==== book2 - Introduction (Статус: completed) ====

The narrator (M) recounts their lifelong quest to discover happiness, framing it as a journey shaped by childhood experiences and a later career as an NPR foreign correspondent. At age five, they embarked on an ill-fated expedition with their friend Drew, halted by police on a Baltimore County roadside. Decades later, after chronicling strife in global conflict zones, M grows disillusioned and resolves to reverse their approach, exploring so-called “happy places” that embody ingredients like wealth, spirituality, or democracy. They critique self-absorbed notions of happiness as an inner pursuit, invoking philosopher Alan Watts’ analogy of a drawn circle to stress the inseparability of self and environment. Historical and cultural references—a 1963 Smiley Face origin myth, Plato’s Blessed Isles, biblical Eden—reveal humanity’s enduring search for paradise. Despite acknowledging the paradox of seeking happiness (as Hoffer’s quote warns), the narrator sets out again, armed with travel guides and skepticism, comparing their adult journey to the stubborn idealism of their five-year-old self.

==== book1 - Chapter 1: THE NETHERLANDS: Happiness Is a Number (Статус: completed) ====

In Chapter 1 of *The Netherlands: Happiness Is a Number*, the narrator (a journalist) begins his quest for the world’s happiest places at a cozy yet unpolished Rotterdam café, where he muses on the cultural role of cafés as stages for observing human behavior. Intrigued by the Dutch city’s juxtaposition of secular freedoms—marijuana, prostitution—and immigrant tensions, he visits the unremarkable campus housing Ruut Veenhoven’s World Database of Happiness (WDH), a repository of global happiness research. Despite his expectation of a “Holy Grail” of bliss, the narrator finds Veenhoven’s office cluttered and devoid of cheer, mirroring the campus’s sterile atmosphere.  

Veenhoven, a trim, energetic professor resembling a Dutch Robin Williams, recounts his contrarian academic origins. In the 1960s, he shifted sociology’s focus from dysfunction to well-being, defying peers who dismissed happiness as unserious. The narrator scrolls through WDH studies, noting correlations like extroverts being happier than introverts, or married couples outpacing singles. He grapples with the field’s central quandaries: the chicken-or-egg nature of happiness causality, cultural differences in defining happiness, and the reliance on self-reporting despite human self-deception.  

After a visit to Alpha Blondie, a legal Rotterdam “coffee shop” where he fumbles buying Moroccan hashish, the narrator reflects on the paradoxes of tolerance and hedonism. Observing the Dutch’s pragmatic balance of liberty and order, he contrasts it with Robert Nozick’s *Experience Machine* thought experiment, which argues that happiness requires more than artificial pleasure. Veenhoven’s database reveals the Netherlands ranks high in measured happiness despite its lack of obvious charm, prompting the narrator to question metrics that reduce joy to statistics.  

Realizing his own happiness level—a modest six on a ten-point scale—he concludes his search must continue beyond the WDH’s spreadsheets. He boards a train to Switzerland, craving a society where precision and moderation might better align with his personal pursuit, leaving behind Rotterdam’s openness to avoid a slippery slope into hash-induced complacency. The chapter closes with his ironic self-awareness: the Dutch model, while data-approved, risks indulgence without fulfillment.