Get Happy

What lifestyle secrets can we learn from the world’s happiest people? Dan Buettner tells you when he comes to Magers & Quinn Booksellers--7:30pm, Monday, November 22.

In Thrive:Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, New York Times bestselling author and explorer, Dan Buettner, reports on the surprising findings from his five-year global study on the keys to personal happiness. In addition to sharing his extraordinary accounts of the happiest people on the planet, Buettner examines how their unique lifestyles correlate to their extraordinary well-being. Finally--and most importantly--Buettner details how to incorporate these powerful characteristics into our daily routine so that we, too, can thrive.

The National Geographic Society sent Buettner on assignment to the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark; the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon; the town of San Luis Obispo in California (arguably the happiest place in America); and perhaps counter-intuitively, the island of Singapore, a region known for its draconian justice system. To unravel the complicated mystery of how each of these four geographic pockets, and specifically their culture, geography, government policies and behavior of their thriving citizens, stack the deck in favor of happiness, Buettner began his research plumbing the most comprehensive databases--tens of millions of data points collected over the past 70 years and representing 95 percent of the world’s population--to determine which factors most directly impact happiness. In addition, he gathered valuable insights from social scientists, economists, politicians, writers, demographers, physiologists, anthropologists and even comedians in each location.

"Dan Buettner has hit this one out the ballpark. In fact, reading Thrive had the effect of asking myself whether it was worth devoting any more time to the arduous study of well-being. I would like to add the book to our class reading list, but again I am afraid of signaling to our PhD students that they need not bother learn statistics and survey methods…Thrive is really subversive!"--Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow and Professor of Psychology Claremont Graduate

Dan Buettner is an internationally recognized research, explorer, and author. As a pioneer in exploration and education, he has traveled the world to find the best practices in health, longevity and happiness. Buettner's National Geographic cover story on longevity, "The Secrets of Living Longer" was one of the top-selling issues in history and a made him a finalist for a national magazine award. His 2008 book, The Blue Zones, hit the New York Times bestseller list.

Details on this and all our other events are here.--David E