This philosophical and sociological look at friendship and happiness begins with a review of Aristotle's three categories of friendship--friends of utility, friends of pleasure and friends of the good. Modern variations--casual friends, close friends, best friends--are described, along with the growing phenomena of virtual friendships and cyber socialization in the Internet age. Inspired in part by Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness , the authors propose that conquering unhappiness is key to achieving the self-satisfaction Russell called zest and Aristotle called eudaimonia or thriving by our own efforts.