An articulate, highly informative, and enjoyable puppy-parenting primer.
A guide for compassionately helping puppies, rescue dogs, and older traumatized canines live their best lives, based upon neuroscience and strategies developed for aiding at-risk children.
At the time the highly respected parenting guide The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family (2007), coauthored by Sunshine, was about to be published, the author adopted a fragile puppy. The tiny brown pup, part of a litter born behind a gas station, was but several weeks old; the puppy had been separated from her mother and siblings too early to learn any rules of the jungle and was painfully frightened, dehydrated, and loaded with worms. After dealing with the medical issues, it was time to teach Hazel, as the increasingly wild brown ball of fluff came to be called, how to become a good canine citizen. But, as Sunshine writes, “Puppy training guides failed me. Nothing in their pages explained what to do with a scrambling, out-of-control bundle of teeth and claws.” And then she was struck by a thought that has resulted in this lucid and informative volume: Perhaps the pages of The Connected Child held valuable insights for raising a puppy. (Like pre- and non-verbal children, dogs communicate their needs to anyone who pays close attention.) Taking a calm, nonjudgmental approach to understanding Hazel’s behavior in terms of her underlying neurological and emotional needs—much as she would with at-risk children—the author began rewarding the pup for “good” behavior and giving her “do-overs” for her mistakes. Sunshine’s guide adopts the approach of “therapeutic parenting,” in which the pup is given the benefit of the doubt. Despite copious neurological and biological discussions, the text is easily understandable—it’s an approachable compendium of scientific research and fascinating “reflections from the field” case studies from like-minded experts. A bonus is the inclusion of surprising and intriguing behavioral tidbits, such as the small-scale study conducted in a rescue facility showing that dogs who raised their inner eyebrows were adopted more quickly. The techniques advocated here are designed to offer puppies (and difficult older dogs) patient, compassionate instruction that relieves their anxiety and leads to close bonding between canine and human.
An articulate, highly informative, and enjoyable puppy-parenting primer.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780757324956
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Health Communications Inc.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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