Make Anger Your Ally (Living Books)

Rating:
Summary: Nutty chick tipoff
Review: Basically, If you see this on someones bookshelf, it's a good sign that the person is wacky. Especially if it is a chick.

Rating:
Summary: Helpful, Thoughtful, Enlightening and Powerful
Review: I read this book over 10 years ago and have happily employed the wisdom and techniques found in it ever since.

I came online to see if it might still be available to give as a gift to someone who recently demolished his computer - with a baseball bat!

I'm thrilled to see that it's still in print. It deserves a wide reading (even after all this time!)

This is very positive, constructive and USEFUL view of our God-given gift of anger.

Anger that, used wisely and with understanding, can enhance and protect our lives. Or - used automatically and without awareness or comprehension - can ruin everything we love.

Thank you to Mr. Warren for this nurturing gift to our rage-prone society.

Read it, think about it, practice it and do it - you'll be a different person!

Rating:
Summary: Oversimplified and narrow minded
Review: This author seems to have a vendetta against all those who do not handle their anger appropriately. Rather than discuss his examples of anger mismanagers in a compassionate and understanding way, Clark assumes a position of authority and lets loose some raw hostility towards his subjects.

In one such example, he oversimplifies the problem of clinical depression and reduces it to a tactic to express anger in a sneaky way. When discussing and describing a depressed person, he tells the reader (who may very well be a depressed person at the end of his/her rope) that others feel like taking the depressed person "out back behind the shed". What a not-so-veiled expression of the author's own anger towards those with depression.

He also compares people who mope to Judas, calling them underhanded and malicious. I do not think that every person who has ever moped, nor even the majority of people who have or do mope, are trying to provoke those around them. A little bit of cognitive therapy would clue the author in to his gross distortion--that he can read the mopers' minds and that, even if they are trying to send a message to those around them, it is a poisionous message intended to hurt and undermine the recipeint. Has it not ocurred to this author that maybe people become sad and have trouble hiding it? What might appear to be malicious moping may actually be the visbile results of great emotional pain. When we feel comfortable around others, shouldn't we have the freedom to be as we are? I do not become sad nor downtrodden nor lethargic for the sole purpose of angering or hurting others. That is the last thing on my mind. If I see someone is moping or sad, I may feel pain at seeing him/her like that, but I am not so pompous and bitter as to accuse the person of willfully trying to hurt me. Instead, I reach out and show that I care and reassure the person that he/she has the total freedom to be and that he/she has my unconditional positive regard.

The author needs to take a step back and realzie that his portrayal of the anger mismanagers in the first two sections of the book are hurtful and only serve to damage the self-esteem of those who are caught in the negative life patterns.

Rating:
Summary: A must read for everyone
Review: This is a marvelous read.Dr. Clark has made a complex problem easy to understand, with the solution to anger problems easily accessible.

Everyone should read this book. Everyone. Even people who do not believe they have a problem.