A paradigm-challenging new look at real happiness.
Bush conducts an unusual, society-oriented examination of the roots of happiness in this nonfiction work.
Although his book concerns “the opposite of depression,” the author, a motivational speaker, stresses from the outset that this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s about eliminating sadness. Bush’s subject is a positive state, not the absence of a negative one; as he asserts, “It’s about striving for greatness, not recovering from an illness.” In searching for what the author refers to as a “grand, unified theory of happiness,” he proposes a new model of happiness itself. After noting that the realization of some long-held wish for sudden good fortune (winning the lottery, for example) often does not bring long-term happiness, Bush imagines a “z-axis” of virtue that complicates the usual spectrum of pain and pleasure—the z-axis is firmly rooted in the social elements of human nature. “Your actions must,” he contends, “exemplify traits that you value in others.” The author posits that “a good life is an admirable life.” Bush draws from a wide range of self-help and psychology authors as well as ancient and modern philosophers, and his book is attractively arranged and illustrated with graphs and flowcharts, but its core message is surprisingly simple: When the self one presents to the world is favorably aligned with one’s own values, one’s happiness increases. While he’s elaborating on this idea, Bush’s prose is always bracingly direct (“You don’t need meaning,” he writes; “You need virtue”). Some of his ideas might be controversial—the author tends to take motivational rather than medical stances on issues such as depression and autism, and his “z-axis” may resonate with monsters (“You should only care about social approval insofar as it reflects your own approval” sounds good on paper, but it’s also the life philosophy of sociopaths). Still, the bulk of the text has an energy that self-help readers will find invigorating.
A paradigm-challenging new look at real happiness.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 978-1737846246
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dtm Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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