We’re bombarded by messages telling us that bigger and better things are the keys to happiness—but after we pile up the stuff and pile on the work hours, we end up exhausted and broke on a planet full of trash. 

Sarah van Gelder and her colleagues at YES! Magazine have been exploring the meaning of real happiness for eighteen years. Here they offer fascinating research, in-depth essays, and compelling personal stories by visionaries such as Annie Leonard, Matthieu Ricard, and Vandana Shiva, showing us that real well-being is found in supportive relationships and thriving communities, opportunities to make a contribution, and the renewal we receive from a thriving natural world. In the pages of this book, you’ll find creative and practical ways to cultivate a happiness that is nurturing, enduring, and life affirming.

“I love this beautiful compilation of voices reminding us that happiness isn’t something we ‘find.’ It’s what we become as we align our lives with a thriving community and life-giving earth.”
—Frances Moore Lappé, cofounder of the Small Planet Institute and author of eighteen books

“Somehow a working planet, a thriving society, and a satisfying personal life are hitched together—and this fine volume offers some powerful clues on the search for those connections!”
—Bill McKibben, cofounder of 350.org and author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

“Everyone’s life is a balancing act in the often-difficult world. This enlightening anthology offers a trove of helpful reflection on what it really means to have and to be, reminding us that joy is there to be found.”
—Mollie Katzen, chef and author of the Moosewood Cookbook

“Sustainable Happiness blazes a trail into the brave new world of transforming extremely materialistic development models into ones that create true prosperity and happiness and of changing consciousness. A great book!”
—John Perkins, bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man