Shelf life: Looking at secular books

Sarah Allen  |  Features  |  Secular Shelf Life
Date posted:  1 Apr 2010
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SMILE OR DIE
How Positive Thinking fooled America and the World
By Barbara Ehrenreich. Granta. 235 pages. £10.99
ISBN 978-1-84708-135-3

Jemimah, aged six, came home from school yesterday saying that she had done well at school because ‘I believed in myself’.

Her siblings sing in assembly, ‘I can do anything I want to, I can climb the highest mountain’. Those in the workplace are encouraged to ‘think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential’ by Pope John XXII. Positive thinking is all around us and, Barbara Ehrenreich claims in this accessible and significant book, it has fooled us all.

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