Rating: 
Summary: my 2 cents
Review: Dr. Seligman writes about the time when swimmer Matt Biondi was on his way to win a gold medal in the 1988 olympic games when Biondi decides not to take the last stroke and coast to the finish wall. As a result he lost the gold medal to another swimmer. This is how I would describe his book. Overpowering the whole way, with a bland finish, but winning a silver medal, nonetheless.
I would call this book, and his research, revolutionary and with deep importance for human kind. But it lacks at least a couple of expanded topics:
1. Studies on pesismists who work on becoming optimists
2. Better methods to becoming optimists, on this I will expand.
The book makes a point about the importance of explanatory style, yet, the methods offered to improve optimism do not clearly relate to explanatory style. Dr. Seligman offers a method, but it leaves much to individual imagination. I am already thinking about how to implement his wisdom, but in other ways.
Also, his methods say nothing about the "other side of the coin" of optimism, namely how to think when good things happen. I scored OK on the Bad events part of his test, but scored poorly on the Good events. That's what I need to work on. But I need to figure out how to do it. The good thing is that this book has given me ideas from the numerous experiments quoted, which provide the most help in becoming optimist.
These are the reasons I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5, but this is definetely good to read. In this time when anyone becomes a writer, this book stands out for being well and intelligently written. Great effort Dr. Seligman!
Rating: 
Summary: Une des clés de la résilience
Review: Ce livre m'a permis de découvrir comment on peut évaluer la présence de l'optimisme chez une personne et comment on peut l'aider à faire grandir cet état cognitif et émotif.À conseiller à tous ceux qui se demandent encore comment être plus heureux ou comment ressentir qu'ils réussissent.
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: This was a fairly interesting read. Seligman spends 80% of the book discussing what he has discovered about learned optimism over the years, and what other researchers have found on the subject. All of this information helps build an strong case for the idea that we humans can, and should, learn to be more optimistic. That being said, I gave this book such a low rating because I feel that the title is completely misleading. I didn't want to read all sorts of information about WHY changing my mind and life is important and possible. I wanted to learn HOW, and that's what the title promises. To be sure, there are some suggestions of how to learn optimism, but such little space in the book is dedicated to this topic that I felt misled and "ripped off" by the title. It's like reading a book called "Instructions for Knitting a Sweater for your Baby" and discovering that only the last chapter is in fact instructive; the first 100 pages are about the history of knitting, the need for babies to wear sweaters, what happens to those poor babies who don't wear sweaters, and why the author considers himself to be the best darn knitter in the entire county. Enough already!
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