An earnest invitation to reassess personal priorities.
A celebration of caring and community within our often bloodless digital world.
Davis, co-founder of the Democracy Policy Network and Getaway, which offers vacation escapes to tiny, off-the-internet cabins, expands his recent Harvard commencement speech into a heartfelt argument in support of the “Counterculture of Commitment” and rejection of the “Culture of Open Options.” Characterized by infinite browsing and fluid attachment to any identity, place, or community, the Culture of Open Options can yield certain pleasures, such as flexibility and novelty, but also leads to decision paralysis, shallowness, and isolation, “the malaise of having no connection to anything, of having no expectations set for you.” Drawing on abundant examples of “long-haul heroes” from friends, family, public figures (Martin Luther King Jr., Ken Burns, sports champions, and political activists, among many others), and myriad interviewees, Davis makes a persuasive case for dedication as “an alternative path of life.” He acknowledges that commitment may generate fears: “If we commit to something, we will later regret having not committed to something else instead,” or we fear undermining “our identity, reputation, and sense of control.” But he asserts that rather than threaten identity, commitment enhances it, bestowing the “gift of solidarity” within a shared moral culture rather than affiliation with the kind of micro-identities found in Twitter communities and on Reddit boards. Davis laments that in the Culture of Open Options, education focuses on training for personal advancement rather than on cultivating attachments or honing professionalism. “To be educated for attachment,” he writes, “is to learn the art of settling—into particular professions, crafts, causes, and communities—and to find there the peace of reverence and duty.” Commitments foster looking out for others rather than only for ourselves: “They structure our world, giving us authority to respect, myths in which to see ourselves, and communities in which we have a voice.”
An earnest invitation to reassess personal priorities.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982140-90-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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IN THE NEWS
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