Cloninger, a distinguished US psychiatrist, starts this book with the question, 'why is it so difficult to be happy'? He is critical of conventional scientific psychiatry's approach to the answer to this question, and throughout the book invokes concepts which science finds it difficult to grapple with - like 'coherence'. He ranges with profound insight widely over philosophy and history plus many other sciences, including mathematics, to take an intelligent stab at the central problems of well-being. (Dr Raj Persaud in the British Journal of Psychiatry). . . a product of vast erudition . . . radical, comprehensive, audacious, brilliant . . . (PsycCRITIQUES)