Lee Cooper

Short, Concise, Powerful

Reviewed: 12-16-24

Excellent material, excellent delivery. Highly recommend to anyone on the fence, especially considering how short and accessible it is.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Good Book, Bad Politics

Reviewed: 09-07-24

A very digestible book presenting the history of print media marred by extremely one-sided politics.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Buddhism Repackaged as Western Therapy

Reviewed: 06-16-24

It's basically secular Western Buddhism repackaged as a therapy framework and self-help routine.

I'd argue it's one of the best frameworks I've seen in that vein, and does the best job of explaining both mindfulness and non-self in an understandable and useable way where all other books fall severely short.

If you're looking for groundbreaking Western scientific advancements, this book isn't that.

But this book is the single best distillation of all the most useful parts of Buddhism for therapy / self-help applications WITHOUT any of the traditional religious dogma or vague woo-woo New Age- nonsense.

I don't recommend therapy books easily since most of them are just psychobabble, New Age nonsense, or just plain useless. This is one of the few I'd recommend.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Good in theory

Reviewed: 03-04-24

Feels like it's written by a Communications academic who understands good ideas in theory rather than in practice.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Avoid

Reviewed: 02-11-24

Overtly politically biased, runs against multiple types of scientific consensus in many fields, and provides guided meditations that would normally be recommended against or even labeled as "negative psychology." Specifically employs a form of hypnosis that could encourage the formation of multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia. Avoid.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

Still Know Little About Marie Laveau

Reviewed: 01-14-24

Author is stuck in her own head, and the book is scattered and all over the place.

Author is clearly an enthusiastic fan girl of Marie Laveau, which is good, but means the author spends a significant amount of time just correcting misconceptions about Marie Laveau rather than telling the biography / story of Laveau from beginning to end.

Correcting misconceptions might've helped me more if I knew anything / had any misconceptions about Laveau to begin with. But I didn't know anything prior to reading this book and was hoping this would be an introduction to Laveau. Now I still basically know as little about Laveau as when I began the book. Felt like a big waste of time.

The first half of the book is a scattered mess of details, anecdotes, and corrections of misconceptions of Laveau. The back half of the book focuses on various conjure practices and rituals you can use to connect with Laveau, if that's valuable to you.

Also, expect a light amount of anti-white people rhetoric. (In case you're wondering, I'm biracial and I've seen both ends of this kind of racism.)

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Fun Anecdotes to Prove Sham Economics

Reviewed: 08-15-23

Fun and interesting read. But otherwise misleading and a waste of time.

Unfortunately, the author either ignorantly or deliberately misunderstands traditional economics' to be entirely summed up by Rational Choice Theory, interprets that theory in the narrowest and most oversimplified way, then pretends to "disprove" his strawman interpretation of that theory through a series of minor anecdotes.

At least he does it in a fairly charming and entertaining way which makes this book a fun read.

But to anyone who's studied Classical, French, Austrian, Chicago, or Virginia schools of economics, it's pretty clear he has no idea what traditional economics believes and lacks any solid evidence to disprove it. He's honestly a disgrace to any real Behavioral Economists, who deserve a better reputation than this book would give them.

Traditional schools of economics tend to believe that value is subjective to each person, and you can't measure the value of something to someone until they make a visible / measurable tradeoff that indicates how they valued that thing relative to something else. In other words, the traditional premise is that only the people can evaluate things for themselves in their own lives, and Economists can only hope to measure / approximate that subjective value by looking at what people chose to pay / trade for it.

Ariely completely misses the boat by arguing that traditional economics presumes that people make perfectly rational, logical, accurate, cold calculations of an object's objective value (which was never the premise of traditional economics in the first place, and no one with a brain ever would've believed that premise anyways). But he frames himself as having cleverly discovered that people are actually imperfect and irrational because they are affected by random cognitive biases that cause them to measure the value of things incorrectly and inaccurately according to his calculations. In other words, his basic premise is that people are wrong at figuring out what something is worth to them, while Behavioral Economists can measure the value of things correctly and objectively.

Therefore he argues in favor of more government intervention to help people make "better" decisions as according to Behavioral Economists like himself (as opposed to the people themselves). This is the insidious, anti-human, pro-authoritarian argument that armchair Economists love to feel clever about and slanted journalists love to cover, but never holds water among actual Economists, Economic Historians, Political Scientists, International Relations scholars, entrepreneurs, and business operators.

Instead, this smells like a classic case of an academic attempting to make a name for himself by fallaciously strawmanning the orthodox opinion and pretending to supplant it with his own "new and improved" school of thought that he founded himself. This enables him to brand himself as an expert so he can sell popular books to mainstream consumers who don't know anything about economics, offer keynotes and speaker engagements at high-profile business events, and shill for news media outlets that need a popular "expert" to "scientifically support" their preferred opinion on public policy. This kind of mercenary, PhD-for-hire business is unfortunately common for academics who failed to make a name for themselves discovering anything of actual substance in Academia, so they pivot into selling / shilling their authority to private interests in the public sphere instead. So take his economics with a bowl of salt.

Overall: Fun read, bad economics.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

Less method and more hippie self-help

Reviewed: 05-26-23

Less methodology, actionable next steps, and real health advice than expected. More hippie self-help, hype, and random anecdotes than needed.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Good storytelling

Reviewed: 05-23-23

Good storytelling, lacks structure, lacks a little bit more science, and could use more practical advice. Still good overall.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Eye Opening Book

Reviewed: 05-21-23

I went into this book with no favoritism toward nor against pro-vaccination or anti-vaccination, just completely new to the debate.

This really opened my eyes to the anti-vaccination's side—which is usually just stereotyped as a fringe conspiracy theory—as having well-reasoned, logical, rational analysis and actual evidence.

I encourage you to read this for yourself and come to your own conclusions.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!