Posts by Marina Krakovsky
The Science of Lasting Happiness (Scientific American)
The day I meet Sonja Lyubomirsky, she keeps getting calls from her Toyota Prius dealer. When she finally picks up, she is excited by the news: she can buy the car she wants in two days. Lyubomirsky wonders if her enthusiasm might come across as materialism, but I understand that she is buying an experience…
Read MoreThe Effort Effect (Stanford)
One day last November, psychology professor Carol Dweck welcomed a pair of visitors from the Blackburn Rovers, a soccer team in the United Kingdom’s Premier League. The Rovers’ training academy is ranked in England’s top three, yet performance director Tony Faulkner had long suspected that many promising players weren’t reaching their potential. Ignoring the team’s…
Read MoreDespite Taiwan Visit, It’s Still Greek to Me (Washington Post)
I’d seen the slender paperbacks: “Chinese at a Glance,” “Instant Chinese” and “Mandarin for Halfwits.” Going by these titles, you might assume that learning Chinese isn’t all that different from learning, say, Spanish. But I knew better, even before my recent trip to Taiwan. That’s because my husband is from Hong Kong, and I’d gathered…
Read MoreSaving the Ranch (O, the Oprah Magazine)
“I’ve always preferred the freedom of riding alone,” Elizabeth Crawford says, taking long, purposeful strides as she shows me where she likes to bring her horse. We’re on Ahmanson Ranch, a vast tract of rolling, oak-studded hills bordering Los Angeles and Ventura counties that Crawford helped to preserve. Although the 2,983-acre ranch appears tranquil, the…
Read MoreAnd Camera Makes Three (Stanford)
“What a perfect day,” my husband announced as Saturday morning dawned gray and gloomy. That afternoon our friend was to be married in Memorial Church, and while I worried that it might rain on her wedding, my husband was delighted by the cloudy sky, which he calls “the mother of all Soft Boxes.” Married to…
Read MoreMaking Books: Literary Prizes (Washington Post Book World)
If Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, ever needs reminding why his work matters, he can just think back to an incident two years ago at the Owl and Turtle Bookshop in Camden, Maine: Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Russo was signing books, and Gissler, having just taken the job, was curious about the impact of…
Read MoreGiving Up the Food Fight (San Francisco Chronicle Magazine)
My 4-year-old hasn’t bought into the low-carb craze. Sarah favors a diet rich in rice, bread, pasta, buns and sometimes bananas, for the extra constipation. It’s not that my daughter prefers simple carbohydrates — it’s more that she believes in the natural superiority of foods that are white, the paler and blander the better. That’s…
Read MoreMaking Books: The Bestseller Lists (Washington Post Book World)
On Sunday, Oct. 3, when the New York Times Book Review premiered its redesigned bestseller pages, Patricia Cornwell’s Trace topped the fiction list, and Kitty Kelley’s The Family was #1 in nonfiction. The fine print below the table explained that the rankings reflected sales for the week ending Sept. 18 — a period about two…
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