Like this book, loyalty is a difficult but essential virtue.
Wall Street Journal columnist Felten (How’s Your Drink?: Cocktails, Culture, and the Art of Drinking Well, 2007, etc.) explores the ambiguous aspects of loyalty.
Has the concept of loyalty changed over time? And how does one navigate the often paradoxical terrain of competing loyalties? The author’s take on what he's rightly termed a "vexing virtue" is a refreshing investigation of a concept often oversimplified. Through philosophical queries, powerful stories and case studies that will set readers pondering for hours, Felten asks us to consider how loyalty is exhibited in a multitude of situations. Politics, religion and parenting all get the loyal treatment—as does warfare. Should a Marine, under the banner Semper Fi, who is witness to an atrocity committed by his brother in arms remain faithful or speak out righteously against him? What will readers make of Agamemnon of Greek legend, asked to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to turn the tides for Troy? Was he a cruel parent or loyal to his gods and his soldiers? Many of us aren't faced with such dramatic or tragic choices, but Felten’s point is that we’ve all faced the conflicts posed by questions of loyalty. From King Lear to George Washington to Tiger Woods, the author’s varied examples of vying interests ask readers to repeatedly reconsider the meaning of loyalty in their own lives.
Like this book, loyalty is a difficult but essential virtue.Pub Date: April 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-7686-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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