Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Written by Barbara Ehrenreich
Narrated by Kate Reading
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-sided is 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.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich (1941-2022) was a bestselling author and political activist, whose more than a dozen books included Nickel and Dimed, which the New York Times described as "a classic in social justice literature", Bait and Switch, Bright-sided, This Land Is Their Land, Dancing In the Streets, and Blood Rites. An award-winning journalist, she frequently contributed to Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times, and TIME magazine. Ehrenreich was born in Butte, Montana, when it was still a bustling mining town. She studied physics at Reed College, and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University. Rather than going into laboratory work, she got involved in activism, and soon devoted herself to writing her innovative journalism.
More audiobooks from Barbara Ehrenreich
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Witches, Midwives & Nurses, 2nd Ed: A History of Women Healers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Bright-sided
Related audiobooks
McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism-American Style Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fully Automated Luxury Communism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Team Human Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rendezvous with Oblivion: Reports from a Sinking Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Author Jia Tolentino On American Culture Through The Prism Of The Internet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pandemic Pivot: A Report from the Institute for Policy Studies, the Transnational Institute, and Focus on the Global South Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Anthropology For You
Why We Love: The New Science Behind Our Closest Relationships Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Power of Myth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Neuroplasticity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Making Memories: How to Create and Remember Happy Moments Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Magic: A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with our Wild Neighbors Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rethinking Narcissism: The Bad-and Surprising Good-About Feeling Special Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Bright-sided
13 ratings1 review
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5It’s difficult to take this book seriously when the author reduces herself to commenting on the hair styles and looks of the people she’s tearing up. Also, the narrator wasn’t pronouncing at least two of the names correctly of people the author was ragging on. I would think they would have fixed that in editing. These things make the book look ridiculous.