Sissela Bok stalks the notion of happiness

Bok, a senior visiting fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented what she called "field notes from my travels" through the interdisciplinary field known, without a hint of irony, as happiness studies. We are, in general, a happier lot than we've ever been, she reported, and the secret of happiness lies not in one magic bullet but rather in a mix of predictable factors like good mental health and social relations and a baseline of physical health and wealth.