A few comments on this book:To complainers everywhere:
Turn up the volume!
Julian Baggini / Financial Times: "Smile or Die, is a measured and informed attack on the “cult of positive thinking” that first infected the US and then spread to the rest of the world world. ... The real value of Ehrenreich’s book is that it shows that the choice is not between being positive or negative. The issue, according to Ehrenreich, is whether we start with the facts or with our attitudes."
Alyssa McDonald / New Statesman: "...it is hard to fault the ideas in Smile or Die. The alternative that Ehrenreich offers to positive thinking's strange mixture of self-absorption, personal responsibility and blind acceptance of the status quo isn't revolutionary: all she suggests is realism, and a little critical thinking. But, coming after the circus of mindless positivity that she documents, it is as welcome as a cool drink of water."
Christopher Hitchens: "Unless you keep on saying that you believe in fairies, Tinker Bell will check out, and what’s more, her sad demise will be your fault! Barbara Ehrenreich scores again for the independent-minded in resisting this drool and all those who wallow in it."
(this comment has so many copies on the Web that I can't find where it originally was published - I really would like to read it in full)Lucy Ellmann / The Guardian: "Vindicated at last! All of us misanthropic misery guts, whingers and whiners, Seroxat-refuseniks, "walking nimbus clouds"; we grouches, saddos, naysayers, demoralisers and party-poopers – our day has dawned."
The Table of Contents looks like this:
Introduction 1
Smile or Die: The Bright Side of Cancer 15
The Years of Magical Thinking 45
The Dark Roots of American Optimism 74
Motivating Business and the Business of Motivation 97
God Wants You to Be Rich 123
Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness 147
How Positive Thinking Destroyed the Economy 177
Postscript on Post-Positive Thinking 195
Notes 207
Acknowledgments 223
Index 227
And here are a few quotes:
The promotion of positive thinking has become a minor industry in its own right, producing an endless flow of books, DVDs, and other products; providing employment for tens of thousands of “life coaches,” “executive coaches,” and motivational speakers, as well as for the growing cadre of professional psychologists who seek to train them. No doubt the growing financial insecurity of the middle class contributes to the demand for these products and services, but I hesitate to attribute the commercial success of positive thinking to any particular economic trend or twist of the business cycle. America has historically offered space for all sorts of sects, cults, faith healers, and purveyors of snake oil, and those that are profitable, like positive thinking, tend to flourish. (p. 9)
So the seeker who embraces positive theology finds him- or herself in a seamless, self-enclosed world, stretching from workplace to mall to corporate-style church. Everywhere, he or she hears the same message - that you can have all that stuff in the mall, as well as the beautiful house and car, if only you believe that you can. But always, in a hissed undertone, there is the darker message that if you don't have all that you want, if you feel sick, discouraged, or defeated, you have only yourself to blame. (p. 146)
Then things began to go wrong, which is not in itself unusual but was a possibility excluded by America’s official belief that things are good and getting better. There was the dot-com bust that began a few months after Clinton’s declaration of unprecedented prosperity in his final State of the Union address, then the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Furthermore, things began to go wrong in a way that suggested that positive thinking might not guarantee success after all, that it might in fact dim our ability to fend off real threats. In her remarkable book, Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst, sociologist Karen Cerulo recounts a number of ways that the habit of positive thinking, or what she calls optimistic bias, undermined preparedness and invited disaster. (p. 10)
There seems to be an evolutionary paradox at work here: human survival in the face of multiple threats depended on our ability to live in groups, but the imperative of of maintaining group cohesion can sometimes override realism and common sense, making us hesitate to challenge the consensus or be the bearer of bad news. (pp. 196-197)
Yay! So there is room for a cranky, skeptical spoil-sport, too... 
. And then when they come back, they can 
