Happy Ever After
Escaping The Myth of The Perfect Life

Happy Ever After by Paul Dolan is a book about uncovering myths about a perfect life. These myths, also known as the happiness narrative, are what we tend to think what makes us happy, but often we are better off abandoning this narrative. Dolan is a behavioral scientist and thus has, not surprising......more

Based on the description for this book I thought I was going to be reading a self-help book. But instead I found it to be more like a text book for academics on the subject of happiness complete with graphs, or in the case of my kindle ARC no graphs, which wasn't helpful. I can only assume if you bu......more

It is a source of immense frustration to many social scientists that people rarely do what those scientists think they should. They have come up with lots of theories as to why people do things they ‘shouldn’t’. The most famous is Karl Marx’s notion of ‘False consciousness‘, which held that “members......more

An interesting little book discussing whether the social narratives many of us strive for are actually making us happier. Looking at them through a lens of reverse utilitarianism (working towards the least misery), Dolan examines 9 narratives that are usually forced upon us and the data about whethe......more

I’m pretty surprised I never heard of this book or this author because this book is right up my alley. Paul Dolan wrote an excellent book about what does and doesn’t make us happy. If you enjoyed The Sweet Spot by Paul Bloom, you’ll definitely enjoy this book. Dolan debunks a lot of myths about what......more