Review of ‘The Gift of Adversity: The Unexpected Benefits of Life’s Difficulties, Setbacks, and Imperfections,’ by Norman Rosenthal. Tarcher/Penguin. Cloth, 2013, 326 pages.

THOMAS HANSEN

Poor, confused, depressed, disheartened, and underprepared.  A lot of our students face the difficulty of not having a home to live in or no family to help them.  A lot of our students sleep in a car or crash at a cousin’s house.  How can they be resilient in the face of poverty, loss, failure, and harassment?

As an educator, I am always reading books new and old on how to help students and other teachers deal with the challenges of the learning process.  I also read booked on how to make it through the learning process coupled with those damning and strangling powers of  poverty, loss, failure, and unfair persons who judge them harshly.  

As a classroom teacher, I have always wondered “How do I reach everybody in the room?  Can I?”  As a teacher educator, I wonder how to help newer teachers figure out to reach the students in their rooms, and how to help the teachers embrace social justice as one of the main topics they should be thinking about every day.

Reaching students who have special struggles—such as learning challenges, the cloak of poverty, and the added difficulties of having a sexuality some people do not understand—I often wonder how you can teach so many different kinds of people, with differences, in varying contexts, and in competing subjects.          

What is helpful about this particular book is not only the challenges that were faced by the author but also ways he overcame them.

Norman Rosenthal is the psychiatrist who first described Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and prescribed Light Therapy which has come to be the most effective treatment for it.  He wrote Winter Blues to explain the entire journey of that part of his personal and professional life.  He has written several other popular books.  This is the first book I have read by him, and I think it is well-organized, clever, insightful, and important reading for educators.

In this book, he tells a very interesting story – namely the experiences and challenges of his life, starting as a young Jewish boy growing up in Apartheid South Africa.  He has a wonderful sense of cross cultural issues, conflicts, resolutions, and insights that teachers especially will enjoy reading about. 

School counselors may be interested in looking at the stages of development in the life of Dr. Rosenthal and his studies in elementary school all the way through medical school and into internships and practica he completes.  Also interesting to counselors might be his communication patterns and strategies for helping friends and family—especially his problem solving skills.  Yet another interesting area is the author’s work to help patients suffering from SAD and the revelations he has that are related to this himself, since he has come from sunny South Africa to cloudy New York City—famous for its long dark and dreary nights.

Teachers of many subjects at different grade levels could use this as informative background reading.  Teachers could also use a variety of passages to show writing technique, key content, strategies to develop topics and expand them, revisit them, and recall them.  I think teachers of English and language arts will certainly revel in what Dr. Rosenthal says about writing books, why he is driven to keep writing more, and why that was his real hope—to be a writer…. But he wound up being a psychiatrist on the way there. He talks about the composing process and what inspires him.  He is a strong writer, and he uses clever paragraph hooks and repetition of key—sometimes sarcastic—phrases that make his writing more entertaining.

Teachers of world languages may be interested in the discussion of the actual use of a variety of languages in the stories told by the author.  Hebrew, Afrikaans, English, and other languages are mentioned as these and other tongues are used in a matter of fact way by all the real characters who people the stories. 

So important for people to understand about world languages is that people really use them, and every day.  Many Americans cannot fathom this simple fact.  Unfortunately, some more traditional language teaching models reflect this lack of understanding—but not in Illinois with our great interdisciplinary state standards!   

Teachers of English language learners (ELLs) can benefit from learning more about race and culture, and how they impact communication.  Exile is a key element in the stories told here, including the fact that Dr. Rosenthal’s family is Lithuanian and Jewish.  There are other stories of exile and longing told in the book also.  Teachers of ELLs and students who have obstacles and challenges in learning may also be living in exile, in poverty, or in fear.  Stories like the ones in this book are important for teachers to read.       

Teachers of social sciences at all levels will find a great deal of information here, ranging from religious and political insights of being Jewish during the Apartheid years in South Africa to the discussions of several different wars and the soldiers who fought in them. 

There is also obviously a huge amount of information related to the history of South Africa, and interesting details about world events as the author comes to the USA to work and continue his medical studies here.  He worked in different countries and lived in different US cities.  

Dr. Rosenthal worked for the National Institutes of Mental Health, also.  There is very telling information about working in a government bureaucracy.  His commentary about “what they do to you” in those places is dead on.  Having worked in a Soviet-style bureaucracy, I can attest to the daily harassment and nonsense adults actually will stoop to in order to get somebody else’s office or get somebody to quit and work elsewhere.  Dr. Rosenthal, unfortunately, had to endure this sort of foolishness even though he is someone who has achieved great and essential things for people in need.

This is a very helpful book.  When I read the accounts of his work, I assume the author is a decent and caring man, one who is driven to solve problems, to bring about successful solutions, and help others see how to live purposeful lives also.  I plan to read the book on SAD next and hope to review it.  Knowing somebody who suffers from the affliction, it will be very informative for me.

I recommend this book wholeheartedly (sounds trite but is meant with the best of intentions) and I am now a Rosenthal fan.  Educators at many levels may enjoy his writing. 

Perhaps they can also use the book as both background reading and a source from which they can lift key passages to help students see the interesting content or the clever writing strategies.  I hope to read the rest of his books, and I really look forward to sharing views on those books with my friends—and maybe with readers of some of my reviews!