User Profile

sdogood

sdogood@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 12 months ago

I write about the commercialization of life in the west and how it impairs the quest for a sustainable culture and how this can be overcome. A representative publication is "Sustainability: From Excess to Aesthetics", which is available here: link.springer.com/article/10.5210/bsi.v19i0.2789

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Lyle Grant, Annabel Ness Evans: Principles of behavior analysis (Paperback, 1994, HarperCollins College Publishers) 5 stars

Review of 'Principles of behavior analysis' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Well I wrote this book so my five-star rating should get a severe disinterestedness deduction. I enjoyed writing the text, which for a brief time at least gave me an overview of work in my field of behavior analysis. The experience left me with the feeling that many people in my field were doing excellent work, improving the education and training of so many from the severely disabled to advanced graduate students. Behavior analysis continues to be an active area of research and theory and one of the most promising initiatives in the history of science. We behavior analysts live in interesting times.

Henry David Thoreau: Walden (1995) 4 stars

Walden (; first published in 1854 as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is a …

Review of 'Walden' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Thoreau chose to live deliberately and to observe life from a fresh perspective, as though no one had ever done so before. The result was a high quality of intimate thought, written for both the reader's challenge and enjoyment. In order to get the most from Walden, it is necessary to slow down and read deliberately. Thoreau carefully studied varied aspects of the natural world, reminding us how interesting everything is and how each moment of our lives can be full of discovery and wonder.

D. Paul Schafer: Revolution Or Renaissance Making The Transition From An Economic Age To A Cultural Age (2008, University of Ottawa Press) 3 stars

Review of 'Revolution Or Renaissance Making The Transition From An Economic Age To A Cultural Age' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This book is divided into two sections, the age of economics and the age of culture. Schafer, who was originally an economic historian, covers the age of economics with insightful scholarship, concluding that the age has provided humankind with important advances in productivity, science and technology. The age has also however had devastatingly harmful environmental consequences, including global warming, depletion of natural resources and overpopulation. For Shafer, the solution is to end the age of economics and begin an age of culture, a new Renaissance, which would focus human activity on the broadly defined arts, sports, and other fulfilling noneconomic activities. Schafer's book is a worthwhile theoretical contribution to a growing literature that advocates cessation of economic growth in favor of human development in noneconomic realms. A chapter or two including practical ideas for advancing a cultural Renaissance would make this book more useful.

Sullivan, Robert: How not to get rich, or why being bad off isn't so bad (2005, Bloomsbury) 4 stars

Review of "How not to get rich, or why being bad off isn't so bad" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This is a clever satire of the how to get rich books that popped up when I tried to search for this one. A very few people, if any, who read this will really be searching for ways not to become wealthy, but most others who pick it up without this intention will discover, as the title says, why being bad off isn't so bad, a modern revival of Thoreau's basic message. The author is witty and, like many people who are not forcefully goal-directed, is typically in no hurry to get to the point, another endearing quality of those not seeking to become rich. You won't reach wealthdom reading this book, but you may well enjoy the ride to wherever you end up.

Tibor Scitovsky: The joyless economy (1992, Oxford University Press) 5 stars

Review of 'The joyless economy' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is a remarkable book in which Scitovsky draws on his knowledge of economics, the arts, and psychology in the form of Berlyne's experimental aesthetics. He has many provocative and original insights. His perspective remains current, especially insofar as they apply to achieving satisfaction through the arts, enjoying novelty, consumerism, resource depletion and the imperative to discover a sustainable way of life.

Sharon Beder: Noses to the grindstone (2000, Zed Books) 3 stars

Review of 'Noses to the grindstone' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This is an interesting book but it has some oversights. Sharon Beder, the author, does a thorough job of examining the background and harmful effects of the work ethic. The work ethic is seen as a tool of capitalism used to exploit workers, legitimize inequality, and rob people of their identity as something other than workers. These views are well supported and have merit, but some interesting facets of the work ethic, covered by Kerr and Scitovsky, are omitted. For example, the work ethic draws much of its strength from altruistic motives to help other people, as typified for example by parents who mistakenly overwork to try to give their children a better life, when the children would be better off spending quality time with the parents. A more nuanced approach that covered the way in which utilitarian motives support the work ethic would have led the way to further …

Staffan Burenstam Linder: The harried leisure class. (1971, Columbia University Press) 5 stars

Review of 'The harried leisure class.' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

How we spend our time is who we are. The author's main premise is that rising productivity has increased "yield on time", how economically valuable our time is, which has in turn created time scarcity, time poverty, and even an entire culture of time famine. These effects are documented with examples and their implications are explored. At one point Linder concedes that the only way out of the problem is to leave the economic realm and move to a lifestyle or a culture in which consumption is centered on noneconomic goods. These can include cultural pleasures, conversation, friendship, nature, etc., provided we take care that these are noneconomic or only incidentally economic. What is interesting here is that many of the observations of Thoreau and others who have sought to depart from economically defined reward systems assume quantitative form in this book.

Anders Hayden: Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet (Paperback, 2000, Zed Books) 4 stars

Review of 'Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The author provides excellent coverage of the theoretical and practical issues in effecting work time reduction, working less than the typical 40-hour week. For decades much of the work we do has been an unsustainable drain on finite nonrenewable resources but it continues due to corporate inertia and lack of time people have to contemplate a better way.

Eight years ago David Beck was knocked unconscious and left for dead, and his wife …

Review of 'Tell no one' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Harlan Coben is a master of this genre. Although this book is enjoyable, it is not quite as good as some of this other ones. The idea that a couple who love each other more than anything would completely separate from one another for years, yet yearn for each other, makes for a great mystery. However, the reason for such a separation has to be ultimately very compelling, and I don't think the author pulled that difficult task off. It is nonetheless a worthy page-turner.

Laren Stover: Bohemian manifesto (2004, Bulfinch Press) 5 stars

Review of 'Bohemian manifesto' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Laren Stover is a dazzling writer. At the outset she tells us she is a Bohemian, but this doesn't deter her from seeing the humor in Bohemians and their sometimes wildly unsuccessful experiments in living. In the end though, the allure of the Bohemian world and its alternative perspective is opened for readers, possibly to sample themselves. The illustrations also enrich the book.

Curtis Sittenfeld: American Wife (Hardcover, 2008, Random House) 4 stars

A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice Lindgren has no idea that …

Review of 'American Wife' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The main character in the book is fully and sympathetically portrayed so realistically that it seems you could touch her. She is surrounded by a husband and other people who are far from her soul mates, but people she has accepted out of affection, necessity and circumstance. Because she is so reticent, Laura Bush is likely to remain opaque forever. This is an intriguing and well considered hypothesis about her interior life.

Susan Jacoby: The age of American unreason (Hardcover, 2008, Pantheon Books) 4 stars

From the Publisher: A cultural history of the last forty years, The Age of American …

Review of 'The age of American unreason' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This books is an excellent survey of anti-intellectualism in America. Jacoby traces the roots of this aspect of American culture and illustrates how it continues to be perpetuated. It is especially frightening that ignorance, illogic and emotionalism have managed to be elevated to virtues in popular culture. Effective self-governance in a democracy depends on an educated population capable of making logical decisions based on dispassionate evaluations of evidence, so the anti-rational trends Jacoby describes threaten the basic foundations of the country.

Bill McKibben: Deep Economy 4 stars

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future is a non-fiction work by …

Review of 'Deep Economy' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is a wonderful book. McKibben is a superb writer. He questions the logic and purpose of the growth economy and offers a superior set of ideals to seek instead. The book is in the tradition of Thoreau, but updated and more attuned to the pragmatic details of changing the course of our culture from an unsustainable path to one that is durable, authentic and centered on human well being.

Paul L. Wachtel: The Poverty of Affluence (Paperback, 1989, New Society Pub) 4 stars

Review of 'The Poverty of Affluence' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

An insightful analysis of the psychological poverty of modern materialism. We have developed a culture that is good at extracting natural resources and building material wealth, but psychological wealth has not kept pace. Wachtel is especialy impressive because although his own views are psychodynamic, he is also able to draw upon other perspectives, both in psychology and economics, to make his case