Preface; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi -- Introduction; Teresa Freire -- PART I. LEISURE AND POSITIVE LIVING.- Chapter 1. Research and Theory on Positiveness in the Social Sciences - The central role of leisure; Robert A. Stebbins -- Chapter 2. Redeeming leisure in later life; Douglas A. Kleiber -- PART II. LEISURE, GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT -- Chapter 3. Adolescent Leisure from a Prevention Perspective; Linda L. Caldwell -- Chapter 4. Leisure experience and positive identity development; Teresa Freire -- Chapter 5. Positive leisure science: leisure in family contexts; Ramon Zabriskie and Tess Kay -- Chapter 6. Leisure, optimal experience and psychological selection: Cultural and developmental perspectives; Marta Bassi and Antonella Delle Fave -- PART III. LEISURE, WELL-BEING AND QUALITY OF LIFE -- Chapter 7. Facilitating change through leisure: the leisure and well-being model of the therapeutic recreation practice; Colleen D. Hood and Cynthia P. Carruthers -- Chapter 8. Flow and leisure; Kim Perkins and Jean Nakamura -- Chapter 9. Physical activity, leisure time and health; Jorge Mota, Mauro Barros, José Carlos Ribeiro and Maria Paula Santos -- Chapter 10. Bringing Leisure in: the benefits and importance of leisure to non-resident fatherhood and parent-child contact; John M. Jenkins -- Chapter 11. Happiness through leisure; Jeroen Nawijin & Ruut Venhoven. PART IV. LEISURE AND THE PURSUIT OF A POSITIVE LEISURE SCIENCE (PLS) -- Chapter 12. Afterthoughts and future research directions on leisure; Teresa Freire and Linda Caldwell.-.

This book extends positive psychology by embedding leisure into the positive science field, following a new paradigm and aggregating various domains and fields. Positive science can be applied to the field of leisure and, in turn, leisure can serve as an arena to study some of the most important optimal functioning variables. The book presents knowledge on a diverse range of topics about optimizing socio-cognitive processes and behaviors, places and contexts, societies and cultures through leisure. These topics are unified by an underlying continuum that extends from individuals and subjective experiences to social worlds. The contributions highlight components of everyday life, showing that subjective experience and life trajectories are structured and social goals and life purposes are defined and achieved within interactions between individuals and their lived contexts and environments in daily life.