The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

The author, a self confessed grump, sets out to travel the world in order to find out what happiness is and whether some countries or cultures have more happiness than others.  He travels to Bhutan, Denmark, Iceland, Moldova, Switzerland, Qatar, and India on a two year trip to measure the amount of hapiness that each country's residents have.  Some places are happy: Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Qatar.  Others are somewhat happy, and Moldova is not happy at all.  Moldova is a country of Russian transplants with few actual Moldovans living there.  He also finds that some of the poorest countries are not happy but not all are unhappy.

As a confirmed grump, I thought he wrote best about Moldova.  The only thing going for this country, say the residents, is the lovely variety of fresh fruits and vegetables and their wine, which is one of their only exports.  Weiner decides that the wine isn't that great, either.  Some countries like Qatar seem happy but they actually have no culture.  Could it be that money is the key to their happiness?  Is the United States happy?  What does it take to make each person happy?  These are some of the questions he asks. 

This book starts out slowly, but seems to gather some steam later in the book.  I hope the author got happier when he made money from this book!