DWD's Reviews

  Published in 2017 by Random House Audio. Read by P.J. Ochlan. Duration: 4 hours, 21 minutes. Unabridged. Alan Jacobs is a professor and expert on the human mind. This short work is essentially a treatise on how to keep an open mind and not get stuck in a mental rut - meaning not simply rejecting new ideas out of hand. He also addresses the concept of how to reach out to people to make new ideas more appealing to them. Alan Jacobs Jacobs fills the book with a lot of anecdotes - they were usually interesting in and of themselves, but not particularly enlightening. For me the last part of that sentence pretty much describes the book. It was pleasant enough but it really didn't teach me anything and a lot of the time I was wondering where the author was going with yet another story. I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  HOW to THINK: A SURVIVAL GUIDE for a WORLD at ODDS by Alan Jacobs.

Published in 2016 by HarperAudio. Read by Roger Wayne. Duration: 5 hours, 17 minutes. Unabridged. Two things before we start: 1) I am not a reader of self-help books - I can't think of the last one I read.  The author, Mark Manson 2) You simply cannot read this book if coarse language bothers you. I will follow the style of this book in this review. Manson makes many points in the book, but two stuck out to me. He posits that many people are unhappy because they simply try to focus on too many things and can't do any of them well. In short, he says that you have to stop giving a f*ck about everything and figure out the very few things that you actually give a f*ck about and make them your priority. One of his other points is similar, but worthy of mention. He points out that no matter where you go, there's a 500 pound bag of sh*t problems waiting for you. If you move to a new city, there will be a 500 pound bag of sh*t of problems. If you quit your job because...

"Focus" lacks focus Published in 2013 by HarperCollins. Read by the author, Daniel Goleman. Duration: 8 hours, 8 minutes. Unabridged Dr. Daniel Goleman is best known as the author of Emotional Intelligence . In many ways this book is less of a book about the importance of focus and more of a sequel to Emotional Intelligence . It is also a anti-global warming manifesto, an education reform book, a self-help book for business leaders who want to be the real leaders in their offices and there is a little bit about how people are able to focus their attentions a bit more and get better results. That, of course, is the problem with the book called Focus . The primary topic should be the ability of people to focus and some hints to help you focus better. The book starts out with exactly this...well, focus. We learn how a store detective is able to focus on a crowded room full of bustling and sort out the normal shopping behaviors from the actions of a shoplifter. Golem...

Published by  Telemachus Press, LLC (March 19, 2012) Quest, Inc. features an all-star cast of self-improvement experts who have joined together to offer the complete  package for those seeking self-improvement. There is an expert on fitness, a psychotherapist with a focus on relationships, a financial expert, a therapist who deals with addictions and a body language and image consultant. The book starts out with Robert Rivera, the fitness expert, He has become fat and completely unmotivated. He has lost his home and his wife and fails at an attempt to kill himself. The other four experts know him from a presidential commission that they all served on and they re-unite to save Rivera and their own reputations (his failure throws doubt on all of their advice). Once Rivera has his life back on track (roughly the first half of the book), the five of them start Quest, Inc. and promote themselves as the Worlds #1 Personal Development Agency. The rest of the book features a r...

Are you sure you saw what you think you saw? In a fascinating, humorous and insightful book Chabris and Simons point to the research that shows that you really don't know what you think you know. Why not? Because you're simply not paying attention. Or, maybe you've convinced yourself that they way you think it happened is the way it happened. Or, maybe you are just a horrible judge of your own capabilities. Whichever the cause, we really don't know what we think we know. Chabris and Simons look at research (such as their famous "gorilla" experiment - click here to see it on youtube ), well known events (such as the infamous Neil Reed/Bobby Knight "choking" incident), popular fallacies (such as eyewitnesses being infallible and subliminal messages in movies and TV), continuity errors in movies (and real life experiments that explain why we don't notice them in movies) and faulty conclusions that are promoted by other authors (they are especi...