Thoughtful discourse on the workings of praise and blame that will be particularly helpful to readers sensitive to scrutiny.
Examination of how our inherent need for appreciation and acceptance can be sabotaged by incrimination and criticism.
Personally and professionally fascinated by relational judgments for over three decades, British psychologist Apter (Difficult Mothers: Understanding and Overcoming Their Power, 2012, etc.) explores the nature of praise and blame and how our predisposition to be judgmental of ourselves and others stems from the evolution of the human brain and the progression of interactive social discourse. The author writes that our sensitivities to praise and blame begin as infants able to “mindsight” and detect purpose and feelings in facial signals. She analyzes the importance of praise in reinforcing confidence in early child development and how it can aid in building brain circuits via the natural highs induced by oxytocin and endorphins. Apter dutifully acknowledges that teenagers can be the toughest to praise, as motivations and perceived patronization come into play, and she provides evidence with her observational research case findings. Conversely, the side effects of blame are painful and emotionally and physically burdensome for individuals of any age as well as for family members. The simple pursuit of praise and the careful avoidance of blame can be emblematic of larger social issues, Apter notes, especially in the context of social media engagement and the competitiveness between siblings or co-workers. In more thoroughly described studies, the author discusses the dynamics of friendships differentiated by gender, or how rejection, a lack of positive reinforcement, and mismanaged blame can foster infidelity in romantic couples. “The demand to be the best ushers in a cascade of anxieties,” she writes, offering an interesting assessment of the various judgment systems active in many contemporary families. In noting that “we live, day by day, in the constant company of our judgments,” Apter counsels that mindfulness and inward reflection can lessen the encumbrances of judgment.
Thoughtful discourse on the workings of praise and blame that will be particularly helpful to readers sensitive to scrutiny.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-24785-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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