Category: Books

Stress Can Help Us Do Well

(p. C3) “We’re bombarded with information about how bad stress is,” says Jeremy Jamieson, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester who specializes in stress. But the conventional view, he says, fails to appreciate the many ways in which physical and psychological tension can help us to perform better.
In research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2010, Prof. Jamieson tested his theory with college students who were preparing to take the Graduate Record Examination, which is used for admission to Ph.D. programs. He invited 60 students to take a practice GRE and collected saliva samples from them beforehand to get baseline measures of their levels of alpha-amylase, a hormonal indicator of stress. He told them that the goal of the study was to examine how the physiological stress response affects performance.
He then gave half the students a brief pep talk to help them rethink their pre-exam nervousness. “People think that feeling anxious while taking a standardized test will make them do poorly,” he told them. “However, recent research suggests that stress doesn’t hurt performance on these tests and can even help performance. People who feel anxious during a test might actually do better…. If you find yourself feeling anxious, simply remind yourself that your stress could be helping you do well.”
It worked: Students who received the mind-set intervention scored higher on the practice exam than those in the control group. Nor could the difference in GRE scores be attributed to differences in ability: Students had been randomly assigned to the two groups and didn’t differ, on average, in their SAT scores or college GPAs.

For the full commentary, see:
KELLY MCGONIGAL. “Stressed Out? Embrace It; To perform under pressure, research finds that welcoming anxiety is more helpful than calming down.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 16, 2015): C3.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 15, 2015, and has the title “Use Stress to Your Advantage; To perform under pressure, research finds that welcoming anxiety is more helpful than calming down.”)

McGonigal’s book, related to her commentary quoted above, is:
McGonigal, Kelly. The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It. New York: Avery, 2015.

The research article mentioned in the passages quoted above, is:
Jamieson, Jeremy P., Wendy Berry Mendes, Erin Blackstock, and Toni Schmader. “Turning the Knots in Your Stomach into Bows: Reappraising Arousal Improves Performance on the GRE.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46, no. 1 (Jan. 2010): 208-12.

John Paul Stapp Thumbed His Nose at the Precautionary Principle

(p. C7) In the early 19th century, a science professor in London named Dionysus Lardner rejected the future of high-speed train travel because, he said, “passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” A contemporary, the famed engineer Thomas Tredgold, agreed, noting “that any general system of conveying passengers . . . [traveling] at a velocity exceeding 10 miles an hour, or thereabouts, is extremely improbable.”
The current land speed for a human being is 763 miles an hour, or thereabouts, thanks in large part to the brilliance, bravery and dedication of a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel named John Paul Stapp, a wonderfully iconoclastic medical doctor, innovator and renegade consumer activist who repeatedly put his own life in peril in search of the line beyond which human survival at speed really was “extremely improbable.”
. . .
Initial tests were carried out on a crash-test dummy named Oscar Eightball, then chimpanzees and pigs. There was plenty of trial and error–the term “Murphy’s Law” was coined during the Gee Whiz experiments–until Stapp couldn’t resist strapping himself into the Gee Whiz to experience firsthand what the cold data could never reveal: what it felt like. On May 5, 1948, for example, he “took a peak deceleration of an astounding twenty-four times the force of gravity,” the author writes. “This was the equivalent of a full stop from 75 miles per hour in just seven feet or, in other words, freeway speed to zero in the length of a very tall man.”
Stapp endured a total of 26 rides on the Gee Whiz over the course of 50 months, measuring an array of physiological factors as well as testing prototype helmets and safety belts. Along the way he suffered a broken wrist, torn rib cartilage, a bruised collarbone, a fractured coccyx, busted capillaries in both eyes and six cracked dental fillings. Colleagues became increasingly concerned for his health every time he staggered, gamely, off the sled, but, according to Mr. Ryan, he never lost his sense of humor, nor did these ordeals stop Dr. Stapp from voluntarily making house calls at night for families stationed on the desolate air base.
. . .
After 29 harrowing trips down the track, Stapp prepared for one grand finale, what he called the “Big Run,” hoping to achieve 600 miles per hour, the speed beyond which many scientists suspected that human survivability was–really, this time–highly improbable. On Dec. 10, 1954, Sonic Wind marked a speed of 639 miles per hour, faster than a .45 caliber bullet shot from a pistol. Film footage of the test shows the sled rocketing past an overhead jet plane that was filming the event. The Big Run temporarily blinded Stapp, and he turned blue for a few days, but the experiment landed him on the cover of Time magazine as the fastest man on earth. The record stood for the next 30 years.

For the full review, see:
PATRICK COOKE. “Faster Than a Speeding Bullet–Really.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 22, 2015): C7.
(Note: first ellipsis, and bracketed word, in original; other ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 21, 2015.)

The book under review, is:
Ryan, Craig. Sonic Wind: The Story of John Paul Stapp and How a Renegade Doctor Became the Fastest Man on Earth. New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 2015.

“You Can Recognize the People Who Live for Others by the Haunted Look on the Faces of the Others”

(p. C21) In her first book, “Strangers Drowning,” Larissa MacFarquhar, a staff writer for The New Yorker, reports . . . about extreme do-gooders, people whose self-sacrifice and ethical commitment are far outside what we think of as the normal range.
. . .
A line from Clive James’s memoir “North Face of Soho” comes to mind. He quotes the journalist Katherine Whitehorn: “You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others.”
. . .
(p. C26) It was Kant who observed that, as the author writes, “it was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage.”
. . .
Charity begins at home, most of us would agree. Not for many of the people in “Strangers Drowning.” In their moral calculus, the goal is to help the most people, even if that means neglecting those close by, even spouses or children.
One of the interesting threads Ms. MacFarquhar picks up is the notion that, for extreme altruists, the best way to help relieve suffering may not be to travel to Africa, let’s say, to open a clinic or help build a dam. It is far more noble and effective — though less morally swashbuckling — simply to find the highest-paying job you can and give away most of your salary. She finds people who live this way.

For the full review, see:
DWIGHT GARNER. “Books of The Times; Samaritans and Other Troublemakers.” The New York Times (Fri., SEPT. 25, 2015): C21 & C26.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date SEPT. 24, 2015, and has the title “Review: ‘Strangers Drowning’ Examines Extreme Do-Gooders.”)

The book under review, is:
MacFarquhar, Larissa. Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help. New York: Penguin Press, 2015.

“Words Can Obscure Rather than Illuminate”

(p. C6) In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell shows how language is a tool of political control, how words can obscure rather than illuminate. Mr. Swaim explains how that applies to Mr. Sanford’s office. At one point, constituents start writing in to ask whether the governor plans to run for president. While Mr. Swaim is expected to answer the letters, he is also expected to deploy a whole lot of “platitudinous observations” and “superfluous phrases” to say, basically, nothing.
“The trick was to use the maximum number of words with the maximum number of legitimate interpretations,” he writes. “Words are useful, but often their meanings are not. Sometimes what you want is feeling rather than meaning, warmth rather than content. And that takes verbiage.”

For the full review, see:
SARAH LYALL. “Pumpting Up Hot Air to the Governor’s Level.” The New York Times (Thurs., JULY 30, 2015): C1 & C6.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date JULY 29, 2015, and has the title “Review: In ‘The Speechwriter,’ Barton Swaim Shares Tales of Working for Mark Sanford.”)

The book under review, is:
Swaim, Barton. The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Experts Are Paid “to Sound Cocksure” Even When They Do Not Know

(p. B1) I think Philip Tetlock’s “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction,” co-written with the journalist Dan Gardner, is the most important book on decision making since Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” (I helped write and edit the Kahneman book but receive no royalties from it.) Prof. Kahneman agrees. “It’s a manual to systematic thinking in the real world,” he told me. “This book shows that under the right conditions regular people are capable of improving their judgment enough to beat the professionals at their own game.”
The book is so powerful because Prof. Tetlock, a psychologist and professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has a remarkable trove of data. He has just concluded the first stage of what he calls the Good Judgment Project, which pitted some 20,000 amateur forecasters against some of the most knowledgeable experts in the world.
The amateurs won–hands down.
. . .
(p. B7) The most careful, curious, open-minded, persistent and self-critical–as measured by a battery of psychological tests–did the best.
. . .
Most experts–like most people–“are too quick to make up their minds and too slow to change them,” he says. And experts are paid not just to be right, but to sound right: cocksure even when the evidence is sparse or ambiguous.

For the full review, see:
JASON ZWEIG. “The Trick to Making Better Forecasts.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 26, 2015): B1 & B7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Sept. 25, 2015.)

The book under review, is:
Tetlock, Philip E., and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Crown, 2015.

Autism Is “Inseparably Tied to Innovation”

(p. 11) “NeuroTribes” is beautifully told, humanizing, important. It has earned its enthusiastic foreword from Oliver Sacks; it has found its place on the shelf next to “Far From the Tree,” Andrew Solomon’s landmark appreciation of neurological differences. At its heart is a plea for the world to make accommodations for those with autism, not the other way around, and for researchers and the public alike to focus on getting them the services they need. They are, to use Temple Grandin’s words, “different, not less.” Better yet, indispensable: inseparably tied to innovation, showing us there are other ways to think and work and live.

For the full review, see:
JENNIFER SENIOR. “‘Skewed Diagnosis; A Science Journalist’s Reading of Medical History Suggests that the ‘Autism Pandemic’ Is an Optical Illusion.” The New York Time Book Review (Sun., AUG. 23, 2015): 11.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date AUG. 17, 2015, and has the title “‘NeuroTribes,’ by Steve Silberman.”)

The book under review, is:
Silberman, Steve. Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. New York: Avery/Penguin Random House, 2015.

Antiquated Education Needs Reform to Encourage Entrepreneurship

(p. 22) . . . “Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era,” by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith — argues that the only way to ensure any kind of future security for our children is to totally upend the education system and rethink what school is for.
“Disrupt” is a buzz word these tech-world gurus use sparingly, but that’s what they mean. Wagner works at Harvard’s Innovation Lab, Dintersmith in venture capital, funding education and tech start-ups. . . . Their argument is this: Public education in America is based on antiquated late-19th-century priorities, on the need “to educate large numbers of immigrants and refugees from farms for basic citizenship and for jobs in a growing industrial economy.” Most of the stuff children are forced to know, and on which our culture’s sense of achievement is based, is unnecessary in the age of Google. But tests and test-makers still run the show, and kids are required to “jump through hoops” and drill and drill to assimilate reams of facts (“content”) instead of learning the skills that will keep them employed and employable for years to come — which is to say, the skills to be entrepreneurs.
. . . .
. . . the assumption that undergirds this whole tract: that every person can — or should — be molded into an entrepreneur.

For the full review, see:
LISA MILLER. “Raise Them Up; A Vision of Education for an Entrepreneurial America.” The New York Time Book Review (Sun., AUG. 23, 2015): 22.
(Note: ellipses in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date AUG. 18, 2015, and has the title “‘Most Likely to Succeed,’ by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith.”)

The book under review, is:
Wagner, Tony, and Ted Dintersmith. Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era. New York: Scribner, 2015.

“A Collective Thumbing of the Nose at” Burma’s Dictatorship

(p. A9) For a young man born in a premodern dictatorship, Nway appeared to have it all. The son of a physician, he grew up in the town of Twantay, Burma, with the comforts typically reserved for the country’s military elite. He dreamed of becoming a doctor and raising a family of his own.
That all changed one night after the abortive elections of 1990, when Nway’s father, a supporter of the democracy movement, was arrested on unnamed charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison. There, he was kept in solitary confinement and endured routine beatings, interrogations and mock suffocations until he died of “complications of the liver” in October 1996.
Nway’s father was gone but not forgotten: His awza, or influence, lives on. Inspired by his father’s legacy, Nway dropped out of medical school and devoted his life to bringing liberal democracy to Burma.
. . .
At one point in the book, Nway is pursued by the “dogs” of Burma’s security forces and happens upon some old acquaintances at a beer den. The friends swallow their fear and summon passersby to help protect him. They sit down, building “a fort around Nway” in “a collective thumbing of the nose at the Special Branch police” until he is able to slip away on a motorbike.
For Ms. Schrank, this anecdote embodies the philosophy that ultimately makes the dissidents’ appeal to the people of Burma successful. In her final chapter she notes that it has now become “cool” to tie across your forehead a strip of cloth with the sign of the NLD and support the party “that only months before had belonged to the underground students and come most often with a one-way ticket to prison.”

For the full review, see:
NICHOLAS DESATNICK. “BOOKSHELF; Freedom Fighters; To understand how Burma’s military junta began coming apart at the seams, you need to meet this band of ‘oddballs and dreamers.'” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., July 31, 2015): A9.
(Note: ellipsis added, italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 30, 2015.)

The book under review, is:
Schrank, Delphine. The Rebel of Rangoon: A Tale of Defiance and Deliverance in Burma. New York: Nation Books, 2015.

Should We Have a Right to the Silence that “Contributes to Creativity and Innovation”?

(p. D5) The benefits of silence are off the books. They are not measured in the gross domestic product, yet the availability of silence surely contributes to creativity and innovation. They do not show up explicitly in social statistics such as level of educational achievement, yet one consumes a great deal of silence in the course of becoming educated.
. . .
Or do we? Silence is now offered as a luxury good. In the business-class lounge at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I heard only the occasional tinkling of a spoon against china. I saw no advertisements on the walls. This silence, more than any other feature, is what makes it feel genuinely luxurious. When you step inside and the automatic doors whoosh shut behind you, the difference is nearly tactile, like slipping out of haircloth into satin. Your brow unfurrows, your neck muscles relax; after 20 minutes you no longer feel exhausted.
Outside, in the peon section, is the usual airport cacophony. . . .
. . .
To engage in inventive thinking during those idle hours spent at an airport requires silence.
. . .
I think we need to sharpen the conceptually murky right to privacy by supplementing it with a right not to be addressed. This would apply not, of course, to those who address me face to face as individuals, but to those who never show their faces, and treat my mind as a resource to be harvested.

For the full commentary, see:
MATTHEW B. CRAWFORD. “OPINION; The Cost of Paying Attention.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., MARCH 8, 2015): 5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date MARCH 7, 2015.)

The commentary quoted above is related to the author’s book:
Crawford, Matthew B. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

Too Much Positive Thinking Creates Relaxed Complacency

(p. D5) In her smart, lucid book, “Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation,” Dr. Oettingen critically re-examines positive thinking and give readers a more nuanced — and useful — understanding of motivation based on solid empirical evidence.
Conventional wisdom has it that dreams are supposed to excite us and inspire us to act. Putting this to the test, Dr. Oettingen recruits a group of undergraduate college students and randomly assigns them to two groups. She instructs the first group to fantasize that the coming week will be a knockout: good grades, great parties and the like; students in the second group are asked to record all their thoughts and daydreams about the coming week, good and bad.
Strikingly, the students who were told to think positively felt far less energized and accomplished than those who were instructed to have a neutral fantasy. Blind optimism, it turns out, does not motivate people; instead, as Dr. Oettingen shows in a series of clever experiments, it creates a sense of relaxation complacency. It is as if in dreaming or fantasizing about something we want, our minds are tricked into believing we have attained the desired goal.
There appears to be a physiological basis for this effect: Studies show that just fantasizing about a wish lowers blood pressure, while thinking of that same wish — and considering not getting it — raises blood pressure. It may feel better to daydream, but it leaves you less energized and less prepared for action.
. . .
In one study, she taught a group of third graders a mental-contrast exercise: They were told to imagine a candy prize they would receive if they finished a language assignment, and then to imagine several of their own behaviors that could prevent them from winning. A second group of students was instructed only to fantasize about winning the prize. The students who did the mental contrast outperformed those who just dreamed.

For the full review, see:
RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D. “Books; Dare to Dream of Falling Short.” The New York Times (Tues., DEC. 23, 2014): D5.
(Note: italics in original; ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date DEC. 22, 2014.)

The book under review, is:
Oettingen, Gabriele. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Current, 2014.

“The Countryside Was Romantic Only to People Who Didn’t Have to Live There”

(p. C4) Mr. Meyer’s motivation for writing his book is simple and straightforward. “Since 2000, a quarter of China’s villages had died out, victims of migration or the redrawing of municipal borders,” as the country urbanizes, he notes early on, adding: “Before it vanished I wanted to experience a life that tourists, foreign students, and journalists (I had been, in order, all three) only viewed in passing.”
“In Manchuria” shifts back and forth among various genres. It is part travelogue, part sociological study, part reportage and part memoir, but it is also a love offering to Mr. Meyer’s wife, Frances, who grew up in the unfortunately named Wasteland, the village that Mr. Meyer chooses as his base near the start of this decade, and to the unborn son she is carrying by the time “In Manchuria” ends.
. . .
After a year in Wasteland, Mr. Meyer was ready to move on, and he now divides his time between Singapore and Pittsburgh, where he teaches nonfiction writing. But his interlude in Manchuria clearly taught him many lessons, perhaps the most fundamental being this: “The countryside was romantic only to people who didn’t have to live there.”

For the full review, see:
LARRY ROHTER. “A Vanishing Way of Life for Peasants in China.” The New York Times Book Review (Mon., MARCH 8, 2015): C4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date MARCH 8, 2015, and has the title “Review: Michael Meyer’s ‘In Manchuria’ Documents a Changing Rural China.”)

The book under review, is:
Meyer, Michael. In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2015.