Radical Curiosity: Questioning Commonly Held Beliefs to Imagine Flourishing Futures

Goldenberg, founder and CEO of “experience design group” Curiosity & Co., finds much to criticize about modern life in his grumpy, pompous debut. “When did we surrender our claim on original thinking? When did we become disinterested in generating new knowledge?” he asks, without proving that people have indeed lost such interests. The “potential extinction” of curiosity is an “emergency,” he argues, and admonishes modern society for opting for quick fixes rather than thinking deeply. Through his Five Pillars of Radical Curiosity—learning by questioning, challenging one’s beliefs, and using imagination among them—he urges readers to approach the world curiously. It’s advice he would have done well to take himself, as his commentaries on gender, racism, and class are superficial at best and short-sighted at worst. For example, he excoriates Americans for not traveling overseas, dismissing worries about the cost of doing so as unimportant when people are in danger of accumulating the “cultural burden” of insular thinking. He also has a tendency to ramble and to be discursive and unfocused. Readers would be best off skipping the dramatics and going right to the punchy “28 building blocks for radical curiosity” at the book’s end, which deliver the author’s message far more effectively than his long-form argument. For the most part, this call for change disappoints. (Aug.)