An often-compelling science-based approach to personal transformation.
In this inspirational book, executive coach Rosemberg explores how thriving is a state that readers can create through intentional choices.
The author opens the book with a series of devastating events that occurred to people in the author’s inner circle that made him realize that “life can be more than mere survival.” Survival mode, he writes, is an “emergency response system” that may manifest as irritability, procrastination, or simply becoming numb. By contrast, thriving is characterized by feeling “open, energized, flexible, and deeply connected.” Creativity and curiosity are other hallmarks of the latter. Rosemberg introduces a map of nine interconnected elements—beliefs; thoughts; emotions; sensations and actions; transcendence; the past; the present; the future; and space—that can help readers shift from surviving to thriving. He explores each in depth and invites readers to go deeper into each one by using his AIR (“Awareness, Inquiry, and Reframing”) framework. The book also discusses ways to face emotional challenges, interpret bodily sensations, adopt an optimistic explanatory style, and balance hedonia (the pursuit of pleasure and happiness) with eudaimonia (the pursuit of purpose and meaning). The book also explores the power of objects, spaces, systems, and culture. Case studies from Rosemberg’s coaching clients highlight how agency, mindfulness, prospection, and space affect one’s ability to thrive. The book concludes with a reminder that learning from challenges, rather than being defined by them, is essential to living life to the fullest. Rosemberg creatively combines personal history, professional anecdotes, neuroscience, and psychology in this all-compassing life-improvement guide. Anecdotes from the author’s coaching clients sometimes feel a bit too polished, presenting a process of transformation that seems smoother than it often is. However, his experience with depression, anxiety, and upheaval lends gravitas to such statements as “Transitions in life often feel disorienting and heavy, like wading through thick mud. The harder we fight against it, the deeper we sink.” Rosemberg compassionately acknowledges the role of privilege in well-being, noting that “Systemic decisions give some people easy access to thriving while leaving others to struggle.”
An often-compelling science-based approach to personal transformation.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781394367931
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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