The Positive Thinkers

The subject of Professor Meyer's superb study concerns the dissolution of the Protestant ethic, its relationship to a general failure of nerve within the American community, and the consequent rise of a pseudo-theology in the guise of a pseudo-psychology, as reflected through the work of certain "mind-cure" practitioners, from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale. It is a subject largely ignored by intellectuals, and Professor Meyer, in taking it out of the domain of the Reader's Digesto...