A meditative, if sometimes-overwritten, appraisal of compulsion and love.
In the absence of love, a man seeks solace in pathological gambling and literature in this debut memoir.
When Rosenthal was just 11 years old, his father attempted suicide and was institutionalized. The author’s socially awkward teenage years were lonely ones, and he turned to literature to experience and understand the romantic love he wanted but could never attain. He entered the University of Iowa’s renowned creative writing program, but failed playwriting, a harbinger of his future disappointment as a writer. He then meandered from one high school teaching job to another, and during a stint on the faculty of American University in Washington, D.C., he discovered the obsession that would dominate his life for the next quarter-century: gambling on horse racing. He accepted a position at Northern Illinois University, mostly due to its proximity to racetracks, and sank himself so deep in debt, he says, that he was reduced to various kinds of financial fraud in order to barely stay afloat. Along the way, Rosenthal suffered both minor indignities (he was caught shoplifting after squandering thousands of dollars in winnings in a single day) and major ones (bankruptcy). Eventually, he sought help from therapists and programs for gambling addicts and found some stability, if not the fullness of redemption. This is an eclectic work that combines self-help, personal memoir, and a philosophical meditation on the nature and possibility of romantic love. Rosenthal’s story is a familiar one, but he tells it with considerable flair and erudition. Unfortunately, his style sometimes devolves into undisciplined flamboyance: “Pugnacious bouncers bum-rush the pathetic imbibers onto the street as reward for emptying their pockets to an old barkeep pissed off at having to listen to the same old racetrack B.S. from whining losers seeking no more than a sympathetic ear for solace.” Also, he sometimes piles up literary references that do little to illustrate his points, and the fact that this brief work is distilled down from 3,000 pages of journal entries makes it a bit scattershot. That said, Rosenthal is bracingly candid about his missteps, and exceedingly thoughtful throughout.
A meditative, if sometimes-overwritten, appraisal of compulsion and love.Pub Date: March 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5049-6683-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2017
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
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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