Underground by Will Hunt

Will Hunt has been fascinated with underground places since his childhood discovery of an abandoned tunnel in his hometown. Perhaps abandoned isn’t quite right; Hunt found signs of occasional human occupation in the old tunnels. He pursued his interest in underground places and the way people used and experienced them around the world. He describes these experiences, and what these hidden chambers mean, in Underground.

Hunt’s explorations took him into both manmade spaces and natural caves. He retells adventures from the Paris catacombs and a trip across the city that was almost entirely underground. He entered mines and saw shrines miners created for the spirits (or monsters) that live in them, beings that are sometimes generous and sometimes dangerous. Perhaps these are relatives to the spirits, strange creatures and gods reputed to live in natural caves.

Caves and tunnels are important to varying degrees to almost all religions. Shamans, priests and philosophers have long traveled under the earth to seek insight or communication with other worlds. Hunt ties this to the hallucinations and distorted sense of time humans experience when they are deprived of sensory stimulation. He does not denigrate these experiences, but sees them as something universally human. The altered state of consciousness one might enter in the utter darkness of a cave is simply another way the mind works, and possibly the root of all religion.

People did not always understand what was underground, and we are still making discoveries. Even two centuries ago, the world under our feet was a mystery. As a fan of Missouriana, I was attracted to Hunts telling of the life John Cleves Symmes. A St. Louis-based trader and former Army officer, Symmes was a proponent of a hollow earth theory. We were not living in the inner world, but he imagined there were worlds within ours existing on a series of concentric spheres. From 1818 until his death in 1829, he traveled the country lecturing on this theory and raising money to mount an expedition. He never made that trip to inner worlds, but he was an inspiration to the authors of hollow earth stories such as Edgar Allen Poe, H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Frank L. Baum.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

The Big Roads by Earl Swift

The Brooklyn Bridge by Judith St. George

The Explorer King by Robert Wilson

The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

London Under by Peter Ackroyd

Rising Tide by James M. Barry

Road to the Sea by Florence Dorsey

Second Chronicles

The Water Room by Christopher Fowler

Hunt, Will. Underground: A Human History of the World Beneath Our Feet. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2018.

It's Not Always Depression by Hilary Jacobs Hendel

Depression and anxiety can be tough to handle and treat. Drugs may treat symptoms, but they do not cure depression and they typically do not work for long or require ever increasing doses. Talk based therapies can be helpful, but sometime it take a long time to get a helpful breakthrough.

Some forms of treatment aim to be more active. One such is accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy, or AEDP. This form of therapy is the basis of the methods described by therapist Hilary Jacobs Hendel in It’s Not Always Depression.

In a nutshell, AEDP sees maladaptive behaviors (defenses) and stressful emotions such as anxiety (inhibitory emotions) as ways to suppress potent core emotions. This can be useful to help us get along in social situations, maintain relationships and keep ourselves from being carried away by strong emotions. This is especially true when we are children and may not have the maturity or power to choose another path. However, we can become stuck in this behavior, never dealing properly with our core emotions, and our inhibitory emotions and defenses can become maladaptive, keeping us from the life and relationships we want and need.

Hendel organizes these items into an equilateral triangle setting on point. Defenses sit at the upper left corner, inhibitory emotions at the upper right, and core emotions at the bottom. Beneath the core emotions is your authentic self, which Hendel calls an openhearted state, in which one feels calm, confident and clear-headed.

Working the triangle is getting in touch with core emotions by finding how our defenses and inhibitory emotions are protecting us from them and the consequences of expressing them. Hendel draws examples from her therapy practice, but the fact that this is a book for a popular audience suggests that this is a technique that people could use on their own as well as in a more formal therapeutic setting. When we acknowledge our core emotions, name them, let ourselves feel them (they will pass) and express them in safe ways (sometimes through fantasy), they lose their potency and move on. By doing this repeatedly we learn that we can handle our emotions in ways that are safe and constructive; we have alternatives to our old defenses and inhibitory emotions and we can let them go. From here we can relax into an openhearted state.

“[W]e cannot  think our way through a core emotion; it must be experienced viscerally to be processed,” Hilary Jacobs Hendel, It’s Not Always Depression

Because defenses and inhibitory emotions protect us from core emotions, it can be difficult to know what we are feeling. Emotions are felt in the body, and Hendel describes was of slowing down to scan the body, assess our sensations and use this information to uncover our core emotions.

I’m not a therapist, but I can see the benefit of the framework. It gives someone a way to identify what they are doing and feeling. It can give one words to describe what one is experiencing and a process for exploring that experience. Its ultimate aim is to retrain the brain so one can let go of behaviors that are no longer helpful an embrace new ways of coping that allow for one to feel emotions and at the same time have the calm and clear mind to deal with situations constructively.

It is hard to do justice to these ideas in a few paragraphs. If you are looking for a way to deal with depression and anxiety, this book may be helpful. Even so, if your issues are severe, you should not abandon professional help from a physician or therapist. You may need a guide to help you through the process. There is no shame in that. We all need help when we are learning something new.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Mindful Way through Depression by Mark Williams et al

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Hendel, Hilary Jacobs. It’s Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2018.

You are a Badass Every Day by Jen Sincero

You Are a Badass Every Day is a companion to Jen Sincero’s two previous books, You are a Badass and You are a Badass at Making Money. While those books explained Sincero’s philosophy, advice and experiences, this book is a collection of related short readings and exercises.

 Each chapter can be read in a few minutes. That is Sincero’s intention. They are prompts to get you thinking and taking action. They are moments of encouragement to keep you on track toward your goals. She describes it as a “spiritual gym,” a way to exercise your mind, imagination and desire so you can grow stronger.

“Success isn’t static, it’s not one place, you don’t arrive at success, crack open a beer and call it a day. Success is a way of being and adapting and growing that gets easier the more you practice.”

-Jen Sincero, You Are a Badass Every Day

 Though Sincero calls for people to take action toward their goals, the real action is in the mind. As she puts it, “thoughts and things are the same.” Your reality is something you created. If you don’t like it, you can change it by getting a new perspective and setting off on a new path.

 If you read one of Sincereo’s other books and you were inspired by it, reading this book will likely give your motivation a boost. It might be a pick-me-up on its own, but I suspect the message will have more impact on a mind prepared by one of the other Badass books.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

 Sincero, Jen. You Are a Badass Every Day. New York: Viking, 2018.

Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope

I’m feel stuck in trying to describe Billion Dollar Whale, by Wall Street Journal reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope. Part of what boggled my mind is the sheer size of the crime they describe, the theft of an estimated $5 billion dollars. That’s right, billion. The other is the number of corrupt people needed to pull it off. Some were neck deep in the scheme, but a lot of people had to look the other way or squelch concerns in order for this to occur and for it to go on for so long.

 The true story focuses on a man name Jho Low. He grew up in Malaysia. His father made millions in business and sent a young low to be educated in the UK and US (the Wharton school at University of Pennsylvania), where he started making connections at the prestigious schools he attended. While the Lows were wealthy—even in the US, $15 million is a lot of money—he was rubbing elbows with scions of families that controlled orders of magnitude more wealth. He wanted to run in those circles.

 I once read that you can’t con and honest man—traditional cons involved roping a mark into something that is morally dubious if not outright criminal. Low was fortunate to have found many dishonest people who were willing to help him, including the prime minister of Malaysia at the time, Najib Razak, the stepfather of one of Low’s Wharton friends. He also made contacts in the Middle East through Wharton and his British prep school. With the help of Razak and a Saudi ambassador, Low created a Malaysian sovereign fund. Instead of investing the billions of dollars the fund borrowed from investors—with the aid of American banks—Low and his conspirators siphoned of most of the money. He never intended to pay it back.

 Low like to party. This is where the story gets really crazy. His partying led him to contact—and in some cases even friendship—with American celebrities. Low pulled money out of the Malaysian fund to finance the making of the film The Wolf of Wall Street, which is about the huge fraud committed by Jordan Belfort, who was played by Leonardo Dicaprio in the film. (Dicaprio was far from the only celebrity in Low’s circle, and part of the fascination of the book is seeing how he used his access to access these people.) Low’s theft and excesses almost makes Belfort seem like an amateur.

 As the book was published, Low’s scheme had finally collapsed after seven years, though he and some of his conspirators were still at large and had access to at least some of their stolen money in spite of American, Swiss and Singaporean efforts to seize assets of those involved in the scam. It is frustrating to think that he may get away with it. It is also frustrating to realize that billions may never be repaid to investors, the people are Malaysia are stuck with enormous debts that will be a drag on their economy for decades and the truly beneficial investments that might have been made with that money will never occur.

 Wright, Tom & Bradley Hope. Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World. New York: Hachette, 2018.

Lost Connections by Hari Johnson

Depression and anxiety are growing problems in the West. The model of depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain is breaking down, and antidepressants are ineffective. (I’m not suggesting you should stop taking antidepressants. Even if they are not working out for you, discuss it with your physician first.) Where do we turn to find relief?

 Johann Hari considers this problem in his book Lost Connections. Hari was a long-time sufferer of depression and taker of ever-increasing doses of antidepressants. He was happy with the model that depression was a chemical imbalance that was beyond his control and a pill could fix it. The problem was that a pill didn’t fix it; he was still depressed.

 First, it isn’t all in your head—or even in your chemistry. Though there is a physiological, and even hereditary, aspect to depression that can make some more susceptible, depression is triggered by our experience and social environments. Depression is a symptom of problems in your life. To Hari, depression is essentially a social disease and it requires social treatments.

 Though Hari does not claim to have completely uncovered the causes of depression, he outlines several that are supported by research. He describes them all as types of disconnection.

 For example, many are disconnected from meaningful work. They have no sense of control over their work. There is no connection between effort and reward, and the work can be humiliating drudgery. In addition, work has become much less secure; many have no idea if they’ll have work next week or even tomorrow.

 Related to this is disconnection from status. Research of primates suggests that depression is an expression of low status intended to protect apes from the abuse of their neighbors. In highly stratified cultures, like the United States, stress is higher than in cultures with more status equality. Low status people are under constant stress, and high status people experience extreme stress when their status is challenged.

 Most of all, we are disconnected from other people. We are less likely than ever to belong to a church, club, civic group, professional organization, sports league or similar structure of getting together with other face-to-face, bonding over common interests and building relationships. Neighborhoods are no longer communities; they’re just clusters of homes.

 Though it is more challenging than taking a pill, the solution to depression is to reconnect in those areas where we have become disconnected. It is especially important to reconnect to other people. If you want to feel better, do something to make someone else’s life better.

 The difficulty is that it is hard to get better on your own. Fortunately, if you’re willing to take a step, there are things you can do. On the bigger scale, we need cultural reform that supports personal relationships, meaningful values, meaningful work, empathy, hope and time in natural settings. There is no money to be made in prescribing a community garden, a book club or a job where one is treated with respect, so the money will probably continue to pour into drugs (whether they work or not), until we demand—and start to create for ourselves—something better.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

Switch on Your Brain by Caroline Leaf

Suggestible You by Erik Vance

Timeless Healing by Herbert Benson with Marg Stark

Vital Friends by Tom Rath

 Hari, Johan. Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression—and the Unexpected Solutions. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018.

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Though we might like to imagine ourselves exercising a lot of conscious control over our lives, a lot—perhaps half—of what we do in a day is habitual. Our habits can make us or break us. Fortunately, we can change our habits.

 Of course learning new habits is not always easy, especially when it comes to breaking old habits. We’ve learned a lot about how we how our brains work in forming habits that can help. James Clear organizes this into a system in Atomic Habits.

 Before he gets started, though, Clear makes an interesting point. Our identities can be wrapped up in our habits. It can be hard to stop a behavior we identify with. It can be hard to start something new and stick with it if we think of it as out of character for ourselves. If we want to be different, we have to believe we can be different and picture ourselves that way.

 Clear lays out four laws for creating habits that are easy to adopt. The inverse of these laws can make a behavior more difficult and help us break bad habits.

 Effective habits are obvious (in your face cues about what to do), attractive, easy and they provide immediate rewards. The more of these characteristics you can bring to your new habit the better. Set up your environment and daily routines to bring the behavior you want into your awareness. Find ways to link it to other things you want. Remove obstacles and concentrate on small, doable changes.  Find a way to get something  out of performing now (consistent with you goal) to carry you until the more long-term payoffs of the behavior kick in.

 The inverse of these work to weaken bad habits. Put reminder and triggers of old behaviors out of sight. Find ways to make it distasteful and unappealing. Put barriers in the way of performing the old habit---make it harder. Creates disincentive and make it costly.

 Clear provides several examples from his own life and from others. The book is peppered with references to his web site where he provides additional examples, forms and worksheets.

 I previously wrote about this book here.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Changing for Good by James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross & Carlo C. DiClemente

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Get Smart! by Brian Tracy

How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Level Up Your Life by Steve Kamb

One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Small Move, Big Change by Caroline L. Arnold

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

This Year I Will... by M. J. Ryan

 Clear, James. Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Habits. New York: Avery, 2018.

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Habits have a profound impact on our lives. They are behaviors we repeat, sometimes automatically, and by repetition, their effects accumulate. It would be great if our habits supported us in being the people we want to be, and if they did not reinforce things we would like to change. James Clear describes how habits work and a system for getting them to work for you in Atomic Habits.

Before working on habits, you need to work on beliefs. Beliefs always win out, and your habits are, to a degree, a manifestation of your beliefs. Fortunately, working on habits can support new beliefs about yourself. You can set up small wins that support your belief in your new identity.

You can also give yourself a break by taking the focus off goals, which can seem overwhelming. Instead, focus on systems. Focus on the things you do, especially the things you do repeatedly, that move you toward being who you want to be. Instead of noticing the gap between where you are and a goal, you can encourage yourself by noticing the progress you make.

Clear describes the process of habit formation. It starts with a cue, which triggers the brain to start a behavior in anticipation of a reward. We experience a craving, a motivation or desire for the reward. As a response, we perform the habitual behavior. Finally, we get a reward that satisfies the craving. Unfortunately, that reward may not satisfy us in helpful ways. We can take advantage of this system to reinforce new behavior patterns and interrupt old patterns.

We can take advantage of the cue by making them more obvious (to trigger wanted behavior) or making them invisible (to prevent the triggering of bad habits). We can rig the craving by making the potential reward more or less attractive. We can make it easier or more difficult to perform a habitual behavior. We can also make the reward more or less satisfying. To superpower these strategies, we can stack them.

In his book, Clear provides several ways to implement these strategies for making and breaking habits. As you develop and implement your habit change strategy, Clear encourages you to seek sweet spot. It will be challenging, and that sense of challenge can be a great motivator, but if you take on to much at once or too large a change, you are likely to experience a failure that can be disheartening. Little wins are great rewards, especially when the feel earned, so seek changes that you can realistically achieve, but that you’ll need to stretch to reach.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Changing for Good by James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross & Carlo C. DiClemente

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Get Smart! by Brian Tracy

How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Level Up Your Life by Steve Kamb

One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Small Move, Big Change by Caroline L. Arnold

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

This Year I Will... by M. J. Ryan

Clear, James. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. New York: Avery, 2018.

New Stuff April 6, 2019

Anxious for Nothing by Max Lucado

Good Naked by Joni B. Cole

Happiness is a Choice by Barry Neil Kaufman

Haunted Jefferson City by Janice Tremeear

Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking by Robert H. Schuller

New & Interesting Stuff January 26,2018

New & Interesting Stuff January 26,2018

The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall

Chief Engineer by Erica Wagner

Learn Python 3 the Hard Way by Zed A. Saw

Loving in Flow by Susan K. Perry

New & Interesting Stuff November 24, 2018

The Revenge of Analog by David Sax

Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It by Gary Taubes

Write Naked by Jennifer Probst

New & Interesting Stuff November 24, 2018

Become a Better You by Joel Osteen

The Computers of Star Trek by Lois Gresh & Robert Weinberg

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

The Johnstown Flood by David McCollough

Making the American Body by Jonathan Black

New & Interesting Stuff September 29, 2018

Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

New & Interesting Stuff September 29, 2018

A Mind for Numbers by Barbara A. Oakley

Choosing Civility by P. M. Forni

Contents Under Pressure by Sylvia F. Munson

Faith by Jimmy Carter

450 Books Reviewed on Keenan's Book Reviews

The Girls of Atomic City by Denis Kiernan

How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg

My Inventions by Nikola Tesla

New & Interesting Stuff April 7, 2018

Seduction of the Innocent by Max Allan Collins

Why Comics? by Hilary Chute

Faith by Jimmy Carter

President Jimmy Carter is well known for his Christian faith. Excepting a handful of famous pastors, Carter is one of the few Americans who is known as a Christian almost as much as he is known for other things; this is especially extraordinary for a former president.

Faith is the title and subject of his recent book. He addresses religious faith, but other types of faith are important to him as well.

For instance, each person need faith in himself to take action with hope to achieve positive results. We need faith in each other to live, work and trade together peaceably.

We even need some degree of faith in government. If we hope to achieve the ultimate purposes of government, justice, equality under the law and peace, we have to believe it can be done. Especially in a republic we need to believe we can achieve these goals through our institutions, laws and the people we elect to represent us.

“A country will have authority and influence because of moral factors, not its military strength; because it can be humble and not blatant and arrogant, because our peple and our country want to serve others and not dominate others. And a nation without morality will soon lose its influence around the world.”-Jimmy Carter, Faith (quoting a speech he presented in 1978)

There are also personal goals that require faith. Justice and equality may be the highest goals we can expect from government, but we want more. If we also hope for love, humility, generosity and kindness, we need another kind of faith.

For many, including Carter, this is religious faith. We find in religion reasons to believe that things like love are real and worthy of pursuing, even if we don’t always get it right.

For Christians, this faith is founded on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the proof of God’s loving mercy and grace. It all starts with God, and we can hope to be better people through the empowerment of God and our grateful response to His love demonstrated in Jesus Christ. As Carter puts it, “It is not what we do for God that is important but what God does for us. Faith brings about good works, but doing good things does not result in faith."

For Carter, Jesus is worthy of consideration as an example of the ideal in human character. Being like Christ is being a better human being. As a Christian and Protestant, Carter believes he has a personal relationship with an ever-present Christ. The faith that underlies Carter’s career and achievements as a politician, philanthropist and peacemaker is that he does not walk alone, but he walks with a living Christ and with other believers who seek to follow Him and see His good will done in our time.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

The Faith of JFK edited by T. S. Settel

God and Ronald Reagan by Paul Kengor

Hebrews

The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

Carter, Jimmy. Faith: A Journey for All. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.