One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life

Horowitz (vice president & editor in chief, Tarcher/Penguin; Occult America) tracks the development of the positive-thinking movement from its roots in late 18th-century New England to its current incarnations, e.g., Joel Osteen's preaching and writings and Rhonda Byrne's The Secret. By the 1920s, spiritual self-help, promoted in books such as James Allen's As a Man Thinketh (1902), which is still read today, led religious congregants to desire a "usefulness" from their faith, which in turn led to the rapid rise of organizations and programs combining scientific, self-help, and religious ideas. By the end of World War II, the idea of positive thinking, having established its religious roots, entered the mainstream and led to new views in business, psychotherapy, and even politics. Horowitz writes that he both loves the movement for its "sense of possibilities, its challenge to religious conformity, and its practical ideas" and disdains it for its "lack of moral rigor, its inconsistencies, and its intellectual laxity." But he notes studies in neuroscience that are addressing the role of human thought in representing—and even shaping—reality. Readers will see how Christian Science, Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, and 12-step programs are all branches on the tree of positive thinking.