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Bright-sided : how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America by Ehrenreich, Barbara is a science book available to read on EtoBox.

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SUMMARY: A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realismAmericans 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 fo

Who reads Bright-sided : how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America?

Author

Ehrenreich, Barbara

Publisher

Macmillan; Henry Holt and Company

Published

2009

Language

EN

ISBN

9780805087499

Category

science

Subjects

Psychology, Anthropology, Social Science

Rating

3.7 / 5 (6,107 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14