An illuminating account of how a great thinker with insatiable curiosity overcame a difficult childhood through his love of...
A titan in his field recounts professional and personal achievements.
Growing up impoverished in a hardscrabble Boston suburb, Aronson never dreamed that one day he would teach at Harvard, let alone be considered one of the preeminent psychologists of the 20th century. The son of a Russian émigré who lost everything in the Depression, the author describes himself as a “painfully shy” and bullied boy always compared unfavorably to his star sibling, Jason. His brother nurtured him, however, imparting many valuable life lessons and insisting that he attend college despite financial hardship and poor grades. In perhaps his first social-learning experiment, Aronson decided to act “as if” he were outgoing and relaxed his first semester at Brandeis. This strategy was effective, and with newfound popularity came increased confidence. Always interested in the basis of others’ beliefs, allegiances and opinions, he selected social psychologist Leon Festinger—famous for his theory of cognitive dissonance—as his mentor, and then designed an experiment that emphasized self-concept, transforming the focus of this field of study. During the next five decades, Aronson remained at the center of dynamic developments in the field. This warm, humble and brilliant man takes pride as much in being a successful teacher, husband, father and friend as in his academic accomplishments. He peppers the narrative with amusing anecdotes about luminaries and colleagues such as Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (now Ram Dass), who asked for his help with the design of their LSD experiments. A humanist who led encounter groups in the ’70s and created the jigsaw classroom to address discrimination in the era of enforced school desegregation in Texas, the author demonstrates dramatically the real-world impact of research. His descriptions of experimental design and theory are thorough yet accessible to the average reader, but it is his profound insights, observations and compassion that make this a fascinating read.
An illuminating account of how a great thinker with insatiable curiosity overcame a difficult childhood through his love of social science.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-465-01833-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A heartfelt and haunting memoir just right for the current political and social climate.
An acclaimed Mexican-born poet’s account of the sometimes-overwhelming struggles he and his parents faced in their quest to become American citizens.
Hernandez Castillo (Cenzontle, 2018, etc.) first came to the United States with his undocumented Mexican parents in 1993. But life in the shadows came at a high price. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided their home on multiple occasions and eventually deported the author’s father back to Mexico. In this emotionally raw memoir, Hernandez Castillo explores his family’s traumas through a fractured narrative that mirrors their own fragmentation. Of his own personal experiences, he writes, “when I came undocumented to the U.S., I crossed into a threshold of invisibility.” To protect himself against possible identification as an undocumented person, he excelled in school and learned English “better than any white person, any citizen.” When he was old enough to work, he created a fake social security card to apply for the jobs that helped him support his fatherless family. After high school, he attended college and married a Mexican American woman. He became an MFA student at the University of Michigan and qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed him to visit his father in Mexico, where he discovered the depth of his cultural disorientation. Battling through ever present anxiety, the author revisited his and his parents’ origins and then returned to take on the difficult interview that qualified him for a green card. His footing in the U.S. finally solidified, Hernandez Castillo unsuccessfully attempted to help his father and mother qualify for residency in the U.S. Only after his father was kidnapped by members of a drug cartel was the author able to help his mother, whose life was now in danger, seek asylum in the U.S. Honest and unsparing, this book offers a detailed look at the dehumanizing immigration system that shattered the author’s family while offering a glimpse into his own deeply conflicted sense of what it means to live the so-called American dream.
A heartfelt and haunting memoir just right for the current political and social climate.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-282559-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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