Heuristic advice and life-affirming direction form a gratifying combination in this motivational handbook.
How significant moments have the capacity to redirect our future endeavors.
“Defining moments shape our lives, but we don’t have to wait for them to happen” write co-authors Chip and Dan Heath (Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, 2013) in their encouraging text, which analyzes the aha instances that have the underestimated ability to change lives. While acknowledging that some moments are naturally more memorable than others, the authors use a wide array of real-life situations as examples to identify the common denominators these meaningful experiences share. Their extensive research brought forth four elements that have the most impact: the elevation of moments using sensory influences, personal insight into our place in the world, pride in the things we do and for the people we love, and the valuable connections made in the business and personal arenas of our lives. An in-depth examination of these four elements makes up the foundation of the narrative, providing a sincere introduction to how readers can shape and improve the peaks in their own experiences. Infused with positivity and enthusiasm, the Heaths believe that whether your keepsakes include love letters, report cards, newspaper articles, or family photos, collectively they all define and represent the strongest and most significant moments in our lives. Using customer experience research, personal stories, professional profiles, and a series of situational “clinics” in which readers can apply the techniques provided, the authors offer simplified input into the process of shaping everyday moments into mightier ones using a wealth of practical strategies. Maximizing the frequency and intensity of these electric instances is the key, the authors insist, to improving life by creating a more satisfying professional and social world, preserving and commemorating one’s milestones, and capitalizing on the opportunities to create them. Readers hungry for a bigger slice of life will find this book valuable.
Heuristic advice and life-affirming direction form a gratifying combination in this motivational handbook.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-4776-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
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