Some self-help and instructional books

This is a Book Week guest post from young entrepreneur, Alex d’Esterre.

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

So here it is, the first of two reviews for Holiday Learning in conjunction with WAHM-BAM’s Book Week. As you can probably guess from the title the first review shall be on the widely acclaimed, number one best-selling book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.

I have been studying the book for quite some time, giving it a lot of forethought and digesting each chapter in manageable chunks, all being said the book itself runs along the border between self-help and general reference.

The book starts with a brief introduction exploring the general issues of intelligence and the power of emotions and Goleman looks at fundamental new discoveries in brain anatomy and architecture. Moving on through the book the reader finds themselves looking at the nature of Emotional Intelligence. This is being able to understand oneself as well as others, being able to control emotions (or in some cases not) and, drawing on Aristotle’s phrase from the Nicomachean Ethics, being able to have the right degree of emotion at the right time for the right reason for the right duration.

In the later stages of the book Daniel Goleman incorporates the general ideas of Emotional Intelligence into the broader context of living, stating that one’s emotional intelligence is in fact a more critical factor than pure computational intelligence at being successful in many important parts of life – from personal relationships to professional relationships. Moving on Goleman examines developmental issues, leading to the final section of the book exploring what happens when such development goes wrong.

Goleman’s observations have been that my generation (children born from the 1990s onwards) seem to be increasingly depressed, despondent, violent and uncontrollable. Now as much as that fact cannot be ruled out due to ever rising statistics on government health sites, the data is undoubtedly subject to scrutiny due to the different parameters in which the evidence is collected and analysed thus conclusions cannot be compared as a whole. A wise man once told me to never theorise before you have data. Invariably, you end up twisting facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. On the whole however Daniel Goleman’s theories do suit his facts and make very interesting reading.

To sum it up, overall, this book presents interesting ideas which explore the very fabric of nature and how we perceive ourselves and others. The idea of Emotional Intelligence is fairly new to us all still and will no doubt be adapted and revised in the coming years by various educational entities, researchers, economists and such like. Goleman has opened a can of worms which I believe will just be the beginning on this subject. However, as a nation if we are to tackle this problem we need data, data, data as we cannot build bricks without clay.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

The second book review is Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & co-author Stephen J. Dubner.

Like the age old saying “you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover” I was dazzled by picking up the book and reading the first few pages.

I’ve firstly got to say there’s nothing more satisfying than picking up a newly bought book and reminiscing in the echo of the crisp newly bound pages, nothing makes it even more of an experience to find out that your new tale, or in this case modern guide, has contents that are equally as pleasing.

The book overall captures you to read another page, until you find out you’ve just read the whole book back to back. I found it illuminating to see how economists look beyond correlations to seek causation thus basing their results on factual data. For example, in what is probably his most controversial chapter, Levitt identifies the effective legalisation of abortion in the US in 1973 as being the cause of a fall in the crime rate 15-20 years later. Levitt, having established this correlation, and posited his explanation – access to abortion meant that a whole cohort of kids that would have been most likely to grow up to become criminals were not in fact born at all – he searches for ways to test it…as you can imagine it is a sensitive subject to cover. He did so by looking at those states where abortion had already been legal, by establishing correlations between abortion rates and the subsequent fall in crime rates and by identifying that the fall in crime happened amongst the late teens rather than older age groups.
Steven D. Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner were clearly aware of the potential distaste and controversies that this deduction might bring, but presented their findings clearly and courageously to that effect. Other areas of study within the book cover the identification of cheating teachers and Sumo wrestlers, the economics of dealing in crack cocaine and whether “pushy” parents can actively influence the success of their children. In many cases, however, and particularly while reading a chapter on parents’ choice of names for their children, I did contemplate whether the same conclusions would be made on the British side of the Atlantic…surely genetics and location would play a factor into the hypothesis and conclusion on the matter.
As to whether this is a truly a radical use of the science of economics…or whether you believe its an abuse of time, resources and in no doubt money to research this, I do not know .It may well be that others have analysed data of this type in similar ways in the past. Nonetheless, Levitt and Dubner ask – and answer – some interesting questions, and if economics is not routinely used in this way perhaps it should be. A brilliant read and very educational for all ages.

Alex is a Gloucestershire-based entrepreneur. You can find out more about him on his profile page and you can also find him on Twitter.