Review
'"50 Facts that Should Change the World" is the shocking, incredible, to-the-point research handbook for the No Logo generation' Guardian
The Ecologist Magazine
Lucidly written, excellently researched ... the world won't look so rosy when you've put in down.
The Booklover
A shocking and eye-opening book ... a remarkable snapshot of global civilisation and just how fragile it might be.
Monica Ali
A fearless and compelling work. You need to know what’s in this book.
Guardian
A research handbook for the No Logo generation.
The Ecologist
Lucidly written, excellently researched and with detailed referencing, the world won’t look so rosy when you’ve put it down.
Product Description
Why is marriage worth £200,000 a year? Why will having children make you unhappy? Why does happiness from winning the lottery take two years to arrive? Why does time heal the pain of divorce of the death of a loved one - but not unemployment? Everybody wants to be happy. But how much happiness - precisely - will each life choice bring? Should I get married? Am I really going to feel happy about the career that I picked? How can we decide not only which choice is better for us, but how much better it is for us? The Happiness Equation descibes how we can measure emotional reactions to different life experiences and presents them in ways to which we can relate. How, for instance, monetary values can be put on things that can't be bought or sold in the marketplace - such as marriage, friendship, even death - so that we can objectively rank them in order of preference. It also explains why some things matter more to our happiness than others (e.g. why seeing friends is worth more than a Ferrari) while others are worth almost nothing (like sunny weather). Nick Powdthavee - whose work on happiness has been discussed on both the Undercover Economist and Freakanomics blogs - brings the reader cutting-edge research on how we value our happiness in a witty and engaging style.
From the Author
50 Facts that Should Change the World is an unashamedly populist - but nonetheless serious and intelligent - book about some of the most shocking inequalities, appalling conditions, absurd contradictions and much more that abound even still in the world of the 21st century.
Jessica Williams - a brilliant journalist known for her work on the BBC's Hardtalk programme in particular - has assembled and analysed a huge breadth of material - statistical and otherwise - about an incredible range of issues, from famine in Africa to drug abuse in the West or even the percentage of Americans - one third - who believe aliens have landed on earth. It is a book that anyone interested in the state of our world should read.
About the Author
Jessica Williams is a journalist and television producer. She was born in Scotland but grew up in New Zealand. She now primarily works for the BBC and is a producer of the News 24 discussion programme, Hardtalk. She lives and works in East London. Her other book is How to Give to Charity (Icon, 2006).
