Stumbling on Happiness | 
| Author: Daniel Gilbert
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  201 reviews
Sales Rank: 1020
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 1400077427
Dewey Decimal Number: 158
EAN: 9781400077427
ASIN: 1400077427
Publication Date: March 20, 2007
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Condition: Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee.
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Amazon.com
Do you know what makes you happy? Daniel Gilbert would bet that you think you do, but you are most likely wrong. In his witty and engaging new book, Harvard professor Gilbert reveals his take on how our minds work, and how the limitations of our imaginations may be getting in the way of our ability to know what happiness is. Sound quirky and interesting? It is! But just to be sure, we asked bestselling author (and master of the quirky and interesting) Malcolm Gladwell to read Stumbling on Happiness, and give us his take. Check out his review below. --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Malcolm Gladwell
 Malcolm Gladwell is the author of bestselling books Blink and The Tipping Point, and is a staff writer for The New Yorker.
Several years ago, on a flight from New York to California, I had the good fortune to sit next to a psychologist named Dan Gilbert. He had a shiny bald head, an irrepressible good humor, and we talked (or, more accurately, he talked) from at least the Hudson to the Rockies--and I was completely charmed. He had the wonderful quality many academics have--which is that he was interested in the kinds of questions that all of us care about but never have the time or opportunity to explore. He had also had a quality that is rare among academics. He had the ability to translate his work for people who were outside his world. Now Gilbert has written a book about his psychological research. It is called Stumbling on Happiness, and reading it reminded me of that plane ride long ago. It is a delight to read. Gilbert is charming and funny and has a rare gift for making very complicated ideas come alive. Stumbling on Happiness is a book about a very simple but powerful idea. What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to predict the future--or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. We're terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that cherished happiness. Gilbert sets out to figure what that's so: why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important? In making his case, Gilbert walks us through a series of fascinating--and in some ways troubling--facts about the way our minds work. In particular, Gilbert is interested in delineating the shortcomings of imagination. We're far too accepting of the conclusions of our imaginations. Our imaginations aren't particularly imaginative. Our imaginations are really bad at telling us how we will think when the future finally comes. And our personal experiences aren't nearly as good at correcting these errors as we might think. I suppose that I really should go on at this point, and talk in more detail about what Gilbert means by that--and how his argument unfolds. But I feel like that might ruin the experience of reading Stumbling on Happiness. This is a psychological detective story about one of the great mysteries of our lives. If you have even the slightest curiosity about the human condition, you ought to read it. Trust me. --Malcolm Gladwell
Product Description
• Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink?
• Why will sighted people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight?
• Why do dining companions insist on ordering different meals instead of getting what they really want?
• Why do pigeons seem to have such excellent aim; why can’t we remember one song while listening to another; and why does the line at the grocery store always slow down the moment we join it?
In this brilliant, witty, and accessible book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions. Vividly bringing to life the latest scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. With penetrating insight and sparkling prose, Gilbert explains why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 196 more reviews...
 Entertaining Enlightenment May 14, 2008
It is with great pleasure that I offer my highest recommendation for Stumbling on Happiness. I was impressed with the engaging style and humor with which Dan Gilbert explores the topic of happiness. Though most people spend their lives in blind pursuit of it, very few ever come to fully understand what happiness truly is and even fewer are fortunate enough to recognize and appreciate the experience of happiness as it occurs.
This book will not make you very happy. As a matter of fact, it will systematically challenge beliefs about the concept of happiness that you may not have ever known you even had in the first place.
What this book may do for you is what it did for me, which was to provide me with an opportunity to look at happiness through a more enlightened set of eyes. It was this very process that allowed me to gain a better idea of what happiness isn't and in turn, to develop a more solid understanding of what happiness means to me.
I particularly enjoyed Daniel Gilbert's use of hypothetical scenarios to illustrate his points. There were many of these theoretical situations that I could easily relate to and which helped to shed light on things I had never really understood, like why I always seem to feel more enthusiastic about going to a social event when I make the commitment to attend than I do when the time to fulfill that commitment actually arrives.
Readers who approach Stumbling on Happiness with an open mind will likely stumble upon a more realistic understanding of what it means to be truly happy but will ultimately have to define happiness on their own terms.
Best book I've read in 2 years April 26, 2008
This is an awesome book written with no little wit and incredible insight. It's like Blink but with humor.
If you want to know why you make bad decisions, why you think like you do and why having kids isn't what it's cracked up to be, you need to check this out.
 Owner for 2 years and still haven't finished April 20, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have to admit I've really struggled to finish this book...in fact after many attempts, I've barely made it through half. The book is a bit trite and was not intriguing enough to hold my attention!
Thought provoking, but doesn't provide solutions to the challenges posed April 10, 2008
When you're deciding about what will make you happy in the future, do you think about things you enjoyed in the past? Do you imagine yourself in the future to imagine how you would feel? If you answer yes to these types of questions, Gilbert's book presents some interesting perspectives that will probably make you think twice about doing it again. For example, he discusses how (from a very scientific point of view) our imaginations fool us by doing things like imposing how we feel today on how we think we'll feel in the future. While he makes great points about how the way people predict what will make them happy is inherently flawed, I thought he fell a bit short in suggesting alternative ways to make predictions. While it's helpful to know that people who take risks are happier in the long run, I'm still not willing to risk jumping off a cliff in the hope I can actually fly.
Not all it's cracked out to be... April 3, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Are you a tremulous bride on your wedding day? You have been looking forward to this day as the 'best day of your life' but are now a nervous wreck.
Have you just gotten the long-awaited promotion and are now overwhelmed with stress and maybe even regret?
Are you a new parent, stressed out by the burden of responsibility and lack of sleep and feeling guilty for not being ecstatically happy all the time?
Then, Daniel Gilbert's book is for you. In finely crafted and precise prose, the author describes the pitfals of 'Great Expectations'. Things that we most look forward to are often not quite as attractive when we get to experience them first-hand.
So, is there a way to predict our satisfaction with something that is touted as end-all and be-all? Yes, carefully watch the ones already there.
Maybe death is so scary to us because the first hand 'experiencers' are a bit hard to get a hold of...
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