Drawing on extensive experience and illustrative examples, Nobel offers practical remedies to a fundamental social problem.
An exploration of creative expression as a powerful response to the epidemic of loneliness.
Loneliness underpins a whole range of personal and social ills, writes Nobel, a physician and public health practitioner who has been working on the issue for many years. The lockdowns and distancing of the Covid-19 era crystalized the problem, but it had begun well before 2020 and continues to build even as the pandemic recedes. Loneliness, defined as a subjective gap between the level of human connection one has and the level they feel they need, has profound effects on mental and physical health. "Loneliness won’t just make you miserable," writes the author. "It can kill you." It is often at the heart of suicides, substance abuse, and mass shootings. Nobel digs into the root causes, exploring community breakdown stemming from economic dislocation. The rise of social media, which can give the illusion of connection while driving people into isolation, is also a major factor—although used the right way, it can be a powerful tool for positive interaction. Nobel, who directs an organization called Project UnLonely, suggests a range of remedies, many of them centered around making art, often in a group setting. Creative expression can provide a path to connection and a sense of hope for the future. The quality of the art, whether painting or poetry, is not important; what matters is the sense of communication and sharing with others. “I can’t say for certain that replacing time spent online with time spent in creative “time wasting” will make you less anxious and more connected,” writes the author. “But I do know that ten minutes writing a haiku is likely to be time better spent then ten minutes doom scrolling your Instagram feed.” The author provides useful answers and a path forward for many people who need one.
Drawing on extensive experience and illustrative examples, Nobel offers practical remedies to a fundamental social problem.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780593191941
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avery
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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
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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