Responding to the troubled racial landscape of 1990's America- -where the press reports endlessly on black ``failure'' and professional blacks Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill gain prominence through scandal—Edwards (coauthor, Muhammad Ali, YA, 1977) and Polite (a psychologist specializing in the problems of the black middle class) offer a worthy glimpse into the world of black success. Martin Luther King's ``I Have a Dream'' speech embodied the hope that America could truly be a land with ``liberty and justice for all.'' The ``children of the dream,'' the authors say, are those who have lived that hope, and their stories, punctuated by psycho/sociological analysis, make up this series of vivid docudramas. Edwards and Polite begin with the black entrepreneurs who emerged out of slavery—such as Madame C.J. Walker, who, selling black beauty products door-to-door, became the country's first black millionaire in 1916. But, the authors point out, it wasn't long before ``separate but equal'' segregation was imposed on the ``free'' black population, proving itself a vicious institutionalization of racism. Only with the 1954 landmark ruling of Brown v. Board of Education (``Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal'') were the racist assumptions of segregation effectively shattered. With integration came the hope of education—and a new world of opportunity. The authors interview a wide variety of successful ``children of integration,'' documenting how they gradually made inroads into the ``white'' realms of higher education and the workplace (from business to broadcast TV). Though overcoming racism is a tireless battle, Edwards and Polite say, blacks who not only survive but succeed are invariably those empowered by their own self-confidence. Plodding at times, with too many overly detailed case histories, but still a much-needed book in an ongoing struggle.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-385-24268-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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