The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance Author: Visit Amazon's Steven Kotler Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1477800832 | Format: PDF
The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance Description
Review
“A thrill ride of a book, empowering in its implications of what any individual can achieve.”
—Kirkus Reviews"The Rise of Superman is a marriage of extreme sports reporting, gonzo science writing, and radical self-help lit: Kotler takes us along on many exciting ventures into the gnarliest gnar, breaks them down into their constituent parts, and puts it all back together as an inspiration to start looking for the Superman inside ourselves." —New Mexico Magazine
About the Author
Steven Kotler is a bestselling author and an award-winning journalist. His books include the non-fiction works:
Abundance, A Small, Furry Prayer, and
West of Jesus, and the novel
The Angle Quickest for Flight. His articles have appeared in over 60 publications, including:
New York Times Magazine, Wired, Discover, Popular Science, Outside, GQ, and
National Geographic. He writes “The Playing Field,” a blog about the science of sport and culture for PsychologyToday.com.
Kotler is also the co-founder and director of research at the Flow Genome Project, an international organization devoted to putting flow state research on a hard science footing, and the co-founder of the New Mexico-based Rancho de Chihuahua dog sanctuary.
He has a BA in English/Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and an MA from the John Hopkins University in Creative Writing.
- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: New Harvest (March 4, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1477800832
- ISBN-13: 978-1477800836
- Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
This was a tough book to review. One reason is that I have read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 1990 perennial bestselling book Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience, his 1993 book The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium, and his 1996 book Creativity, Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. Flow, the psychological research behind it, the relevance to sports, business, and life, have been around for decades. Jimmy Johnson, the once coach of the Dallas Cowboys gave some credit for his superbowl wins in the 1990's to reading Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow. With this background, I opened this book on the relevance of flow to action adventure sports with trepidation.
The strengths in this book are also some of the weaknesses. You will gain a new appreciation of action sports heroes that deserve greater recognition. Discover the accomplishments of legendary surfer Laird Hamilton, skateboarding sensation Danny Way (although you will gain more from watching the documentary "waiting for lightning" which is available on Netflix), rock climbing fanatics Alex Honnold and Dean Potter, among others. I knew many of the stories but Steven Kotler is a journalist and knows how to trigger intrigue. The concept, science, and applications of entering into the deep psychological state of flow plays second to Steven's attempts to draw you into the death defying feats in sports. Let me be absolutely clear - if you are uninterested in adventure sports, you will not enjoy this book.
I'll give you a few examples of what I mean.
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