Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking

Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America



Barbara Ehrenreich is a perfect antidote for anyone fed up with the power of positive thinking and all its attendant pink ribbons, smiley faces, and injunctions to have a nice day! Ehrenreich explores how medical, academic, and business gurus persuade the public that wishing, done in the right way, can make things happen. The section on the history of positive thinking that probes Calvinism and Max Weber is less original. Kate Reading hits all the right notes in conveying the author's humor, sarcasm, scientifically backed conclusions, and curmudgeonly insights. Her pace is brisk, and she captures the witty wonder of this book.



A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism. Americans are a “positive” people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.” Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis.



With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

@artpepper says: A terrific corrective to all that happy-clappy bullshit. Forget positive thinking. Forget 'thinking' yourself rich (as if). Forget re-growing hair by thinking about it. Wake up and smell the proverbial coffee, chump. Life's a wild, unpredictable ride and then you croak. Make the best of it.