Bibliofreakblog

Possible Futures by Jude Treder-Wolff

The subtitle to to this book is “Creative Thinking for the Speed of Life”.  So, I was O.K., when the first few chapters talked about how desensitized we are by media, that we are bombarded with ads all day long.  That was just set up, right?

Wrong. 

The whole book read like an undergrad sociology paper proving that we lead hectic lives.  Never did we get the “Creative Thinking” that was promised us from the subtitle.  

Instead, it is mostly filled with quotes from other sources, and the results of studies, neither of which add much because they are not fully delved into.

Perhaps it’s because I read Freakanomics a while back, but I am skeptical of the whole causation thing in many statistics.  Treder-Wolff maintains that children who are exposed to music programs do better in math and science.  Is this really causation or is it correlation?  The parents who encourage their kids to play musical instruments are also those who may be more likely to do things like, spend time helping out with homework.  The same goes with study she sited that middle schoolers who had 2 or more semester-long classes that involved meditation had higher grade point averages.  Unfortunately, because Treder-Wolff only ever skims the surface of these studies, I have no idea if these students chose to participate in the class, or if they were randomly assigned.  Or, perhaps it compared schools that offered it with schools that didn’t offer it.  I have no idea, thus it might as well have been left out of the book, as far as its contribution goes.

I really had high hopes for this book, considering that Jude Treder-Wolff is a social worker, group psychotherapist, and creative arts therapist.  But only once does she ever tell us what she actually does with her patients, when she relays an anecdote from her professional life.  

While, after reading this book, I might have paid more attention to ads and technology, but my future is still pretty much the same.

Yo FTC: I got this book for FREE from the AUTHOR to REVIEW.
Buy Possible Futures: Creative Thinking For The Speed of Life on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything by James Gleick
The Arts and the Creation of Mind by Elliot W Eisner
The Art and Science of Mindfulness: Integrating Mindfulness into Psychology and the Helping Professions by Shauna L Shapiro and Linda E Carlson
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan
Mindfulness and Psychotherapy by Christopher K. Germer PhD, Ronald D Siegel PsyD, and Paul R Fulton EdD (editors)
Creativity Revealed: Discovering the Source of Inspiration by Scott Jeffrey
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter M Senge
The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi
Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi

Other works by Jude Treder-Wolff:

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