A Bankruptcy Lawyer’s Blog

A Review for – Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

The Lowest Price we could find is $27.00 $12.68

Review:

As always, Tim Harford finds the most interesting economic research and explains it well. As I read Adapt, I was frequently inspired to go online and look up the economics he reports on. The section on evolved virtual creatures prompted me to visit YouTube and watch for myself how animal-like forms evolved through computer simulations. After reading about the unintended consequences of some foreign aid programs, I had to see what a Play Pump looks like and watch the interviews with teachers who preferred the old borehole pumps. Adapt is an excellent collection of quotes, stories, and research findings on innovation and economic evolution.

However, the book falls short in a few ways. First, although Harford’s writing is generally clear, he employs some annoying rhetorical devices that should have been edited out. One is that he repeatedly withholds the name of the person whose work he’s discussing until he has built up all the details of the story. Only once he’s laid out the research results does he reveal that the anonymous manager is a famous figure or someone we met in the last chapter. It’s as if Harford isn’t confident that the research will hold anyone’s attention, so he has to play games with the reader. Equally irksome is his tendency to repeat points again and again, reminding readers of things he mentioned two pages back that no one could have forgotten.

The chapter on the financial crisis was also a disappointment. It devolved into boring jargon and obscure terms for different loans and contracts. Maybe it’s not possible to make subprime mortgages entertaining, and I don’t know if any other writer could have done a better job. But the book would have been more enjoyable without that tedious interlude.

But the main drawback is that Harford’s thesis that economic progress parallels evolution in the natural world is not fully developed or defended. Certainly, economic progress is like evolution in that bad products disappear and good technology, like good genes, is passed along. Harford’s assertion that isolation is a necessary precondition of creativity seems less persuasive. He gives examples from evolutionary biology in which populations adapted differently because they were separated by physical barriers. Harford then offers the example of researchers who moved out to Utah or Arizona to get some space as proof that human innovators must be similarly isolated. But is that really true in the world of human ideas? I’m not convinced. Virtually all innovators of the last century had some kind of intellectual peer group, either through a university or social circle. And modern communications enable researchers in Utah to keep abreast of the latest ideas and theories. They’re not separated intellectually from their peers the way guppies in different ponds are separated physically. Furthermore, Harford does not fully explain what process in the economy corresponds to sexual reproduction in the natural world. How do good ideas spread if they’re not identified by a manager from the top? Harford alludes to imitation by other economic actors, but doesn’t show how or why this occurs.

Adapt is worthwhile reading as a starting-point for investigating economic research on innovation, but its model of economic development as a corollary to biological evolution is not completely satisfactory.

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My Review for – Ten Days to Self-Esteem

The Lowest Price we could find is $16.99 $3.13

Do you wake up dreading the day?
Do you feel ciscouraged with what you’ve accomplished in life?
Do you want greater self-esteem, productivity, and joy in daily living?

If so, you will benefit from this revolutionary way of brightening your moods without drugs or lengthy therapy. All you need is your own common sense and the easy-to-follow methods revealed in this book by one of the country’s foremost authorities on mood and personal relationship problems.

In Ten Days to Self-esteem, Dr. David Burns presents innovative, clear, and compassionate methods that will help you identify the causes of your mood slumps and develop a more positive outlook on life. You will learn that

You feel the way you think: Negative feelings like guilt, anger, and depression do not result from the bad things that happen to you, but from the way you think about these events. This simple but revolutionary idea can change your life!

You can change the way you feel: You will discover why you get depressed and learn how to brighten your outlook when you’re in a slump.

You can enjoy greater happiness, productivity, and intimacywithout drugs or lengthy therapy.

Can a self-help book do all this? Studies show that two thirds of depressed readers of Dr. Burns’s classic bestseller, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, experienced dramatic felief in just four weeks without psychotherapy or antidepressant medications. Three-year follow-up studies revealed that readers did not relapse but continued to enjoy their positive outlook. Ten Days to Self-esteem offers a powerful new tool that provides hope and healing in ten easy steps. The methods are based on common sense and are not difficult to apply. Research shows that they really work!

Feeling good feels wonderful. You owe it to yourself to feel good!

Review:

I’ve had depression for over ten years, flirting with suicide for most of them, before finally seeking help. So I know what it’s like at the bottom, trust me. Meds can make you a LOT better… but they’re only a kick-start to taking care of the problems addressed in this book. This book can make you ALL better by taking care of the main symptom of depression – negative thoughts – and thus preventing deeper depression and relapse.

"Ten Days to Self-Esteem" includes checklist tests to chart your progress, simple homework assignments, and daily exercises to train yourself to think more positively. In other words, if you’re willing to put in the work, and let Dr. Burns show you where to start, it WILL help you, step-by-step.

So why all the negative reviews? I have to put in my two cents, here.

There are three major themes running through the brains of those with depression:
1. "I have a very special case of depression. Other people may have gotten better, but I’m different. I’ll never be cured."
2. Life’s details are tainted with bad-ness. ("That’s nice, but…")
3. If it’s not perfect, it’s not good enough. ("There’s a typo on my resume, so I won’t bother applying for the job.")

All of these combined will invariably lead to negative reviews of this book. The depressed patient will find one or two things they don’t agree with (whether rational or not), and since they have an all-or-nothing philosophy, they decide this book is worthless and can’t help them, so they don’t read it or do the exercises (or do them half-heartedly), and this book gets one star.

Now, I’m NOT picking on any certain reviewer here; I haven’t read the complaints in that much detail. I’m just trying to help explain to the non-depressed people why there are such a bafflingly wide range of opinions about this book. Well, that’s the way depressed people think – negatively. (In fact, depressed people even answer “No” to questions significantly more often than non-depressed people.)

With that said, I’ll admit that I had EXACTLY the same reaction. The book was too _______, I didn’t have enough time for the exercises, it wasn’t helping fast enough, blah blah blah. (I have a high IQ – so sometimes my negative thoughts are downright artistic in their warped-ness.) I managed to do the exercises up until Day 3, at which point I did what most other depressed people will probably do with this book — I put it aside to collect dust, and procrastinated, until I conveniently forgot about the exercises I was supposed to be doing.

A month or two later, I noticed that I was happier. My head was clearer. I had fewer doubts and paid less attention to that snide play-by-play announcer in my head. ("But what will they think? You can’t do it, you’ll screw up, stupid…") And I realized that it was this book, "Ten Days to Self-Esteem," that had taught me the methods.

I’m currently eager and happy to be ordering a new copy. Exactly what I need. Yes, after rejecting it, now I’m coming back to it, because I *know* now how good it was for me.

Yes, some of the ideas Dr. Burns presents are "common sense" — but not ALL of them. Your thoughts control your emotions. But — controlling your thoughts! — THAT idea takes a while to really sink in. Do you commonly stop in the middle of a hands-on project or trip to the store, etc., to say to yourself, "I don’t like these thoughts… I’ll think of something happier now"? No! We just let them run on auto-pilot, dictated by outside circumstances or internal dialogue. It takes real effort to step in and say, "STOP. You’re wrong. And I’ll prove it – right now."

Seriously, I know this all seems simple now. But I guarantee you, in a few months you’ll look back at this book and realize you only THOUGHT you got it, at first. (I’d already read several books on these topics, but THIS one was the one that actually drastically helped my depression.) Reading this book is a valuable investment in your future.

Curing yourself of depression is like climbing out of a sinkhole – lots of resistance at first, more and more ground gained as you go, becoming faster and easier. It’s natural to have negative thoughts about this book at first. And I don’t expect you to believe me about the "faster and easier" part until you get there, heh. But you will.

Still have doubts about buying the book? Well, I’ll say it here, so you can see how irrational it sounds outside of your own head: "I don’t want to read this book if it will only help me a little. I’d rather be totally sick until I get a shot at being instantly cured."

In other words, I’m begging you: Buy it. Give it a chance. Make sure you memorize the Distortions list; that alone can save your life. This book WILL help you.

Other books that have helped me tremendously with overcoming depression: "Learned Optimism" by Martin Seligman ; "Living Fearlessly" by Rhonda Britten. Check those out, too. Good luck!

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First Looks: Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It

The Lowest Price we could find is $26.99 $15.77

In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government-driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission-trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature.

With heartfelt urgency and a keen desire for righting wrongs, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis: how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and reductive logic-and instead using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left-Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He plumbs the issues of campaign financing and corporate lobbying, revealing the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts the issues in terms that nonwonks can understand, using real-world analogies and real human stories. And ultimately he calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted-but redeemable-representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended greatness.

While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it. In REPUBLIC, LOST, he not only makes this need palpable and clear-he gives us the practical and intellectual tools to do something about it.

Review:

Lessig explores the concept of a government responsible to the PEOPLE, as the Constitution calls for, and how the current system of campaign finance has warped it so much toward being a government responsible to the CONTRIBUTORS that even the Supreme Court used those words (in the infamous Citizens United corporation-as-a-person decision). The picture he draws of moneyed influence is truly appalling–all the more so as the influence is almost never overt bribery, but often just hints and signals (as in “if you aren’t able to vote for X, I’ll have to contribute $1,000,000 to your opponent”).

Can it be cured? Lessig offers several possible prescriptions, the most serious of which is calling for a Constitutional Convention, and at least while I’m reading the book, I can believe that maybe there’s some hope for our republic. There are many good ideas here, and the arguments are rich and comprehensive.

Read this book if you want to understand what’s really wrong with government, why nothing gets done, why the posturing and pandering grows and grows, and why life is getting steadily worse for the 99% of the population who aren’t rich. And–especially–read it if you want to know what you can do to make things better.

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