What I Just Read

1956 novel about a fictional peasant village in India, half Sikh, half Muslim. At first, this peaceful community avoided the sectarian violence surrounding the 1947 Partition. Until it didn't. Before everything went wrong, people in this village ordered their days to the schedule of trains passing the town, rarely stopping. But as the chaos of the Partition accelerates, the train system becomes unpredictable and inconsistent, upsetting the natural rhythm of this village and of everyone in it. Then, one particular train arrives that changes everything, engulfing this town in chaos, and a community that lived peacefully for generations suddenly evicts all its Muslims. I've been reading about India's Partition era because I fear we might see something like it again in the coming years. History rhymes, it has cycles and patterns, and periodically we see mass movements of peoples that reliably explode into terrible violence. You could certainly rank India's Partition with so...

This book will either reach you or it won't. Some readers will view this book analytically and think the central idea ludicrous; others will instantly grasp the immense value of autosuggestion--as well as grasp the paradox that belief in it is both self-fulfilling and circular. Once you know how a placebo actually works--how the placebo effect is actually you  creating a response to a perceived external stimulus--you can take the idea of a placebo to its ultimate, self-empowering conclusion: you can produce your own placebo effect using your own stimuli, volition and beliefs. In other words, you don't have to wait around for somebody to give you a pill or therapy, you can produce results yourself. You Are the Placebo fits well with David Hawkins' striking book Power versus Force,  as well as C. Harry Brooks' short and useful book about the Coué Method, The Practice of Autosuggestion . If you're familiar with either of these works (I recommend both, if only for the...