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A self-help book is basically one which is written for the purpose to teach its readers on dealing with personal issues. Self-help books gradually went from a peripheral position to being an authoritative postmodern urban phenomena in the mid twentieth century. In the past decade or so, self-help books have gained considerable amount of acceptance and significance as a form of therapeutic intervention for people who seek healing and assistance. Many people, due to the demands of their professional lives and the increasing challenges of modern living, have discovered the value and efficacy of such books. This book review aims to highlight some of the aspects that are significant in this regard.

Critical Thinking: The Power of Conversational Reflection is one of the self-help books that makes critical thinking an important part of the therapy. It provides detailed insights into how critical thinking can be applied in various situations and in varying fields of study. It helps the reader to identify and analyze potential arguments, disputing claims, developing alternative frames of reference and developing arguments based upon logic and evidence. The author rightly maintains that there is a difference between critical thinking and “slamming” or “full-blown argument”. The former promotes healthy debate and healthy skepticism, while the latter tends to exaggerate or deny the importance of evidence and rational arguments.

However, critics have raised questions about the focus of the critical thinking in self-help books. They question the writer’s intent to apply critical thinking when refuting claims made in some self-help book about lifestyle changes. The writer counters that such criticisms miss the point of the matter and that such refutations are aimed at clarifying the meaning of the text and leaving readers with a better understanding of the text.

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In discussing the self-help book in the context of 20th century American self-improvement history, the author makes several interesting points. The first question to arise is whether or not it is relevant to the topic of self-improvement. Many have seen self-improvement as an independent entity on its own. As such, books like this that seek to illuminate the concept of self-improvement are viewed by some as irrelevant to self-improvement. The author disagrees.

He contends that the concept of self-improvement is much more intertwined with the broader concept of twentieth century progressivism. Progressivism is a political theory of economic policy that views the state as an instrument for social progress, using redistributive tax policies to promote greater equality in wealth and opportunity and work to prevent economic disadvantages from being imposed on any group of people. The writer argues that such arguments for why self-help books… fail to connect with a progressive vision of society miss the mark because they focus on individual behaviour rather than systemic causes.

The second problem cited with self-help books… is that they tend to focus too much on personal growth and development rather than systemic causes. This can lead to a kind of self-sabotage. Such a focus tends to recur to personal improvement and ignores or replaces constructive criticism with self-pity. Such a point of view is further fueled by the fact that many of the greatest self-help books of the late twentieth century -like Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking” – tended to focus too much on positive thinking and emotional manipulation of the mind. It is fair to say that such books helped shape the public’s perception of what self-help should be about.

The third major problem cited with self-help books… is that too much of them tend to present the same “wisdom” as mainstream institutions of knowledge and education. In other words, the ideas espoused in such books are almost inevitably recycled from what has already been learned in mainstream academia. And while the traditional academic approach to self-improvement can be questionable at times, it at least offers some intellectual variety. By contrast, most of the information, techniques and strategies espoused by the likes of bogus “self-help gurus” and the likes of ill-conceived “academy gurus” are… not really original. They are simply recycled.

So the question of what is the best self-help book still remains open. It would seem to be that the best self-help book would be one that combines the important elements mentioned above into a cohesive whole. It would need to take the ideas that have been learned, analyzed and refined from a wide variety of fields over time, and weave them into a form that is easy to read and useful in improving your life. Such a book might be called a self-help notebook, apropos of everything you need to improve your life and the lives of those you care about.