Do you want more free book summaries like this? Download our app for free at https://www.QuickRead.com/App and get access to hundreds of free book and audiobook summaries. Smile or Die (2009) explores the dark side of our cultural obsession with positive thinking. Although positive thinking is widely considered to be a good and helpful thing, Barbara Ehrenreich wants readers to be aware that being positive about everything all the time is not only unrealistic, it’s actively harmful. By exploring the impact of toxic positivity, Ehrenreich contemplates the mass delusion of the “power of positive thinking” movement and encourages her audience to take precautions for their health.

Exposes the downside of America's penchant for positive thinking, which the author believes leads to self-blame and a preoccupation with stamping out "negative" thoughts on a personal level, and, on a national level, has brought on economic disaster.

Many twenty-first-century evangelical charismatics in Britain are looking for a faith that works. They want to experience the miraculous in terms of healings and Godsent financial provision. Many have left the mainstream churches to join independentcharismatic churches led by those who are perceived to have special insights and to teach principles that will help believers experience the miraculous. But all is not rosy in this promised paradise, and when people are not healed or they remain poor they are often told that it is because they did not have enough faith. This study discovers the origin of the principles that are taught by some charismatic leaders. Glyn Ackerley identifies them as the same ideas that are taught by the positive confession, health, wealth, and prosperity movement, originating in the United States. The origins of the ideas are traced back to New Thought metaphysics and its background philosophies of subjective idealism and pragmatism. These principles were imported into the UK through contact between British leaders and those influenced by American word of faith teachers. Glyn Ackerley explains the persuasiveness of such teachers by examining case studies, suggesting their miracles may well have socialand psychological explanations rather than divine origins.

Not exercising as much as you should? Counting your caloriesin your sleep? Feeling ashamed for not being happier? You may be avictim of the wellness syndrome. In this ground-breaking new book, Carl Cederström andAndré Spicer argue that the ever-present pressure to maximizeour wellness has started to work against us, making us feel worseand provoking us to withdraw into ourselves. The Wellness Syndromefollows health freaks who go to extremes to find the perfect diet,corporate athletes who start the day with a dance party, and theself-trackers who monitor everything, including their own toilethabits. This is a world where feeling good has becomeindistinguishable from being good. Visions of social change havebeen reduced to dreams of individual transformation, politicaldebate has been replaced by insipid moralising, and scientificevidence has been traded for new-age delusions. A lively andhumorous diagnosis of the cult of wellness, this book is anindispensable guide for everyone suspicious of our relentless questto be happier and healthier.

One out of five kids in school today has a gun, knife or club. School violence grabs at the gut of America & concerned adults want to know who their kid is in school with. SMILE OR DIE! shows them, through the eyes of a tormented twelve year-old modeled after a real-life character fiercely determined to confound the system. He pulls no punches to effect his demands, including poking pins through his fingers. He's as out of place in school as the wild skunk that follows him in. The story revolves around his interaction with people who variously want to help, hurt, trick & ignore him. The book tackles behavior behind the forces driving the coarsening of America. It is adult fiction from the trenches of miscreants mingling with rosy-cheeked straights. Plot develops from research of a middle school counselor's actual experience. 5.5 X 8.5, softcover, 272 pages. Fiction/psychology. Order through Pacific Pipeline; The Bookmen or call direct at 1-800-PEASANT. 40%.