The Good Life

The Good Life — Summary

On a rainy day in 1941, two researchers climbed three flights of stairs in the grimy stairwell of a Boston tenement. They knocked on a door where there was no running water, and they asked a fourteen-year-old boy, Henry Keane, whether he would take part in a scientific study. His parents were suspicious, but in the end they said yes. Nobody suspected what would become of this boy. That he would be one of the central figures in the longest scientific study in the world. And that eighty years later his life would help answer one of the oldest human questions: what makes a life good?

If you asked a hundred young people today what they want most, the majority would say the same thing. Money and fame. In a 2007 survey, three quarters of young adults said their top goal was to get rich, and half of them wanted to be famous. It sounds logical. There is just one problem. According to the most thorough study ever done, these things tell us almost nothing about whether you will be happy. The single most reliable discovery of the longest scientific study is that good relationships make us healthier and happier. That's it. Not wealth, not career, not fame. The people around us.

This book grew out of a study that has run for eighty-four years, following the lives of more than thirteen hundred people across three generations. Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, the study's current directors, show us what they learned from these lives. You will get answers to three big questions. Why do relationships matter more than anything else? How did we drift so far from what actually makes us happy? And most important: what can you do tomorrow morning to make your life richer, no matter how old you are right now?