Book Reviews - Review 233

Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich lays into the "positive thinking" movement that has substantially infiltrated the business, self-help, medical and even academic scenes in the USA. As a cancer patient, she was bombarded with injunctions to see the bright side of her disease, and made to feel guilty about voicing bitterness or fear. The sensible idea that one look for the positive in life has, she came to feel, tipped over into a paradoxical, morbid fear of negativity. Perhaps most importantly, "instruction" in positive thinking has been a gold mine for business consultants, psychologists and even Christian ministers, who never have trouble getting people willing to pay to hear what they want to - i.e. that the universe is plastic to our wishes, if only we wish hard enough. It's convenient for those enjoining us to wish, too: if things don't work out for us, it's down to our own negative attitude rather than circumstances. Cancer patients, the unemployed, overworked employees: if they're not happy, it can only be because they're not being positive enough.

This book doesn't tell the sceptical reader anything they don't already know: that western culture, and American culture in particular, is dominated by images of grinning morons, images propagated by charlatans who want our money, time or sweat. However, the book contains a good many anecdotal nuggets, is very wittily written, and is cogently argued. Not exactly a life-changing book, but then unlike many of the glib self-help volumes Ehrenreich lambastes, it doesn't claim to be.