by Audrey Edwards & Craig K. Polite ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1992
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
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by Edward Lewis with Audrey Edwards
by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 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
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IN THE NEWS
by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2018
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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