Survivors of traumatic events often do not recover without help from others, and Gonzales’ excellent book is an education...
How can the world smite thee? Let us count the ways...
Having limned the odds and wherefores of surviving various challenges in Deep Survival (2003) and Everyday Survival (2008), Gonzales (Lucy, 2010, etc.) looks deeply into the mental processes that enable us to cope with the trauma that often sets in during and after a challenge to our survival. Take, for instance, the prospect of falling overboard and floating in the deep ocean for five days before rescue, as happened to one woman Gonzales profiled in the first book. Though she was rescued, that was not the end of the story in real life; instead, for years, she has had to relive “the pain of thirst, the terror, the physical brutality of the sea,” while her brain has followed its well-known assumption that what happened in the past will happen in the future, no matter how rare the chances of being shipwrecked. Here Gonzales narrates plenty of grim and gruesome tales, not all of them elective; his survivors are those who have suffered war and terrorism as well as falls off mountains and into choppy surf. The best parts are not those harrowing stories, though, but instead the author’s contemplative explanations of the science behind, for instance, how the amygdala works, a blend of inheritance and hard-won education. Pity us poor primates and our amygdalae, for, as he writes, “[w]hen bad things happen, this system can be the source of much sorrow.” One manifestation is the “rage circuit,” which so often afflicts soldiers returning from combat. Those who adapt well to the post-traumatic stress share points in common. One characteristic of success, writes Gonzales, is the ability to step outside oneself to help others, which is “one of the most therapeutic steps you can take.”
Survivors of traumatic events often do not recover without help from others, and Gonzales’ excellent book is an education for those wishing to be of use in a stressful, often frightening world.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-393-08318-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
Hiccups aside, a mostly valuable compendium of irrational thinking, with a handful of blanket corrective maneuvers.
A waggish, cautionary compilation of pitfalls associated with systematic cognitive errors, from novelist Dobelli.
To be human is to err, routinely and with bias. We exercise deviation from logic, writes the author, as much as, and possibly more than, we display optimal reasoning. In an effort to bring awareness to this sorry state of affairs, he has gathered here—in three-page, anecdotally saturated squibs—nearly 100 examples of muddied thinking. Many will ring familiar to readers (Dobelli’s illustrations are not startlingly original, but observant)—e.g., herd instinct and groupthink, hindsight, overconfidence, the lack of an intuitive grasp of probability or statistical reality. Others, if not new, are smartly encapsulated: social loafing, the hourly rate trap, decision fatigue, carrying on with a lost cause (the sunk-cost fallacy). Most of his points stick home: the deformation of professional thinking, of which Mark Twain said, “If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will be nails”; multitasking is the illusion of attention with potentially dire results if you are eating a sloppy sandwich while driving on a busy street. In his quest for clarity, Dobelli mostly brings shrewdness, skepticism and wariness to bear, but he can also be opaque—e.g., shaping the details of history “into a consistent story...we speak about ‘understanding,’ but these things cannot be understood in the traditional sense. We simply build the meaning into them afterward.” Well, yes. And if we are to be wary of stories, what are we to make of his many telling anecdotes when he counsels, “Anecdotes are a particularly tricky sort of cherry picking....To rebuff an anecdote is difficult because it is a mini-story, and we know how vulnerable our brains are to those”?
Hiccups aside, a mostly valuable compendium of irrational thinking, with a handful of blanket corrective maneuvers.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-221968-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.
An analysis of our emotions and the skills required to understand them.
We all have emotions, but how many of us have the vocabulary to accurately describe our experiences or to understand how our emotions affect the way we act? In this guide to help readers with their emotions, Brackett, the founding director of Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, presents a five-step method he calls R.U.L.E.R.: We need to recognize our emotions, understand what has caused them, be able to label them with precise terms and descriptions, know how to safely and effectively express them, and be able to regulate them in productive ways. The author walks readers through each step and provides an intriguing tool to use to help identify a specific emotion. Brackett introduces a four-square grid called a Mood Meter, which allows one to define where an emotion falls based on pleasantness and energy. He also uses four colors for each quadrant: yellow for high pleasantness and high energy, red for low pleasantness and high energy, green for high pleasantness and low energy, and blue for low pleasantness and low energy. The idea is to identify where an emotion lies in this grid in order to put the R.U.L.E.R. method to good use. The author’s research is wide-ranging, and his interweaving of his personal story with the data helps make the book less academic and more accessible to general readers. It’s particularly useful for parents and teachers who want to help children learn to handle difficult emotions so that they can thrive rather than be overwhelmed by them. The author’s system will also find use in the workplace. “Emotions are the most powerful force inside the workplace—as they are in every human endeavor,” writes Brackett. “They influence everything from leadership effectiveness to building and maintaining complex relationships, from innovation to customer relations.”
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-21284-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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