3.0
All That Happiness Is: Some Words on What Matters
ByPublisher Description
From New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik, a slim, elegant volume presenting a radical alternative to our culture of relentless striving.
Our society is obsessed with achievement. Young people are pushed toward the next test or the “best” grammar school, high school, or college they can get into. Adults push themselves toward the highest-paying, most prestigious jobs, seeking promotions and public recognition. As Adam Gopnik points out, the result is not so much a rat race as a rat maze, with no way out. Except one: to choose accomplishment over achievement. Achievement, Gopnik argues, is the completion of the task imposed from outside. Accomplishment, by contrast, is the end point of an engulfing activity one engages in for its own sake. From stories of artists, philosophers, and scientists to his own fumbling attempts to play Beatles songs on a guitar, Gopnik demonstrates that while self-directed passions sometimes do lead to a career, the contentment that flows from accomplishment is available to each of us. A book to read and return to at any age, All That Happiness Is offers timeless wisdom against the grain.Download the free Fable app
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities12 Reviews
3.0
Spades DeLuca
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GiantCodyPuffs
Created about 2 months agoShare
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“The nostalgia of picking up a guitar in your youth spoke to me in the opening, but it felt like it dragged on a bit in the middle.
“What matters is making meaning. Everything else is the human comedy, which we struggle merely to make humane.””
Sam
Created 4 months agoShare
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Ben Sajdak
Created 5 months agoShare
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“All this to say, “get a hobby.””
Amy George
Created 6 months agoShare
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About Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnik is a staff writer at The New Yorker and has written for the magazine since 1986. He has three National Magazine awards for essays and for criticism. The author of numerous best-selling books, including Paris to the Moon, he lives in New York City.
Other books by Adam Gopnik
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