Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Ehrenreich makes the point (and it can't be made too often) that the Law of Attraction, as promulgated via such works of irrationalist pseudoscience as The Secret and the books of Esther and Jerry Hicks, has the down-side effect of making out-of-work, poor, sick, and otherwise "unlucky" people responsible for their own condition. She tells how Rhonda Byrne (The Secret) opined that tsunami victims had attracted their own misfortune. Ehrenreich also spells out how convenient this "philosophy" is to the greed heads that have lately been so busy raping America and the global economy. Don't revolt, don't complain, it's all your own fault. She covers how Emerson and the Transcendentalists attempted to break free from the toxic effects of Calvinism on early American life, but how that attempt got sidetracked into New Thought (Phineas Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy, etc), with its increasingly laser-like focus on "prosperity" and get-rich-quick schemes. The scholarship that went into this intellectual/cultural history is impressive. Closer to present time, she unpacks how many evangelical mega-churches have leveraged this new, and very un-Christian, gospel in the style of huckster marketeers and predatory CEOs. But my favorite is the number she does on Martin Seligman and his "Positive Psychology" boondoggle. This isn't just a good book, it's an important one and much needed. I hope it will shape attitudes and change minds.