Pursuing Happiness: A Bedford Spotlight Reader explores questions around the central concept of what makes us happy: What is the psychology of happiness? Can we make or buy our own happiness? How should we question what makes us happy? How can we make ourselves and others happy? Does technology make us happy? Readings by philosophers, psychologists, spiritual leaders, ethicists, economists, and others take up these issues and more. Questions and assignments for each selection provides a range of activities for students. The catalog page for the titles in the Spotlight Series offers comprehensive instructor support with sample syllabi and additional teaching resources.

[[new selections are marked with an asterisk]]

About The Bedford Spotlight Reader Series

Preface for Instructors

Contents by Discipline

Contents by Theme

Contents by Rhetorical Purpose

Introduction for Students

Chapter 1. What is Happiness?

*Voltaire, The Good Brahmin

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, The Sources of Happiness

Martha C. Nussbaum, Who Is the Happy Warrior? Philosophy Poses Questions to Psychology

*Darrin M. McMahon, From the Happiness of Virtue to the Virtue of Happiness: 400 BC–AD 1780

*Sissela Bok, Illusion

*Sara Ahmed, Happiness and Queer Politics

*Jon Meacham, Free to Be Happy

Chapter 2. What Makes People Happy?

Michael Argyle and Peter Hills, The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, If We Are So Rich, Why Aren’t We Happy?

National Academy of Sciences, Global Well-Being Ladder

Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener, Can Money Buy Happiness?

*Hal E. Hershfield, Cassie Mogilner, and Uri Barnea, People Who Choose Time Over Money Are Happier

Sonja Lyubomirsky, How Happy Are You and Why?

Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, Very Happy People

Chapter 3. Do We Deserve to Be Happy

Jennifer Michael Hecht, Remember Death

*Emily Esfahani Smith, There’s More to Life than Being Happy

Giles Fraser, Taking Pills for Unhappiness Reinforces the Idea That Being Sad Is Not Human

John Keats, Ode on Melancholy

*Laren Stover, The Case for Melancholy

*Naomi Shihab Nye, Kindness

*The New Economics Foundation, The Happy Planet Index

Mohsen Joshanloo and Dan Weijers, Aversion to Happiness across Cultures: A Review of Where and Why People Are Averse to Happiness

David Brooks, What Suffering Does

Chapter 4. Can We Create Our Own Happiness?

Gretchen Rubin, July: Buy Some Happiness

*Lucky Strike Cigarettes, Be Happy, Go Lucky

*Oliver Sacks, My Own Life

Graham Hill, Living with Less. A Lot Less.

*Lucille Clifton, won’t you celebrate with me

Noelle Oxenhandler, Ah, But the Breezes . . .

*Paul E. Jose, Bee T. Lim, and Fred B. Bryant, Does Savoring Increase Happiness? A Daily Diary Study

Chapter 5. Does Technology Make Us Happier?

*Maria Konnikova, How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy

*Lynn Stuart Parramore, Happy All the Time

*Adam Piore, What Technology Can’t Change About Happiness

*James McWilliams, Saving the Self in the Age of the Selfie.

*Sherry Turkle, Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.

*Max Strom, from There Is No App for Happiness

*Sentence Guides for Academic Writers

Acknowledgements

Index of Authors and Titles