The Optimist's Telescope by Bina Venkataraman

THE OPTIMIST'S TELESCOPE by Bina Venkataraman begins with a story about not treating a rash and subsequently having to deal with the effects of a tick bite; as the author says, “Smart people make reckless decisions, despite clear warnings.” Venkataraman, currently director of Global Policy Initiatives at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, explores why “sometimes people, businesses, and communities do avert crisis and act for the sake of the future” when others fail to do so. The author encourages long term thinking versus settling for immediate gratification or short-term decisions. She surveys a variety of case studies, including increased flooding and natural disasters sparked by hurricanes and climate change, or financial decisions, or historical events, like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Our students and teachers will appreciate the comfortable, conversational tone of this text. In one example, the author describes how college students react after seeing virtual reality avatars of their older selves. Later, Venkataraman includes a section on war games that refers to their “long history of shaping military history” and of including a “twist” so as to “explore what decisions they [players] would make when caught by surprise and what potential downside or upside consequences could emerge.” THE OPTIMIST'S TELESCOPE, subtitled “Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age,” is a thoughtful text worth perusing; it includes detailed notes and a helpful index.

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

Earlier this month, Simon & Schuster’s Atria imprint released US AGAINST YOU by Fredrik Backman; it is the sequel to Beartown, a book which has generated some lengthy discussions at our high school. The stories in both novels take place at a small town where hockey championships are truly a focus and “kids get raised with the philosophy ‘the stats never lie.’ Either you’re the best, or you’re everyone else.” As the new novel opens, reverberations from a sexual assault by one of the key players are still being felt and there is talk of disbanding the team. “The idiots won’t say it was Kevin who killed Beartown Ice Hockey, they’ll say ‘the scandal’ killed the club. … their real problem isn’t that Kevin raped someone, but that Maya got raped. … Women are always the problem in the men’s world.”

The story is classic Backman (he also wrote A Man Called Ove and others), with much empathy for those with less power and with anger against the bureaucracy: “it is divided in the way that all worlds are divided between people: between those who are listened to, and those you aren’t” OR “sports are only sports until someone who doesn’t give a damn about sports has something to gain from them, then sports suddenly become economics.” Once again, Backman gives readers much to discuss in US AGAINST YOU which received a starred review from Library Journal. 

LOST CONNECTIONS by Johann Hari

LOST CONNECTIONS by Johann Hari was just published this week and deals, as the subtitle notes, with “Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions.”  This was actually a very surprising and quite interesting book to read because the author builds an argument against more commonly accepted causes of depression such as serotonin levels and genetics.  Hari argues instead that depression and anxiety are caused by society and by our increasing disconnections from meaningful work, from each other, from nature, etc.  I found myself wanting to learn more, especially because Hari does not have a medical degree (which he acknowledges), but does speak with authority due to his own experience with depression. He supplements his personal observations with thousands of hours of interviews and numerous studies; these are cited in the wide-ranging notes, in part a reaction to past questions in the UK about his sources. Hari describes in detail, for example, the research regarding loneliness that University of Chicago professor John Cacioppo and others have conducted. Coincidentally, the UK Prime Minister last week appointed a Minister of Loneliness which is estimated to impact over nine million Brits. In 2010, AARP projected the corresponding American figure to be almost 43 million.

In his conclusion, Hari writes, “We need to stop trying to muffle or silence or pathologize that pain. Instead, we need to listen to it, and honor it. It is only … when we can see its true causes, can we begin to overcome it.” Calling LOST CONNECTIONS a “sure-to-be-controversial book,” Kirkus says, “Hari delivers a weighty, well-supported, persuasive argument against treating depression pharmaceutically.”  I can think of several groups who will be curious to read more about his claims: our Social Work Department, Health Services, various teachers, and, of course, students and their parents.