A sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best: poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.