It is an old-established truth, a truism in fact, that money does not buy you happiness — though, as the late Professor Joad pointed out, it does allow you to be miserable in comfort. Yet the great majority of people, knowing this, nevertheless devote their energies to increasing their wealth, which suggests that happiness is not actually their ultimate goal. In fact, most people don’t have an ultimate goal. The authors of this book, father and son, seek to persuade us that we should devote more of our energies to things that are done for their own sake, that are good in themselves, rather than spend our lives on the treadmill of getting and spending, which is ultimately no more satisfying than the work of prisoners who are forced to dig holes only to fill them again.