An engaging volume that offers lovely photos and stirring reflections.
A compilation of photographs and musings shares the story of a man’s struggle to overcome alcoholism.
In May 2010, Blanchard (Fighting for My Life, 2014)—a former marathon runner and the COO of a Maine company—passed out in his car on the side of the road after drinking vodka and taking Xanax. When a state patrolman approached his car, the author woke up and tried to speed away. This was the third time in three months he had been arrested for alcohol-related crimes. With his marriage in deep trouble and the prospect of jail time, he was extremely depressed and decided to end his life. Fortunately, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he received compassionate, professional help and a referral to a rehab program. Blanchard took his last drink on July 26, 2010, and though it wasn’t easy, he used several tools, such as therapeutic writing, to remain on a sober path. One of his greatest pleasures was taking photographs of picturesque places, especially his beloved Martha’s Vineyard. A self-taught photographer, the author replaced vodka with the natural highs he received from studying and shooting lush landscapes, like peaceful seaside sunrises. Hoping to inspire others who struggle with addiction, he offers this captivating collection of more than 50 color photos of mostly outdoor subjects—like a majestic red-tailed hawk appearing at South Beach and the brilliant Gay Head Cliffs glowing in a sunset’s light, both on Martha’s Vineyard—along with his pensive thoughts about recovery and sobriety. Blanchard’s beautiful photos are often calming reflections of his words. For example, when he discusses how drinking kept him in a shell in which he didn’t have to share his true self with others, he includes a compelling photo of a spiral lighthouse stairway, which looks shell-like. Meandering from topic to topic—a thoughtful examination of the pain his bad decisions caused is followed by a list of personal affirmations and a moving anecdote about a Facebook friend’s death—Blanchard’s eloquent prose is easy to browse and ponder.
An engaging volume that offers lovely photos and stirring reflections.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-49159-2
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Genevieve Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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
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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
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