An unusual, easy-to-follow examination of some perplexing aspects of human behavior.
In his debut self-help book, Meredith offers suggestions for dealing with the human brain’s evolutionary heritage in order to enhance happiness.
The brain, the author asserts, was well-suited to enable people to function in the long-ago “brutal...dangerous world of scarcity,” but it isn’t conducive to modern happiness. He calls this “vast, secret,” now-dysfunctional brain, the “ultraconscious” and says that it’s “working directly against…happiness.” Meredith offers a few of the secrets of the mind’s workings, as well as how to outfox its unwelcome influences. One such influence, Meredith says, is the ultraconscious’s consuming goal to reproduce; it sees happiness “as the reward for surviving and reproducing.” Suggestions for overcoming this manipulation include accepting that some unhappiness is part of the human condition and simply striving to enjoy life’s basic pleasures. In the chapter “Your Ultraconscious is a Liar,” Meredith discusses such phenomena as the placebo effect and what he terms “emotional lies,” or the ultraconscious’s ability to cloud judgments with “false memories” and “involuntary emotions.” The chapter ends with pointers on applying this knowledge to persuasion and handling conflict. The book’s most controversial chapter tackles religion. The writer considers religion to be based on superstitions that exist largely to foster optimism and reproduction. Other chapters discuss the human ability to be exploited and the importance of critical thinking. The book concludes on a hopeful note: Human evolution has tended toward improvement and self-knowledge. There are also seven crucial “commandments” to follow to increase one’s happiness, including “pursue happiness incrementally” and “enjoy the small things.” Some may see the writer’s scheme as an overly simplified and limited description of human psychology. Still, Meredith’s energetic, colloquial style animates this often inherently abstract material. Readers interested in more information will find more than 100 notes, many of which cite scholarly sources.
An unusual, easy-to-follow examination of some perplexing aspects of human behavior.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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