Barbara Ehrenreich

Bright-sided (eBook, ePUB)

How Positive Thinking is Undermined America

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-sided is a sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism Americans are a "positive" people-cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to "prosper" you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of "positive psychology" and the "science of happiness." Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes-like mortgage defaults-contributed directly to the current economic crisis. With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America's penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out "negative" thoughts. On a national level, it's brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best-poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Henry Holt and Co.
• Seitenzahl: 256
• Erscheinungstermin: 13. Oktober 2009
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781429942539
• Artikelnr.: 39943145

Autorenporträt

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941-2022) was a bestselling author and political activist, whose more than a dozen books included Nickel and Dimed, which the New York Times described as "a classic in social justice literature", Bait and Switch, Bright-sided, This Land Is Their Land, Dancing In The Streets, and Blood Rites. An award-winning journalist, she frequently contributed to Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times, and TIME magazine. Ehrenreich was born in Butte, Montana, when it was still a bustling mining town. She studied physics at Reed College, and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University. Rather than going into laboratory work, she got involved in activism, and soon devoted herself to writing her innovative journalism.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction 1
Smile or Die: The Bright Side of Cancer 15
The Years of Magical Thinking 45
The Dark Roots of American Optimism 74
Motivating Business and the Business of Motivation 97
God Wants You to Be Rich 123
Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness 147
How Positive Thinking Destroyed the Economy 177
Postscript on Post- Positive Thinking 195
Notes 207
Acknowledgments 223
Index 227