Bright-Sided
How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
By Barbara Ehrenreich
(Thorndike Press, Hardcover, Large Print, 9781410424709, 367pp.)
Publication Date: July 2012
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover
Categories: General, Sociology - General, Anthropology - Cultural
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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the December 2009 Indie Next ListAmericans are a positive people -- cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat. This is our reputation as well as our self-image. 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, and exposes the downside of irrational optimism.
When author Barbara Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was bombarded with wildly optimistic, inspirational phrases. But a cheerful outlook, she argues, does not cure cancer. In her new book, Bright-Sided, Ehrenreich explores the negative effects of positive thinking. More at NPR.org
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Rather than focus on some particular tool of oppression -- like religion or television -- that's misled the masses into believing they're happy, Ehrenreich trains her ire on happiness itself. Bright-Sided is a sustained attack on enforced optimism and positive thinking, on the belief that speaking no evil is an effective way to ward off evil.
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