my mind on books

free kindle ebook (US) 'The 5-Minute Habit Breaker' http://t.co/UoOofHET4s via @amazon

— Debbie A Foster (@mymindonbooks) August 19, 2013

When: The Art of Perfect Timing by Stuart Albert (Jossey-Bass, 2013)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

An elegant and counterintuitive guide to achieving perfect timing
Timing is everything. Whether we are making strategic business decisions or the smallest personal choice, we must decide not only what to do, but when to do it. Act too early—or too late—and the results can be disastrous. Based on a 20-year investigation into more than 2,000 timing issues and errors, When presents a single and practical approach for dealing with timing in life and business. Good timing, Albert argues, is not just a matter of luck, intuition, or past experience—all of which may be unreliable—but a skill. He describes that skill and details the tools and methods needed to conduct a successful timing analysis.

• The book is the first to offer an efficient and comprehensive way to think through any timing issue
• Filled with dozens of lively stories illustrating good and bad timing in all walks of life—business, warfare, medicine, sports, entertainment and the arts
• Written by Stuart Albert, one of the foremost timing experts in the world and developer of the first practical, research-based method for turning the skill of timing into a competitive advantage

Engaging and counterintuitive, When will show everyone, regardless of the work they do, or the life they live, that “it’s all in the timing.”

See also:
When – excerpt (pdf of Chapter 1) from publisher’s website

One of Amazon’s Best Books of the Month: Nonfiction for August:

Falling Into the Fire: A Psychiatrist’s Encounters with the Mind in Crisis by Christine Montross (Penguin, 2013)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

Falling Into the Fire is psychiatrist Christine Montross’s thoughtful investigation of the gripping patient encounters that have challenged and deepened her practice. The majority of the patients Montross treats in Falling Into the Fire are seen in the locked inpatient wards of a psychiatric hospital; all are in moments of profound crisis. We meet a young woman who habitually commits self-injury, having ingested light bulbs, a box of nails, and a steak knife, among other objects. Her repeated visits to the hospital incite the frustration of the staff, leading Montross to examine how emotion can interfere with proper care. A recent college graduate, dressed in a tunic and declaring that love emanates from everything around him, is brought to the ER by his concerned girlfriend. Is it ecstasy or psychosis? What legal ability do doctors have to hospitalize—and sometimes medicate—a patient against his will? A new mother is admitted with incessant visions of harming her child. Is she psychotic and a danger or does she suffer from obsessive thoughts? Her course of treatment—and her child’s future—depends upon whether she receives the correct diagnosis.

Each case study presents its own line of inquiry, leading Montross to seek relevant psychiatric knowledge from diverse sources. A doctor of uncommon curiosity and compassion, Montross discovers lessons in medieval dancing plagues, in leading forensic and neurological research, and in moments from her own life. Beautifully written, deeply felt, Falling Into the Fire brings us inside the doctor’s mind, illuminating the grave human costs of mental illness as well as the challenges of diagnosis and treatment.

Throughout, Montross confronts the larger question of psychiatry: What is to be done when a patient’s experiences cannot be accounted for, or helped, by what contemporary medicine knows about the brain? When all else fails, Montross finds, what remains is the capacity to abide, to sit with the desperate in their darkest moments. At once rigorous and meditative, Falling Into the Fire is an intimate portrait of psychiatry, allowing the reader to witness the humanity of the practice and the enduring mysteries of the mind.

Google Books preview:

See also: Author’s website

You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself by David McRaney (Gotham, 2013)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

The author of the bestselling You Are Not So Smart shares more discoveries about self-delusion and irrational thinking, and gives readers a fighting chance at outsmarting their not-so-smart brains

David McRaney’s first book, You Are Not So Smart, evolved from his wildly popular blog of the same name. A mix of popular psychology and trivia, McRaney’s insights have struck a chord with thousands, and his blog—and now podcasts and videos—have become an Internet phenomenon.

Like You Are Not So Smart, You Are Now Less Dumb is grounded in the idea that we all believe ourselves to be objective observers of reality—except we’re not. But that’s okay, because our delusions keep us sane. Expanding on this premise, McRaney provides eye-opening analyses of fifteen more ways we fool ourselves every day, including:

• The Misattribution of Arousal (Environmental factors have a greater effect on our emotional arousal than the person right in front of us)
• Sunk Cost Fallacy (We will engage in something we don’t enjoy just to make the time or money already invested “worth it”)
• Deindividuation (Despite our best intentions, we practically disappear when subsumed by a mob mentality)

McRaney also reveals the true price of happiness, why Benjamin Franklin was such a badass, and how to avoid falling for our own lies. This smart and highly entertaining book will be wowing readers for years to come.

Google Books preview:

See also: Author’s blog (You Are Not So Smart)

The Joy of Pain: Schadenfreude and the Dark Side of Human Nature by Richard H. Smith (Oxford University Press, USA, 2013)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

Few people will easily admit to taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others. But who doesn’t enjoy it when an arrogant but untalented contestant is humiliated on American Idol, or when the embarrassing vice of a self-righteous politician is exposed, or even when an envied friend suffers a small setback? The truth is that joy in someone else’s pain-known by the German word schadenfreude–permeates our society.

In The Joy of Pain, psychologist Richard Smith, one of the world’s foremost authorities on envy and shame, sheds much light on a feeling we dare not admit. Smith argues that schadenfreude is a natural human emotion, one worth taking a closer look at, as it reveals much about who we are as human beings. We have a passion for justice. Sometimes, schadenfreude can feel like getting one’s revenge, when the suffering person has previously harmed us. But most of us are also motivated to feel good about ourselves, Smith notes, and look for ways to maintain a positive sense of self. One common way to do this is to compare ourselves to others and find areas where we are better. Similarly, the downfall of others–especially when they have seemed superior to us–can lead to a boost in our self-esteem, a lessening of feelings of inferiority. This is often at the root of schadenfreude. As the author points out, most instances of schadenfreude are harmless, on par with the pleasures of light gossip. Yet we must also be mindful that envy can motivate, without full awareness, the engineering of the misfortune we delight in. And envy-induced aggression can take us into dark territory indeed, as Smith shows as he examines the role of envy and schadenfreude in the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

Filled with engaging examples of schadenfreude, from popular reality shows to the Duke-Kentucky basketball rivalry, The Joy of Pain provides an intriguing glimpse into a hidden corner of the human psyche.