Product Description: Explores why contemporary Anglo-American society is obsessed with happiness. Striving to be happy is now a morally imperative pursuit. Through the lens of novel social theory, this book explicates how this has transpired as consequence of a complex "conspiracy of coordination" between political, organizational and psychological developments...read more

Product Description: A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realismAmericans are a “positive” people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image...read more

Product Description: Americans are a positive people -- cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat. This is our reputation as well as our self-image. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude, and exposes the downside of irrational optimism...read more