The Happiness Files
By Arthur C. Brooks

What I Liked About It: Arthur C. Brooks is a social scientist who supports his ideas with facts and data that come from experiments and studies, most of them scientifically controlled.

I also liked that he distinguishes between pleasure and enjoyment. (In my essay above, which I wrote before reading the book, I used the word “pleasure.” I decided not to change it because pleasure was the best word I had at the time.)

I liked that he has studied the role of family on friendship and I agree with most of the conclusions he came to.

I like very much that one of his four “values” is work. His definition of it is not exactly the same as mine. (Mine is better.) But it’s good.

What I Didn’t Like So Much: One of his four pillars is faith. I don’t feel comfortable with that term because it is too easily mistaken for religion. And in fact, in the references he makes to argue for the importance of faith, he equates it with religion. I think the truth is deeper than that. But heck, he’s been teaching the science of happiness at Harvard for something like 15 years, and he’s never read my work. So I can’t criticize him for missing some of the finer points.

Here is a short presentation by Brooks on the science of happiness.

About the Author

Arthur C. Brooks is an American author and academic. Since 2019, Brooks has served as the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit and Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and at the Harvard Business School as a Professor of Management Practice and Faculty Fellow. (Source: Wikipedia)