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| The Conquest of Happiness (Routledge Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Bertrand Russell
Creator: Anthony Grayling
Publisher: Routledge
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 46366
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 200
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0415378478
EAN: 9780415378475
ASIN: 0415378478
Publication Date: February 1, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
Drag yourself out of that pit of misery July 21, 2008
Bertrand Russell, mathematician, philosopher and Nobel prize winner,appears to have lived a full and interesting life for 97 years so his philosophy to achieve happiness should be well worth a look. I like the easy to read format, chapters that may be read at your leisure one at a time or even read the whole book in one sitting.
BR looks at the reasons for unhappiness ie Boredom, envy, being a victim, having a persecution complex etc and gives very good advice, often hilariously funny, to change your way of thinking, if that is your problem. So, if something really upsets you keep thinking about it, force yourself to think about it until it becomes so tiresome and boring that you never want to think about it again, he says. This is of course contrary to the usual advice of putting things to the back of your mind, but a good idea I think.
I love his thoughts on women and envy, the women on a train with their jealous looks when a well dressed lady steps on. Women on the whole dont much like other women, whereas men are only jealous of someone in the same field as themselves, an interesting idea. Envy and conforming to society ie 'keeping up with the Jones' causes no end of dissatisfaction and this needs knocking very firmly on the head to avoid lifelong misery.
Then BR gives some good advice for long term happiness and it can be summed up by saying 'Zest'. Having an interest in everything around you is the key to not falling into the misery trap. So take my advice, get this book, it is better than most modern self help books on the shelf.
 An Excellent Read and Practical December 4, 2006
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I have to say that when I bought this book I was pretty skeptical and even cynical about the topic matter, having read Russell's History of Western Philosophy and some of the other titles in the Routledge Classics and expecting something similar.
I was very pleasantly surprised and intend to re-read this book annually, Russell wrote this book for a mass audience, combining philosophy, psychology and common sense Russell first surveys what he believes to be the main causes of unhappiness, byronic unhappiness, competition, boredom and excitment, fatigue, envy, the sense of sin, persecution mania and fears of public opinion, and then proceeds to consider the possible sources of happiness Zest, affection, the family, work, impersonal interests and effort or resignation.
Some of it can appear dated and the work of the age in which it was written, for instance I think that he wrote about a sense of sin at a time where this could be a great deal more troubling to the conscience than present day, then again I remind myself that there are probably people and places where this remains very much the case today.
I cant fault Russell in his ultimate conclusion that to be happy one should live objectively, have a wide range of interests and be as sincerely and genuinely interested in and warm towards others, engaging with the world instead of retreating from it where possible. The book is full of great advice about how living after this fashion can permit you to cope with the sources of unhappiness which Russell perceives.
Russell also, in his wisdom, does not pretend to have all the answers and when he does touch upon the topic of psychology does say that it is possible that on occasion more professional advice and assistance could be called for, something that I think is very much lacking in other self-help genres or treatise.
I would also recommend this book as very readable, its jargon free, the pace is excellent and I enjoyed it as much as any book of its kind or more light reading like genre fiction.
Very enjoyable book if you suffer from unhappiness sometimes June 7, 2005
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
When searching in an online library with the keyword 'happiness' yesterday I was surprised to find a book by Bertrand Russell. The scope of his output was amazing, and it seems all to be very high quality. I was searching for a book that might cheer me up because I was feeling down, and this book really did cheer me up. It isn't mindless optimism but is good common sense on how to avoid a lot of the main causes of unhappiness. Russell was a brilliant scholar and suffered from unhappiness himself at times in his life, and he was even suicidal through most of his youth, and here he shares his own solutions in order to help others. Russell was a great altruist and I'm grateful for him to have shared these bits of common sense. There are chapters on the various causes of unhappiness in practice, (this is a practical book), including competition, boredom and excitement, fatigue, envy, the sense of sin, and persecution mania etc. From reading most of the book yesterday I have extracted more useful common sense than in any similar book. It reminds me of the good common sense from Plutarch's Moralia. This really is a gem for someone who feels unhappy, perhaps suffers from depression, and wants to feel better. If you don't have any such problems and you are just trying to read Russell's entire oevre to be a completest, then by skim reading this you might indeed not find it as interesting as a challenging philosophical work, but this is a useful practical book for anyone that needs it. As with any other practical books, they are probably not as interesting as theoretical books for general reading, but if they cover something that effects your life they can be a great help, and this is a very pleasant book. It definitely cheered me up just like it did a previous reviewer. Overall I'd recommend this to anyone who is feeling unhappy in general and doesn't really know why, as this will probably make you realise a lot of the reasons for feeling unhappy, and will also provide you with some valuable common sense.
A Do-it-yourself guide to happiness January 8, 2004
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Half DIY happiness guide and half philosophy of human behaviour. On the whole a complete must read. Russell manages to condense into a short and enjoyable book his personal views on why we are happy or unhappy. He identifies causes of unhappiness and gives practical remedies for them. He shows us the sources of happiness and helps us profit from them. A deeply penetrating book I found most of it very relevant and practical both for understanding yourself and others, and for being happier. Read it, it gives us the education for life we should get at school. And remember enthusiasm is one of the most important source of happiness, live with enthusiasm and you will enjoy
He never intended this as a "philosophical masterpiece" February 3, 2002
39 out of 40 found this review helpful
One of the reviewers complained that this was not a "philosophical masterpiece". Of course it isn't. It's an excellent work of popular psychology aimed at the layman. As Russell himself commented:
"Unsophisticated readers, for whom it was intended, liked it... Highbrows, on the contrary regarded it as a contemptible pot-boiler..."
These words are from Russell's autobiography.
The contention of the same reviewer that Russell was a deeply unhappy man is a plump over-simplification of the truth that anyone who is brilliant and intellectually rigorous as Russell was will never - in Russell's own words - find consolation in philosophy. Never satisfied by anything less then what could be backed up by fact he suffered from the corresponding lack of assurance that certainty brings. This does not mean his life was without joy or he was generally unhappy. Read and enjoy, and if you are a highbrow unable to go beyond Principia Mathemetica, at least try to recall that you are a human being for whom cerebration is a part time job and that there is more in Russell then is dreamt of in your philosophy.
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