Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermined America

Barbara Ehrenreich

Oct 2009 · Sold by Metropolitan Books

About this ebook

The New York Times Bestseller

“Deeply satisfying. . . I have waited my whole life for someone to write a book like Bright-sided.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the critically-acclaimed author of Nickel and Dimed comes the bestseller Bright-sided, 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 is the key to getting success and prosperity. Or so we are told.

In this utterly original debunking, Barbara Ehrenreich confronts the false promises of positive thinking and shows its reach into every corner of American life, from Evangelical megachurches to the medical establishment, and, worst of all, to the business community, where the refusal to consider negative outcomes--like mortgage defaults--contributed directly to the current economic disaster. With the myth-busting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of positive thinking: personal self-blame and national denial. 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.

Ratings and reviews

Definitely worth reading, especially if, like me, you feel that positive thinking is drowning out the voices that have real solutions to some of the problems that pervade our society. The skeptic in me would have liked to see Ehrenreich's theories backed up with more empirical research, but what she says makes sense, and is a needed wakeup call for some.

About the author

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.