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Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America 2009Author: Barbara EhrenreichAudio Books : Self-help : EnglishPublisher: Macmillan AudioISBN: 1427208360 | October 2009 | English | 7 hours, 27 minutes | MP3 64kbps | 205 MB———This 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 is the key to getting success and prosperity. Or so we are told.In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange history of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal 19th-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.Read by Kate Reading who hits all the right notes in conveying the author’s humor, sarcasm, scientifically backed conclusions, and curmudgeonly insights. Her pace is brisk, and she captures the witty wonder of this book.