Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: being cheerful and modern -- The gap: happiness scales and the edge of sadness -- Component parts: modernity and ideas of happiness and progress as historical forces -- Modernity's deficiencies -- False starts and surprises: making modernity more difficult -- The dilemmas of work in modernity -- Death as a modern quandary -- Century of the child? Childhood, parenting, and modernity -- Born to shop: consumerism as the modern panacea.

Electronic reproduction. Palo Alto, Calif. : ebrary, 2011. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ebrary affiliated libraries.