A New Age–tinged work urging a more mindful financial practice.
In this debut inspirational work, Mitchell challenges readers to incorporate spiritual beliefs into their economic decisions.
Most people probably wouldn’t use the adjective “sacred” when talking about money; for the author, that’s a problem. “Our society separates the inner, spiritual self and the outward world of money, economics, and finances,” laments Mitchell in her introduction. “Using our money, our resources, and our commitment to the Earth, we can bring this spiritual connection to our finances, and to our choices to help create a new world…” Raised to believe that women had little value outside of their traditional duties, the author came, as an adult, to see herself as an engine of community development. She and her CPA husband, Paul, began making small loans to friends and neighbors who could not get them elsewhere, learning as they did the power of money—and the power of people. Mitchell sees the dominant economic model—for people, corporations, and countries—as “Me, More, Mine.” She asserts that everyone should adopt a more collaborative and moral model, which the author calls “Us, We, and the Earth.” Using affirmations, exercises, and anecdotes from her personal life, Mitchell demonstrates how financial thinking can become an extension of one’s spiritual practice, to the benefit of one’s mind, soul, and pocketbook. The author’s prose is always encouraging, and the language she uses is unlike anything you are likely to hear in an econ class: “Release what no longer serves you and set an intention to plant new seeds in your money garden. Now is a powerful time to die to the old to make room for the new. Winter is a wonderful time to ponder what you want to sow in your money and in life for the coming year.” This is more a book about holistic spiritual living than economics per se, and Mitchell’s brand of spirituality (there are a lot of candles and incense and invocations of the Goddess) may turn off some readers. For the right kind of free spirit, however, the author’s message will ring true.
A New Age–tinged work urging a more mindful financial practice.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Empower Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2024
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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