Bright Sided

I have read other books by Barbara Ehrenreich. I read Nickled and Dimed and Bait and Switch. So when I picked up Bright-Sided; How The Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America I thought I was in for a good, science and fact filled read. Unfortunately about half the book was a rambling discourse and not based on science or fact at all. The first chapter was about the author's experience with breast cancer. She was told to imagine and draw the immune  cells destroying the cancer cells. The author has a degree in chemistry and did her thesis on immune cells so she knows the immune cells don't have much to do with the cancer cells anyway. As a patient she was encouraged to think positive and to set aside the anger and fear and other less than positive feelings. She talks about the banking industry and the mortgage companies who talked positive even though the refusal to think negative contributed to the mortgage crisis a few years ago. She says there isn't a lot of read data to support the push for optimism. She talks about the mega churches who proclaim that God wants you to become rich. In the end she suggests that realism is better for the survival of the species than positive thinking. She asked that all complainers keep complaining and to turn up the volume.