The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. Oliver Burkeman - Hardcover

Oliver Burkeman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847678645 ISBN 13: 9781847678645

Publisher: Canongate Books, 2012

Synopsis

The Antidote is a series of journeys among people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. On the surface, they might not seem to share much else: they are philosophers and experimental psychologists, Buddhists and terrorism experts, New Age dreamers and hard-headed business consultants. But what they have in common is a hunch about human psychology: that in our personal lives and the world at large, it's our constant efforts to eliminate the negative - that cause us to feel so anxious, insecure and unhappy. And that there is an alternative negative path to happiness and success that involves embracing the things we spend our lives trying to avoid. Oliver Burkeman's new book is a witty, fascinating and counter-intuitive read that turns decades of self-help advice on its head and forces us to rethink completely our attitudes towards failure, uncertainty and death

About this title

Review:

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2012: The you-can-do-it, life-is-one-big-smiley-face ethos of our contemporary culture has its value: Aggressive positivity helps many triumph over addiction, say, or build previously unimaginable businesses, even win elections and wars. But according to Oliver Burkeman, this relentless pursuit of happiness and success can also make us miserable. Exploring the dark side of the theories put forth by such icons as Norman Vincent Peale and Eckhart Tolle by looking to both ancient philosophy and current business theory, Burkeman--a feature writer for British newspaper The Guardian--offers up the counterintuitive idea that only by embracing and examining failure and loss and unhappiness will we become free of it. So in your next yoga class, try this: breathe deep, think unhappy thoughts--and feel your soul relax. --Sara Nelson

About the Author:

Oliver Burkeman writes for "The Guardian, "where he also has a weekly column, "This Column Will Change Your Life." He is a winner of the Foreign Press Association's Young Journalist of the Year Award and has been short-listed for the Orwell Prize and the What the Papers Say Feature Writer of the Year Award. His work has appeared in "Esquire, Elle, GQ, The Observer," and "The New Republic." He holds an M.A. in social and political sciences from Cambridge University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1847678645
• ISBN 13: 9781847678645
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256