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The Bright Side - Sumit Paul-Choudhury ***

When I first saw The Bright Side (the subtitle doesn't help), I was worried it was a self-help manual, a format that rarely contains good science. In reality, Sumit Paul-Choudhury does not give us a checklist for becoming an optimist or anything similar - and there is a fair amount of science content. But to be honest, I didn't get on very well with this book.

What Paul-Choudhury sets out to do is to both identify what optimism is and to assess its place in a world where we are beset with big problems such as climate change (which he goes into in some detail) that some activists position as an existential threat. This is all done in a friendly, approachable fashion. In that sense it's a classic pop-psychology title.

For me, Paul-Choudhury certainly has it right about the lack of logic of extreme doom-mongers, such as Extinction Rebellion and teenage climate protestors, and his assessment of the nature of optimism seems very reasonable, if presented at a fairly overview level. However, I found the structure of the book hard to get my head around - it seems to leap about all over the place, making it difficult to follow any clear argument. It also feels fluffily insubstantial not so much in its content as because of that structure.

A big concern is that we are given the results of many psychology and other social science studies without any health warning on their quality - after the replication crisis, I  don't think this is acceptable. Given the dubious nature of many studies before the late 2010s - and, frankly, a fair number since - it is surely important that anyone writing popular psychology or social science acknowledges the issue and makes it clear where there are potential issues.

This is not by any measure a bad book. Paul-Choudhury is an approachable guide. But it's not for me.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

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