Free Republic

Have you ever thought about what life was like for your great-grandparents? If you really have, you’d agree with Gregg Easterbrook of the Brookings Institution that our great-grandparents would consider the world we live in today to be some kind of utopia. Yet, all of the progress we enjoy hasn’t made Americans any happier. In fact, the opposite is true—it’s made us more unhappy. In his new book, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, Easterbrook begins by telling us just how good we have it: The average Westerner lives better than 99.4 percent of all...

Have you ever thought about what life was like for your great-grandparents? If you really have, you'd agree with Gregg Easterbrook of the Brookings Institution that our great-grandparents would consider the world we live in today to be some kind of utopia. Yet, all of the progress we enjoy hasn't made Americans any happier. In fact, the opposite is true -- it's made us more unhappy. In his new book, THE PROGRESS PARADOX: HOW LIFE GETS BETTER WHILE PEOPLE FEEL WORSE, Easterbrook begins by telling us just how good we have it: The average Westerner lives better than 99.4 percent...

Social hypochondria is the national disease of the most successful nation. By most indexes, life has improved beyond the dreams of even very recent generations. Yet many Americans, impervious to abundant data and personal experiences, insist that progress is a chimera. Gregg Easterbrook's impressive new book, ''The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse,'' explains this perversity. Easterbrook, a Washington journalist and fellow of the Brookings Institution, assaults readers with good news: American life expectancy has dramatically increased in a century, from 47 to 77 years. Our great-great-grandparents all knew someone who died of some disease we...