One of the basic premises of The UP Side of Down is that we need to stop expecting things to always go smoothly and well. There are some great examples of success comes from those who are unafraid to jump in and make mistakes. This is an important point and something I agree with. I know as a parent I hated to see my children experience disappointment. But if you never experience the sting of disappointment as a child, what happens when you encounter it as an adult?

McArdle writes eloquently about her time being unemployed and reveals some interesting statistics about the effect of being unemployed on people’s lives.

A study from London’s Centre for Economic Performance measured the effect on life satisfaction of six different events: layoff, unemployment , marriage, birth of a child, divorce, and the death of a spouse. All these events had immediate effects on life satisfaction, mostly in the direction you’d expect: people’s satisfaction jumped in response to marriage, plummeted when their spouse died. 9 But five years later, people had mostly adapted; their happiness levels returned to about where they were before. (In fact, there are somewhat troubling charts showing that five years after they’ve lost a spouse, people are somewhat happier than they were when their better half was alive.) Not so with unemployment. Life satisfaction plummeted as you’d expect— lower than everyone except widows and widowers. But while the bereaved eventually dealt with their grief and moved on, the unemployed didn’t. Even five years in, they were still about as miserable as they’d been in that first year. Other research shows the same result. We may adapt to losing the use of our legs, but not the use of our time cards.

McArdle, Megan The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success

Because of the sections about unemployment, I was glad I purchased (and read) the book. McArdle also talks a lot about the economic policies of failure (bankruptcy laws, unemployment insurance, people on parole etc) and even failed economic policies (the banking crisis).

BUT… the book does itself fall short from time to time. There are moments that the author explores politics and economic theories at such length that the reader must ask, “How did we get here again?” or “How is this relevant to me? I thought I was going to hear “how to harness the power of failure” (a phrase used in the book description on Amazon).

In the spirit of the message that The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success carries ‐ better to do something imperfectly and learn from your errors, I liked the book and accept that it is itself flawed. There are some really good ideas mixed in and definitely if you are unemployed or have ever been unemployed for an extended time, I believe you will relate to that portion of the story.