my mind on books

Sue M. Halpern reviews several recent books on happiness for the New York Review of Books (4/3/08), concluding:

And so it comes back to the problem of relying on overly broad, categorical, static words like fear and happiness to describe, diagnose, predict, and expound, words that don’t get us very far, as patients, as subjects, as readers. This problem with language may explain why, though we all say we’re happy, the library of how-to-get-happy books and why-we’re-not-happy books is expanding. Anyone who spends time in that section of the stacks is likely to cheer Jerome Kagan’s transcendent (hopeful, gracious) and courageous (brave, valiant, courteous) request:

Let us agree to a moratorium on the use of single words, such as fear, anger, joy, and sad, and write about emotional processes with full sentences rather than ambiguous, naked concepts that burden readers with the task of deciding who, whom, why, and especially what.

Links for the books reviewed:

The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky
Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy by Eric Wilson
What Is Emotion?: History, Measures, and Meanings by Jerome Kagan

“Honorable Mention”: Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman.

Sue Halpern’s forthcoming book is Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research.