A very thoughtful view of self-help thinking. Pearsall is a practicing neuropsychologist, and has an academic and theoretical viewpoint that most writers of these books lack. His viewpoint also has more power from his near death from cancer. Very interesting and helpful book.

This book is hard to find now, but it's a good one. Very practically oriented.

Very readable, and helpful, but seems a bit unrealistic to me. I just don't see his approach working for most people. Still, he probably knows better than I do.

Excellent look at how social relationships, work and leisure are the main factors of happiness.

Interesting approach. Miller notes how no matter how much we already have, we always want more.

Written by a Harvard BA and Stanford PhD, now a psychology professor at UC Riverside. But written for a lay audience. Quite a contrast, though, between this scientific approach and the book Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill, by Matthieu Ricard.

Excellent book by a poet, philosopher and historian. I've become rather tired of all the books on happiness by psychology professors. This book takes a different, and very helpful, perspective.

A good effort at showing how our brains mislead us. But the tone of the book gets annoying quick. It is written with tongue in cheek throughout.

Psychology 101 at Harvard, where Gilbert teaches. This book gets good reviews. But there is not much new here. Just presented very well.

A good look at who is happy, and why.

This book, a novel, differs from the rest on the list. It looks at Schopenhauer's thought and group psychotherapy. Fascinating (but a bit difficult) read. Schopenhauer's philosophy of pessimism and misanthropism jars with the happiness theme of this list (Ira Gershwin's lyrics include "My evenings were sour, Spent with Schopenhauer"), but perhaps has value as counterpoint.