Discussed in this essay:

The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being, by William Davies. Verso. 320 pages. $26.95.

24 Hours of Happy, directed by We Are from L.A. Iconoclast Interactive. 1,440 minutes.

At 9:04 a.m. in the video for Pharrell Williams’s neo-Motown hit “Happy,” a smiling gray-haired woman in glasses and a flowing flowered dress dances in the parking garage of a Los Angeles skyscraper. Her delight is palpable. With a scarf loosely tied around her neck and a purse on her shoulder, she shimmies and claps, windshield-wipers…