The Caspian is Blissful, Too

I have a beef with Eric Weiner, my former classmate at Stanford University. Weiner has a new book out this week, called "The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World."

Let me say right away that the title is spot on -- Weiner is definitively grumpy. But that's not my complaint.

Look at a sampling of the "exotic" countries that he chooses to focus on: Just one -- Bhutan. Meanwhile he shows an astonishing bias toward the boring northern Europeans. We get Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Britain.

If I may inform Weiner -- Georgia is a pretty darned happy place. You can hardly beat Kyrgyzstan for merry. And how about the Kazakhs -- now that's a gay bunch.

Weiner, whose book is deservingly doing extremely well right out of the gate, blogs here.