Description

While many self-help books purport to tell readers how to find happiness, few such titles can claim to be based on any scientifically valid, large-scale studies. One of the happy exceptions was University of Chicago psychologist Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (LJ 3/15/90). There the author published the results of studies using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), in which he found that people were happiest when most absorbed in their actions, a state the author termed flow. The current book (part of Basic’s series purporting to present “a crystallization of a lifetime’s work and thought” by noted scholars) presents similar material, but with an emphasis slightly shifted toward practical applications of the ESM findings. Public librarians should check their shelves: if their copies of Flow are tattered or nonexistent, they should definitely buy this new title; if they have a decent copy of the older book, this is still a recommended purchase. Academic libraries need to have the author’s more scholarly book but will find this popular with undergraduates.?Mary Ann Hughes, Neill P.L., Pullman, Wash. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.