by Chad Scott ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2025
A powerful and often gripping guided tour through some of humanity’s dark places.
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Psychotherapist Scott provides readers with a look at the strange world of “dark tourism.”
This book centers on the kinds of sightseeing travel that seldom makes it into brochures, such as tours of old mental hospitals, scenes of natural disasters, or other sites where many people have died. “Historical sites can feel like open wounds,” he writes, “places where suffering lingers in the air,” which describes his own reaction while visiting Auschwitz’s crematorium and descending steps where “thousands of men, women, and children had walked, most unaware they were moving toward their deaths.” Throughout history, he observes, people have been drawn to such grim places. Scott uses the common term “dark tourism” in his book’s subtitle, but he resists using the term in the text itself, as he feels that it has trivializing implications: “To me,” he writes, “a tourist is someone who's just checking off boxes on a list, while a traveler looks for something deeper—a real connection with the places they visit.” In these pages, Scott chronicles his own memories of visiting such destinations as Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, with its massive tombs, and such spots as the Golden Gate Bridge, the site of nearly 2,000 documented suicides. He relates his visits to medical museums, such as Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum, which houses fragments of Albert Einstein’s brain and displays the bodies of conjoined twins, giant tumors, and other biological phenomena; prisons; battlefields; and even museums of death in Hollywood and New Orleans, which he characterizes as “a sensory overload that sensationalizes death with virtually no discussion of the victims.”
Scott’s prose style occasionally veers toward melodrama over the course of this book, as in a description of Alcatraz: “the infamous prison, perched atop a rocky hill, loomed larger and more imposing against the backdrop of the bay.” However, his earnest tone is the book’s consistent bit of magic. When he visited the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance, he notes how his thoughts were tempered by his nearly 30 years as a therapist: “Knowing I've helped people find enough hope to choose life,” he writes, “brings me immense fulfillment.” His visits to various medical museums reminded him of the liver transplant that saved his life and gave him a greater appreciation of the medical advances that many people take for granted: “It’s a sobering, enlightening journey through the curious corners of medical history,” he writes, “that left me with a deep respect for the design and diversity of the human body.” In this way, Scott transforms his visits to troubling destinations into opportunities for personal growth. This revelatory element regularly elevates his descriptions of sometimes-depressing places, as he frequently manages to find a thread of hope or optimism. His reflections on how recent some terrible events were—such as that, even just 100 years ago, his liver disease would have been fatal—adds a sobering tone to many of his recollections here.
A powerful and often gripping guided tour through some of humanity’s dark places.Pub Date: May 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781917523004
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Whitefox
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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by Erin Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 27, 2014
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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