Campus Community Book Project
The Campus Community Book Project (CCBP) was initiated after September 11th to promote dialogue and build community by encouraging diverse members of the campus community to read the same book and attend related events. The book project advances the Offices of Campus Community Relations' mission to improve both the campus climate and community relations, to increase diversity, and to promote equity and inclusiveness. More information about the past present and future book projects and other OCCR initiatives is available on the website: http://occr.ucdavis.edu
The Geography of Bliss:
One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
Eric Weiner, a veteran foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, has covered a multitude of catastrophes and maladies from more than 30 countries over the past two decades. For The Geography of Bliss, however, he decided to tell the other side of the story by visiting some of the world's most contented places.
Using the ancient philosophers and the much more recent "science of happiness" as his guide, Weiner travels the world in search of the happiest places. Many authors have attempted to describe what happiness is; fewer have shown us where it is, and what we can learn from the inhabitants of different cultures.
As Weiner makes his way from Iceland (one of the world's happiest countries) to Bhutan (where the king has made Gross National Happiness a national priority) to Moldova (not a happy place), he calls upon the collective wisdom of "the self-help industrial complex" to help him navigate the path to contentment.
"Your Place of Bliss" Contest
Share your favorite place in the world where you found your bliss.
Submit a photograph of your favorite place in the world with a brief essay explaining why this is your happiest place (100 words maximum) or a video that captures your place of bliss. Photos and videos will be posted on the Campus Community Book Project website's interactive map. Provide YouTube link to video submission and photographs must be in jpeg format. Submit entries to ucdavisccbp@gmail.com by November 13, 2009.
Winning entries will receive tickets to Eric Weiner’s talk on December 1, 2009, 8 PM at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. Winners will be notified during the week of November 16, 2009.
Eric Weiner
For as long as he can remember Eric Weiner wanted to be a foreign correspondent. So he could hardly believe his good fortune when, one day in 1993, NPR dispatched him to India as the network's first full-time correspondent in that country. Weiner spent two of the best years of his life based in New Delhi, covering everything from an outbreak of bubonic plague to India's economic reforms, before moving on to other postings in Jerusalem and Tokyo.
Over the past decade, he's reported from more than 30 countries, most of them profoundly unhappy. He traveled to Iraq several times during the reign of Saddam Hussein. He was in Afghanistan in 2001, when the Taliban regime fell.
He's also served as a correspondent for NPR in New York, Miami and Washington, D.C. Weiner is a former reporter for The New York Times and was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. He was part of a team of NPR reporters that won a 1994 Peabody award for a series of investigative reports about the U.S. tobacco industry.
Author's Visit
Dec. 1, 2009 - 4 PM - 5 PM
Why Republicans Are So Happy (And Other Tales from the Science of Happiness) – A Panel Discussion with Eric Weiner and UC Davis Faculty,
Jackson Hall, Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
Dec. 1, 2009 - 8 PM - 9:30 PM
Author’s Talk: Geography of Bliss,
Jackson Hall, Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
Dec. 1, 2009 - 9:30 PM
Book Signing by eric Weiner,
Rumsey Rancheria Grand Lobby, Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts