F*ck Happiness: How Women Are Ditching the Cult of Positivity and Choosing Radical Joy

Can a woman be smart, empowered, and happy?

Happiness has become a serious business. Where twentieth-century psychology focused on depression and illness, in the new millennium scientists have begun focusing on "positive psychology"--the study of happiness. Ariel Gore first became intrigued by this subject when she discovered that a class on positive psychology was the most popular course on the Harvard campus.

As she read deeper into the topic, she noticed something disturbing: everyone in this happy land was a man. Worse still, some of these new "experts" seemed hell--bent on proving that women with traditional values and bread-winning husbands--those who had made "an effort to expect less," according to one sociologist--were more content than women with feminist values. The more she read, the more she wondered: Can a woman be smart, empowered, and happy?

Determined to find out, Gore began her own "study in living"-- a journey into the feminine history, science, and experience of happiness. Her results, chronicled with humor and curiosity in F*ck Happiness, are by turns fascinating and enriching. A woman's happiness may not come easily and it may not take the forms prescribed by popular culture. But, as Gore discovers, it is not only possible but necessary.

F*ck Happiness is a smart, no--nonsense, uplifting study of the real secret of joy and whether it's truly at odds with the goals of modern women.