An invigoratingly aggressive and lucidly intelligent attack on the multi-tentacled nonsense monster ... for all the pleasure to be taken in its acidic wit, Smile or Die is deadly serious at its core ... Fine, funny and angry
Daily Mail, Book of the Week
Vindicated at last! All of us misanthropic misery guts, whingers and whiners, Seroxat-refuseniks, "walking ... Read morenimbus clouds"; we grouches, saddos, naysayers, demoralisers and party-poopers - our day has dawned
Guardian
With wit and withering disdain, she shows how upbeat delusion is growing everywhere from the church to the office, and prescribes a dose of realism to stop the rot
New Statesman
This study of American optimism at its most delusional is funny, fascinating and convincing ... a highly entertaining, alarming read, and a ringing clarion call to America to brace up and remember sod's law
Christopher Hart
Sunday Times
It is a theory, compellingly told, that may bring a smile to your lips: the cult of "positive thinking" is all humbug. America, the land where the smiley philosophy was born, is plagued by health care inequality, gun violence, debt and high levels of discontent
Arifa Akbar
Independent
In this droll incisive analysis Ehrenreich argues that undue optimism and fear of bad news can have catastrophic consequences and can even be blamed for the financial crisis
Charlotte Vowden
Daily Express
Barbara Ehrenreich writes good, solid books on what's gone wrong with the world. She's a baby boomer, and what's gone wrong is that the progressive attitudes of the Sixties have turned into a corporate sell-out. She's right. Here she explains how optimism, such an important part of the US psyche, has been used perniciously
William Leith
Evening Standard
Ehrenreich explores the callous flipside of smiley-faced "bright-siding": a pervasive tendency to blame the sick or the unemployed for their own misfortune. Her rallying cry for critical thinking is rousing, and her deliciously sardonic take on human folly will, ironically, put a smile on your face
Benjamin Evans
Sunday Telegraph
Ehrenreich brilliantly shows that there's more than a little wrong with the particular role "positive thinking" has played in recent years ... Intelligent, readable and witty, Smile or Die traces this shallow, hyper-individualised happiness industry through other realms ... Superb
Jo Littler
Guardian
A fascinating, persuasive and, paradoxically, smile-inducing read
Catherine Nixey
The Times
Important, scary and highly entertaining
Carla McKay
Daily Mail
Barbara Ehrenreich's Smile of Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World finishes this list of instructively grumpy non-fiction. Ehrenreich's cancer diagnosis led those around her to tell her she needed to look on the bright side, as it would aid her recovery. She decided instead to delve into the history of positive thinking, and shows how corrosive its influence has become in the US and increasingly in the UK
Hari Kunzru
New Statesman
Revelatory
Colin Waters
Sunday Herald
A provocative dismantling of the Positive Thinking Industry, exposing it for what it is - a complete fraud
Rosie Garland
Metro
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