“Barbara Ehrenreich’s skeptical common sense is just what we need to penetrate the cloying fog that passes for happiness in America.”
—Alan Wolfe, author of The Future of Liberalism
Meet Barbara Ehrenreich
Discussing and signing
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Henry Holt & Company, $23)
Monday, October 19, 7:30pm
Books & Books, Coral Gables
BOOK-AND-RECEPTION TICKET: For just $40, you get a copy of Bright-Sided,a ticket to the private wine-and-hors d’oeuvres reception with Barbara Ehrenreich and a reserved priority seat at the reading. BOOK-AND-RECEPTION TICKETS ARE LIMITED. To get your book-and-reception ticket, call or stop by any Books & Books locations. Ticketed Reception starts at 6:30pm.
PUBLIC EVENT is free and open to the public and does not require tickets.
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 morb
id 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.
About the Author
Barbara Ehrenreichis the author of thirteen books including The New York Times bestseller Nickel and Dimed. A frequent contributor to Harper’sand The Nation, she has been a regular columnist at The New York Timesand Time magazine. She lives in Virginia.
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