NOTES
CHAPTER 1
page Happiness. Aristotle’s views of happiness are most clearly developed in
1 the Nicomachean Ethics, book 1, and book 9, chapters 9 and 10. Contem
porary research on happiness by psychologists and other social scientists
started relatively late, but has recently begun to catch up with this
important topic in earnest. One of the first, and still very influential,
works in this field has been Norman Bradburn’s The Structure of Psycho
logical Well-Being (Bradburn 1969), which pointed out that happiness
and unhappiness were independent of each other; in other words, just
because a person is happy it does not mean he can’t also be unhappy
at the same time. Dr. Ruut Veenhoven at the Erasmus University in
Rotterdam, the Netherlands, has recently published a Databook of Happi
ness^ which summarizes 245 surveys conducted in 32 countries between^
1911 and 1975 (Veenhoven 1984); a second volume is in preparation.
The Archimedes Foundation of Toronto, Canada, has also set as its task
the keeping track of investigations of human happiness and well-being;
its first directory appeared in 1988. The Psychology of Happiness, by the
Oxford social psychologist Michael Argyle, was published in 1987. An
other comprehensive collection of ideas and research in this area is the
volume by Strack, Argyle, Schwartz (1990).
Undreamed-of material luxuries. Good recent accounts of the condi
tions of everyday life in past centuries can be found in a series under
the general editorship of Philippe Aries and Georges Duby, entitled A
History of Private Life. The first volume, From Pagan Rome to Byzantium,
edited by Paul Veyne, was published here in 1987. Another magisterial
series on the same topic is Fernand Braudel’s The Structures of Everyday
Life, whose first volume appeared in English in 1981. For the changes
in home furnishings, see also Le Roy Ladurie (1979) and Csikszent-
mihalyi &. Rochberg-Halton (1981).
241
