A serious, sensitive book that teaches personal responsibility using whimsy and wonder.
In her debut “guide for the teenage mind,” Swinburne provides a “life tool box” for parents, educators and young adults.
Swinburne challenges readers to explore the meaning and malleability of happiness, attitude, perception, energy and the mind/body connection by posing a series of quirky questions, from the basic “Do You Know What You Want?’ to “What Makes Up Your Reality?” and “What’s Your Frequency, Kenneth?” The answers to these questions will be unique to each reader, but the author provides each with her own pithy digressions, punctuated with quotations from Mahatma Gandhi, Deepak Chopra and the character Phoebe from Friends, the author’s “favourite programme ever.” The author presents strategies and techniques to help readers put their own insights into action, including a list of helpful “attitude adjustment” tips. Using the research of psychologists in the field of “neuro-linguistic programming” Swinburne counsels teens on how to control their emotional well-being and retrain their “mental chatter.” Readers can achieve a positive attitude by respecting others, she writes, which in turn can lead to a greater sense of personal responsibility, happiness and success. Taking a cue from Stephen R. Covey’s 1989 book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Swinburne suggests that readers observe those who are happy and successful and “model them, do what they do.” She adds a healthy dose of visualization techniques and numerous examples of perception altering physical reality, many from the 2004 film What the Bleep Do We Know!? Swinburne keeps her topics accessible with sound advice and assured writing—even when she plumbs the depths of the “smallest levels of reality,” as represented by the Planck scale in quantum physics. The author’s rampant Britishisms, such as “boldies” and “identity parade,” and references to people such as Lord Alan Sugar of the U.K. TV show The Apprentice, add charm, but may trip up some American readers.
A serious, sensitive book that teaches personal responsibility using whimsy and wonder.Pub Date: July 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-1462029365
Page Count: 112
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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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