : 27,67 MB

Release : 2015-05-12

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1781688478

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Book Description

“Deeply researched and pithily argued.” —New York Magazine “A brilliant, and sometimes eerie, dissection” of ‘the science of happiness’ and the modern-day commercialization of our most private emotions (Vice) Why are we so obsessed with measuring happiness? In winter 2014, a Tibetan monk lectured the world leaders gathered at Davos on the importance of Happiness. The recent DSM-5, the manual of all diagnosable mental illnesses, for the first time included shyness and grief as treatable diseases. Happiness has become the biggest idea of our age, a new religion dedicated to well-being. Here, political economist William Davies shows how this philosophy, first pronounced by Jeremy Bentham in the 1780s, has dominated the political debates that have delivered neoliberalism. From a history of business strategies of how to get the best out of employees, to the increased level of surveillance measuring every aspect of our lives; from why experts prefer to measure the chemical in the brain than ask you how you are feeling, to why Freakonomics tells us less about the way people behave than expected, The Happiness Industry is an essential guide to the marketization of modern life. Davies shows that the science of happiness is less a science than an extension of hyper-capitalism.



The Happiness Fantasy

Author : Carl Cederström

Publisher : John Wiley & Sons

Page : 200 pages

File Size : 39,97 MB

Release : 2018-10-22

Category : History

ISBN : 1509523847

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Book Description

In this devastatingly witty new book, Carl Cederström traces our present-day conception of happiness from its roots in early-twentieth-century European psychiatry, to the Beat generation, to Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. He argues that happiness is now defined by a desire to be "authentic", to experience physical pleasure, and to cultivate a quirky individuality. But over the last fifty years, these once-revolutionary ideas have been co-opted by corporations and advertisers, pushing us to live lives that are increasingly unfulfilling, insecure and narcissistic. In an age of increasing austerity and social division, Cederström argues that a radical new dream of happiness is gathering pace. There is a vision of the good life which promotes deeper engagement with the world and our place within it, over the individualism and hedonism of previous generations. Guided by this more egalitarian worldview, we can reinvent ourselves and our societies.



The Ash Family

Author : Molly Dektar

Publisher : Simon & Schuster

Page : 352 pages

File Size : 13,99 MB

Release : 2020-04-07

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1501144871

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Book Description

When a young woman leaves her family to join a secret off-the-grid community headed by an enigmatic leader, she discovers that belonging comes with a deadly cost, in this “stunning debut,” (The New Yorker) “perfect for fans of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and the film Martha Marcy May Marlene” (Booklist, starred review). At nineteen, Berie encounters a seductive and mysterious man at a bus station near her home in North Carolina. Shut off from the people around her, she finds herself compelled by his promise of a new life. He ferries her into a place of order and chaos: the Ash Family farm. There, she joins a community living off the fertile land of the mountains, bound together by high ideals and through relationships she can’t untangle. Berie—now renamed Harmony—renounces her old life and settles into her new one on the farm. She begins to make friends. And then they start to disappear. “An excellent debut, Molly Dektar probes life in a cult with a masterful hand, excavating the troubled mind of a young woman,” (Publishers Weekly). The Ash Family explores what we will sacrifice in the search for happiness, and the beautiful and grotesque power of the human spirit as it seeks its ultimate place of belonging. “A captivating and haunting tale” (New York Journal of Books).



The Cult of Smart

Author : Fredrik deBoer

Publisher : All Points Books

Page : 272 pages

File Size : 48,28 MB

Release : 2020-08-04

Category : Education

ISBN : 1250200385

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Book Description

Named one of Vulture’s Top 10 Best Books of 2020! Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top-to-bottom reform. Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: Academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability. Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that hierarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place. This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.



Happy as Larry

Author : Kaethe Cherney

Publisher : Kaethe Cherney

Page : 280 pages

File Size : 40,39 MB

Release : 2018-11-27

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 191649515X

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Book Description

After her dad suddenly dies, teenage Saskia gets a crash course in growing up in the gritty glamour of 1970s New York. Her now downwardly mobile family moves to the seedy Upper West Side. Their mom becomes increasingly nihilistic and embarks on a sexual walkabout, which costs her the trust of her two eldest kids who run away to join the Sullivanian cult. Ex-communicated by her siblings, Saskia becomes her mom's mom. High school becomes all about getting high at school as Saskia struggles with grieving, hapless crushes, fixing her family and the desire to be loved. This witty, heart-breaking but ultimately affirming coming of age novel doubles as a love letter to a Manhattan of an edgier era, that speaks to the chaos of closure and the satisfaction of self-determination.



The Happiness Project

Author : Gretchen Rubin

Publisher : Harper Collins

Page : 354 pages

File Size : 18,48 MB

Release : 2012-06-26

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1443418196

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Book Description

What if you could change your life--without changing your life? Gretchen had a good marriage, two healthy daughters, and work she loved--but one day, stuck on a city bus, she realized that time was flashing by, and she wasn’t thinking enough about the things that really mattered. “I should have a happiness project,” she decided. She spent the next year test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Each month, she pursued a different set of resolutions: go to sleep earlier, quit nagging, forget about results, or take time to be silly. Bit by bit, she began to appreciate and amplify the happiness that already existed in her life. Written with humour and insight, Gretchen’s story will inspire you to start your own happiness project. Now in a beautiful, expanded edition, Gretchen offers a wealth of new material including happiness paradoxes and practical tips on many daily matters: being a more light-hearted parent, sticking to a fitness routine, getting your sweetheart to do chores without nagging, coping when you forget someone’s name and more.