Buchholz projects a communicable affection for the loud business of life, of risk-taking and devoted engagement in the...
Former presidential economic advisor and hedge-fund director Buchholz (New Ideas from Dead CEOs: Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office, 2007, etc.) sings the praises of competition—in both our personal and professional lives—for leading a happier, healthier life.
The author marshals evidence from a number of sources—neuroscience, psychological investigations, evolutionary theory, common sense and his own experience—to suggest that the great avenue to happiness is being in the hunt, that competition, in all its risk and intensity, is what gets the vital juices flowing. In a zesty voice, and with the occasional wiseacre comment, he presents intelligent remarks on the value of hard work. He draws important distinctions between good and bad competition (“There is a big difference between meeting healthy, productive challenges and plundering your coworker’s ego”) and between good and bad anxiety (the former being nervous energy, the latter a lifestyle without enough choices). Buchholz appreciates that the competitive marketplace is often not fair, but then neither is life—it’s a struggle in which you have to actively engage, and that engagement brings happiness in its wake. Not all readers will agree with the author that “[w]e prefer to earn more than our colleagues at work…because that is a signal that we have earned our keep,” or when he asks, “[w]hat’s the point of hailing a people as happiest if their purported happiness does not inspire them to reproduce?” Although the humor is fun and a little corny for the most part, it can also be snarky: “The contented do not grow smarter, they grow moss.” But the author saves his humanist best for last in a tribute to personal goals, fulfilling forms of competition with yourself that don’t require you to root for the defeat of others.
Buchholz projects a communicable affection for the loud business of life, of risk-taking and devoted engagement in the pursuit of happiness.Pub Date: May 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59463-077-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hudson Street/Penguin
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lively and well-written survey, spiced up with incidents from recent headlines.
It isn’t only computers that have memory problems. Just ask anyone over a certain age—or take a look at this entertaining new book.
As the title indicates, Schachter (Psychology/Harvard Univ.) describes seven generic failings to which everyone’s memory is prone. Transience is the loss of details over time; everyone remembers last night’s dinner better than that of a week ago, and that of a year ago is often entirely forgotten. Absentmindedness is the familiar inability to remember where you left your car keys or whether you took your medicine. One of the most frustrating is blocking (the “it’s right on the tip of my tongue”) phenomenon, in which a familiar word or name refuses to emerge from memory (often coming back in the middle of the night). Also common is misattribution, for example crediting Sean Connery for a role played by some other actor. Suggestibility is the tendency to adopt and hold onto false memories suggested by some other outside influence (such as a leading question) or to recall feeling at the time of a past event an emotion only experienced much later. A variety of biases lead us to reconstruct the past to match current beliefs, or to place ourselves at the center of events in which we were minor participants. Finally, there is persistence, the inability to forget even years later some traumatic event such as a rejection or a faux pas. For each of these traits, the author suggests causes as well as potential remedies: gingko biloba for transience, for example. In a summary chapter, Schacter argues that each of these failures is in fact an aspect of some positive trait without which memory would be far less valuable.
A lively and well-written survey, spiced up with incidents from recent headlines.Pub Date: May 7, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-04019-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
To exorcise the demons of irrationality, turn to this rigorous—if overzealous—study of everyday logic. Cognitive illusions—like optical illusions—hold us in their thrall, says Piattelli-Palmarini (Cognitive Science/Institute San Raffaele, Milan). But theoretical breakthroughs in cognitive science provide revolutionary new avenues for thought. Addressing everyone who wants to make more rational decisions, Piattelli- Palmarini unveils the ``discovery'' of the ``cognitive unconscious.'' This term, with its nod to Freud, refers to the reflexive patterns of reasoning in which we engage unreflectively, even though counterintuitive but logically correct thinking would serve us better. Asked, for instance, which outcome is more likely in a coin flip, ``heads-heads-heads'' or ``heads-tails-heads- tails,'' most people use incorrect logic to conclude that the latter is more likely (in fact, ``the longer the sequence, the less probable it is''). Piattelli-Palmarini explores the ``tunnels'' of cognitive illusion, showing how familiar problems, (drawn from the realms of medicine, demography, economics, and gambling) flummox most people. Then he corrects common misapprehensions, mapping the rational terrain that lies outside these tunnels, even making an arcane but crucial fact about statistics clear to the general reader. By revealing how most respondents err in, for instance, guessing someone's profession based on a personality profile, Piattelli-Palmarini rigorously defines the rules of probability and deduction. Some will object that what he calls ``irrationality'' is itself a function of the abstraction of such problems, but he vigorously defends cognitive science against such arguments. Perhaps less defensible is his pretense that its ideas represent a revolutionary breakthrough; the issues he raises are, after all, part of a 2,000-year-old philosophical debate. Whether or not his grand claims are justified, as a primer for problem-solvers, this book has great merit.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-471-58126-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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