Book Tip No. 67 (2024): Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz: The Good Life … and how it can succeed. Insights from the world’s longest study of a fulfilled life.
Munich 2023.
By Hans-Christian Riekhof There is certainly no shortage of guides on how we can lead a happy, healthy and long life. But the book by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz has a special fascination and a unique and exciting methodological basis: it is based on the empirical findings of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a longitudinal study that has been researching the lives of two generations of American families for over 80 years.
Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz are the current leaders of the research team, and they report the empirical results, but they also establish the connections to other current empirical studies in this area. They provide insights into the biographies of the study participants and let us participate in the protocols of the interviews from very different life phases of the study participants. At the same time, they have a lot of practical advice for the readers.
The core message is quickly brought to the point: a good life is often largely underestimated by the quality of our social relationships. The design of our social relationships – our family, our friends, our colleagues – has an enormously high influence on our health, our life satisfaction and our happiness. An exciting read and a unique research project that is very well prepared for reading.
