Ehrenreich’s latest expose excoriates the misbegotten mixture of pseudoscience, warped survivals of Calvinism and plain wishful thinking behind the belief that a positive attitude is the sole key to success in life.
As the ungainly subtitle implies, really her focus is on the US; there is a note of how “healthy British scepticism can be a barrier to these attitudes”, and in general we would still tend to think of them as “a bit American”. Nonetheless, her analysis of how positive thinking both exacerbated the recent economic collapse (those who warned of approaching disaster were dismissed as negative, then simply dismissed) has obvious global relevance.
The manner in which positive thinking can so easily become victim- blaming – whether the misfortune be cancer or redundancy – is mercilessly analysed, and the way this excuses doctors and CEOs from the scrutiny they deserve held up to the light. A timely book.
Alex Sarll
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