A forthright personal finance work, hampered by occasionally unappealing moments.
A blueprint for doctors to find greater joy and peace of mind.
Dermatologic surgeon Tran conceived his book for medical professionals as a hunt for the greatest treasure of all: happiness and freedom from burnout, which arises, he says, when one feels a loss of control over one’s life: “The grind of the non-productive administrative burden of clicking boxes to produce long, useless blocks of text, smart phrases, and ‘vital’ information on electronic medical records is soul-sucking,” he writes. Tran assures readers that they can carve the life they want out of the “raw block of marble” they’ve been given, and his book outlines the process of how that happens; he specifically attributes his own ability to “find grace through every challenge” to the personal awakening he experienced when his son was diagnosed with a rare cancer and underwent treatment. His self-help process centers on three words: intention, attention, and retention—in short, he notes that readers need to set a goal, bear down and focus on it, and make sure to stick to it despite any distractions. Tran mixes these bits of advice with copious references to his own life experiences, from his grueling time in medical school to his troubles and triumphs as a husband and father. His primary focus, however, is advising his fellow doctors on how to create a second stream of income through real estate investment, and he’s engagingly earnest on that subject. However, a few asides that seem to venerate the rich are off-putting, as when he extols the virtues of renting to companies like UPS by complaining about other, less wealthy renters: “I don’t worry about them making rent or paying on time, and I don’t worry about them calling me in the middle of the night about a broken toilet.” At another point, he asserts that his own financial life improved when he started playing with “high-level people,” whom he defines as “people who are real hustlers worth 10 or even 100 times what I’m worth.”
A forthright personal finance work, hampered by occasionally unappealing moments.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1951407940
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Legacy Launch Pad Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2021
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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