Happiness /

In the first decade of the 21st century, a renewed interest in happiness emerged across the social sciences and around the globe. In this short volume, part of Routledge's "Key Ideas" series, Danish social scientist Greve contributes to and summarizes this current interdisciplinary interest in happiness and its applicability and implications for individual well-being as well as social and public policy. Six chapters introduce the concept of happiness and approaches to thinking about it; discuss how one defines and would attempt to measure it; dissect its relationship to income, labor-market experiences, and health; expand on broader indicators of welfare and measures of societal development; and conclude with the author's suggested emendations, including proposed new indexes to measure and improve on societal welfare. Figures, tables, and running parenthetical footnotes cum references complement the prose. Happiness is certainly one of the hot topics among both academics and policy makers. Too short to capture the totally of this interest, Greve's book is nevertheless up-to-date, offers a blend of philosophical underpinnings and empirical work, and constitutes a solid introduction for intelligent lay readers and more well-versed scholars. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. A. R. Sanderson University of Chicago