Commute audiobook. Narrator was fine. Book was perfect level of difficulty for a commute audiobook (moderately complex, adequately engaging).

In this book Ehrenreich explores the the invasion of American preoccupation with positive thinking into various aspects of our lives: corporate culture, church, medical diagnosis and treatment, motivational speaking as big business, social stratification, psychology as an academic field.

Why not think positively? It might help! It certainly can't hurt, right?

Wrong, Ehrenreich says. The results of all this forced positivity are mostly -- perhaps entirely -- damaging. Through the lens of positive thinking, everything is good for us and we should be grateful it's happened to us. Cancer patients (pardon, "survivors" or "fighters" who are "battling" cancer) aren't supposed to be angry or sad for even a moment. Employees shouldn't be angry or sad about the erosion of employee-friendly labor policies or job termination. If we think enough positive thoughts, good things will come to us because "God wants to give us nice things."

But denying negative emotions/negative situations doesn't help us in the long run. Sometimes shitty things happen for no reason, and we need to acknowledge that. Sometimes shitty things happen for systematic reasons (e.g. the wealth gap, poverty, wage inequality) and failing to acknowledge that maintains the status quo. All this positive thinking -- "if I think positive thoughts hard enough, good things will happen to me" -- has the corollary that if good things DON'T happen to me, it must be my fault because I didn't think positively enough. It couldn't possibly be due to living in an unfair, chaotic world in a society structured to keep the little guys down. Positive thinking ends up a key component of the modern conception of rugged American individualism. Notably, the major figures of the positive thinking movement are, Ehrenreich points out, Republicans, the party which would gut the social safety net and constantly extols the hard work of individuals without reference to systematic factors that helped the successful achieve their success.