An accessible overview of the dismal science.
A young progressive’s take on how the economy works and what it means to ordinary consumers.
If Madeline Pendleton’s I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt speaks to the intricacies of personal finance, Scanlon’s offering ratchets up the discussion into more ethereal realms—the economy as a reflection of not just on-the-ground realities but also human emotions. The author opens her debut book with “The Deciders,” the higher-ups who build and shape economic policies that, at least in theory, “are designed to work for the collective benefit.” The Federal Reserve is among this group, with its two sometimes-conflicting missions of keeping employment high while keeping inflation low through such instruments as contractionary monetary policy. Scanlon does a good job in later sections of relating such macro issues to the vicissitudes of daily life: why, for instance, the imposition of tariffs or the relative strength of the dollar to the yuan makes Chinese trade goods more or less expensive, with the resulting knock-on effects on consumers’ pocketbooks. The discussion of recession is admirably clear, and Scanlon ably explains the causal mechanisms and the fact that from time to time, the economy needs a reset, albeit at a cost borne by ordinary people more than those with deeper resources. Throughout, the author, leaning to the left, reminds readers that the economy is ultimately about people, a matter that governments and corporations seem to have forgotten. “If the minimum wage had moved with productivity growth (as it did up until 1968),” she notes, “it would now be about $24.00 per hour”—a fact that, one hopes, will startle policymakers into taking the issue seriously. Currently, writes Scanlon, “there is no place in the United States where a minimum-wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment.”
An accessible overview of the dismal science.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780593727874
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Currency
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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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A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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