We live in a world that seeks happiness at all costs. Being happy has become not only a purpose in life for many of us, but also a right and obligation, another version of the American dream - indeed, who would ever claim to want to be and remain unhappy? As an ally in the pursuit of this desired goal, in the late '90s, a new science emerged: Positive Psychology, with its doctors, its self-proclaimed scientists, and its gurus, who are by your side to teach you how to be happy. With their kind but strict help, you will learn how to overcome negative and unproductive emotions, developing instead joy and positivity. And if you fail... you cannot fail. You are not allowed to fail, you are condemned to succeed for your own good. But if you do fail, you will bear the burden of the mistake or responsibility exclusively, having shown a lack of will or diligence - and certainly not society.

However, we are not dealing here with a new trick that aims to convince us, once again, that wealth and abundance, success and failure, health and illness are solely our responsibility;

And does the so-called science of happiness not extend the realm of consumption to our inner world, turning emotions into common commodities?

In this book, Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz trace with a lively discourse the origins of this new "science" and explore the consequences of one of the most worrying phenomena of the beginning of our century.