{"id":200,"date":"2019-03-26T18:15:44","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T18:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/?page_id=200"},"modified":"2019-05-03T10:11:28","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T14:11:28","slug":"about-the-book-author","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/montclair-book\/montclair-book-archives\/2011-montclair-book\/about-the-book-author\/","title":{"rendered":"About the Book and Author"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Geography of Bliss<\/em>\u00a0is about mapping happiness. Eric Weiner explains his focus in an interview: &#8220;It&#8217;s really a book about happy places. There are many books out there that focus on the question &#8216;What is happiness?&#8217; I attempt to answer the question &#8216;Where is happiness?&#8217; I&#8217;ve always believed that we are creatures of geography, of place. By &#8216;place&#8217; I mean physical place, yes, but also cultural place.&#8221;\u00a0<em>The Geography of Bliss<\/em>\u00a0is also, as Weiner points out, &#8220;a travelogue of ideas, and it is these ideas\u2014about happiness, about the good life\u2014that inform the book as much as the physical places themselves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Weiner&#8217;s quest begins at a place called &#8220;The World Database of Happiness&#8221; in the Netherlands, which, according to Weiner, &#8220;contains mankind&#8217;s accumulated knowledge about what makes us happy and, even more important, where we are happy. Physically, it&#8217;s an unassuming, even ugly place, but it&#8217;s fascinating.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>From &#8220;The World Database of Happiness&#8221; Weiner travels to a range of countries, including Iceland, Bhutan, Moldova, Switzerland, Qatar, India, Thailand and England (as well as parts of the United States).<\/p>\n<p>Eric Weiner spent more than 10 years as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR). He has also been a correspondent for\u00a0<em>The New York Times\u00a0<\/em>and he has published his journalism and commentary in various other publications, including\u00a0<em>Slate<\/em>,\u00a0<em>The New Republic<\/em>, and the\u00a0<em>Los Angeles Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Geography of Bliss\u00a0is about mapping happiness. Eric Weiner explains his focus in an interview: &#8220;It&#8217;s really a book about happy places. There are many books out there that focus on the question &#8216;What is happiness?&#8217; I attempt to answer the question &#8216;Where is happiness?&#8217; I&#8217;ve always believed that we are creatures of geography, of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":671,"parent":198,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-200","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":891,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/200\/revisions\/891"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/center-for-writing-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}