"We think of our version of a happy life as more like physics than like pop songs; we expect the people of the next century to agree with our basic tenets—for instance, that broccoli is good for a happy life and that opium is bad—but they will not. Our rules for living are more like the history of pop songs. They make weird sense only to the people of each given time period. They aren't true. This book shows you how past myths functioned, and likewise how our myths of today function, and thus lets you out of the trap of thinking you have to pay heed to any of them."

The Happiness Myth is a fascinating cultural history that both reveals our often silly assumptions about how we pursue happiness today and offers up real historical lessons that have stood the test of time. Hecht delivers memorable insights into the five practical means we choose to achieve happiness: wisdom, drugs, money, bodies, and celebration.

Hecht liberates us from today's scolding, quasi-scientific messages that insist there is only one way to care for our minds and bodies. Hecht looks at contemporary happiness advice and explains why much of it doesn't work. "Modern culture," she writes, "is misrepresenting me and spending a lot of money to do it."

Rich with hilarious anecdotes about both failed and successful paths to happiness, Hecht's book traces a common thread of advice—she calls it "sour charm wisdom"—that we can still apply today to create authentic, lasting happiness.

Know Yourself...

Know yourself. This is the key to all philosophy, the center of all wisdom, the one thing that decides if you are the actor in a tragedy or a comedy. This chapter points out three major interpretations of this singular injunction. The first is the Socratic, and it has to do with knowing what you believe. The second is Freudian and has to do with knowing who you are. The third is lonely and has to do with training yourself to take your intellect as your own companion.

In the Apology, Plato has Socrates explain that the only happiness is figuring out what real virtue is, and enacting it. People who behave badly may seem happy, but they are not, no matter how rich they get, and people who act with virtue are certain to come into happiness and, very likely, come into money as well. As he put it: "I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private." Coming to know yourself and re-creating how you experience the world is a more efficient way to get comfortable than directly altering the world.

An angry person on the subway scowls and pushes, other people scowl and push in response, and quarrels ensue; a smiling person offers seats, takes inconveniences with patience, offers to share cabs, and has merry encounters. The angry person has no idea how much his or her anger colors the way other people act. A sunny disposition is no guarantee they won't steal your wallet, but some of what we don't really know about ourselves gets bounced back from the world and radically conditions how we see things. The Socratic claim that the unexamined life is not worth living is so commonplace that we forget how harsh it is. Vicious even. Think of all the good, sweet fools you know! Isn't it possible to be a decent, gentle, productive person without a jot of philosophy or self-examination? The Socratic answer is resolutely no; the examination of oneself and one's manner of living is the only good life and only cause of happiness. The happiness thus achieved cannot be stolen away by any means. Given the pitiless vagaries of life, the internal nature of philosophical happiness is one of its big selling points.

Socrates insisted that we ask ourselves how we know what we believe. You like democracy, monogamy, American food, sleeping at night, children raised in families, longevity as a life-defining goal. You like a woman of five foot ten to weigh about a hundred forty pounds. Set a goal of convincing yourself of something you oppose. Pick a hot-button subject, and a reward for yourself if you can shake your own faith in your convictions. I have strong political convictions, but I'm not rallying for them right now. I'm suggesting you pull a Socratic trick on yourself and ask yourself all the questions you usually avoid thinking about. If the thought is unbearable, it tells us something about the way we believe, and think, and live. We live in little cognitive comas. Or rather, we cavort in cognitive fields surrounded by electric fences: we all think we are free to go where we wish, but we are struck by a lot of pain when we try to think past our boundaries. Politics are real, but the odds are that if you had been raised in a different U.S. state (let alone China!), you would be not the Democrat or Republican that you are now, but instead a Republican or Democrat. Even though those people make your blood boil. Odds are odds. If you want to know yourself, you are going to have to rough yourself up a little. Socrates and...

Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of award-winning books of philosophy, history, and poetry. Her book Doubt: A History demonstrates a long, strong history of religious doubt from the origins of written history to the present day, all over the world. Hecht’s The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism and Anthropology (Columbia University, 2003), won the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s 2004 prestigious Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. Hecht’s book reviews appear in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Hecht earned her Ph.D. in History and the History of Science from Columbia University. She lives in New York City.