The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness - Paperback

by Paula Poundstone (Author)

"A remarkable journey. I laughed. I cried. I got another cat." --Lily Tomlin

"Paula Poundstone is the funniest human being I have ever known." --Peter Sagal, host of Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! and author of The Book of Vice

"Is there a secret to happiness?" asks comedian Paula Poundstone. "I don't know how or why anyone would keep it a secret. It seems rather cruel, really . . . Where could it be? Is it deceptively simple? Does it melt at a certain temperature? Can you buy it? Must you suffer for it before or after?" In her wildly and wisely observed book, the comedy legend takes on that most inalienable of rights--the pursuit of happiness.

Offering herself up as a human guinea pig in a series of thoroughly unscientific experiments, Poundstone tries out a different get-happy hypothesis in each chapter of her data-driven search. She gets in shape with taekwondo. She drives fast behind the wheel of a Lamborghini. She communes with nature while camping with her daughter, and commits to getting her house organized (twice!). Swing dancing? Meditation? Volunteering? Does any of it bring her happiness? You may be laughing too hard to care.

The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness is both a story of jumping into new experiences with both feet and a surprisingly poignant tale of a single working mother of three children (not to mention dozens of cats, a dog, a bearded dragon lizard, a lop-eared bunny, and one ant left from her ant farm) who is just trying to keep smiling while living a busy life.

The queen of the skepticism-fueled rant, Paula Poundstone stands alone in her talent for bursting bubbles and slaying sacred cows.

Like George Carlin, Steve Martin, and David Sedaris, she is a master of her craft, and her comedic brilliance is served up in abundance in this book. As author and humorist Roy Blount Jr. notes, "Paula Poundstone deserves to be happy. Nobody deserves to be this funny."

Front Jacket

"Paula Poundstone is the funniest human being I have ever known."*

"My God, this is a funny book!" --Dick Cavett

"Everything she does, thinks, or says is hilarious. If you chopped her into bits, each piece would be hilarious. (But don't.) So, thus and naturally, this book is hilarious. Even the punctuation is a scream. Buy it." --*Peter Sagal, host of Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! and author of The Book of Vice

"Paula Poundstone never disappoints with her stand-up, and now she has written an informative and highly entertaining book that deserves to be read and discussed." --Carl Reiner

"Highly recommended!" --Dick Van Dyke

"Did someone finally do it? Did Paula Poundstone discover the secret to human happiness? I don't want to give away the ending, but she did make
me laugh a lot, and even shed some tears. Read this book!" --Pete Docter, screenwriter and director, Inside Out, Up, and Monsters, Inc.

"Hilarious."--P. J. O'Rourke

"The bravest and best improv comic of our time has now done the impossible and created a Work of Literature that has the wild, hairy spirit of performance about it. The whole family comes in for the price of one ticket and there is not a bad seat in the house."--Garrison Keillor

"Paula Poundstone says that deep-rooted happiness requires a sense of purpose. I started reading this book because I knew it would make me laugh, and it did. I finished this book with hope, my own sense of purpose, and a renewed faith in people." --Trisha Yearwood