Convincing advice regarding a timely issue.
A combination of compelling overview and practical strategy.
Benjamin Franklin wrote that public libraries would empower the common man by giving him knowledge. Free public education, a 19th-century invention, proclaimed the same goal. In the following century, computers and, later, the internet would spread information everywhere, overwhelming the forces of censorship, propaganda, prejudice, and lies. As we all know, the opposite happened. This spread of misinformation has produced countless books about true believers who are impervious to evidence—contradictory facts actually strengthen their beliefs. In one of his examples, McRaney, author of You Are Not So Smart, examines attitudes toward same-sex marriage. At the turn of the 21st century, opposition was overwhelming; by the teens, it was crumbling; today, it’s gained fairly wide acceptance. What happened? Searching to discover why fiercely prejudiced people changed their minds, the author begins with the mind itself. Evolution designed the brain for survival, not accuracy. Making decisions from the raw data of our senses is hopelessly slow. Brains work fast and take shortcuts, so we see what we expect to see. When we encounter something that doesn’t make sense, our instinct is not to question our beliefs but to make it fit—and we almost always succeed. Only when contradictions pile up do individuals, reluctantly, reconsider. Equally important, humans are ultrasocial animals who value being accepted by their communities more than being right. Sociologist Brooke Harrington told McRaney, “Social death is more frightening than physical death.” After investigating the stories of true believers who saw the light, the author concludes by describing successful methods. With labels like “street epistemology” or “deep canvassing,” they involve building rapport; listening respectfully to a claim, however wacky; exploring the reasons behind it; and encouraging believers to judge the quality of their reasons. The goal is getting people to think about their own thinking. It doesn’t always work, but McRaney effectively shows how it has proven far more successful than focusing on facts.
Convincing advice regarding a timely issue.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-19029-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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