Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Underminded America

Americans are a positive people -- cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat. This is our reputation as well as our self-image. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude, and exposes the downside of irrational optimism.