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Biography
Rhonda Byrne (born 1945, Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian television writer and producer, best known for her New Thought books, The Secret (based on a film she produced of the same name) and its sequel The Power. She has also written The Magic. Her latest book is "The Hero".
In 2007 Byrne was featured in Time Magazine's list of 100 people who shape the world. She gained mainstream popularity and commercial success after appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Her philosophy is that believing will allow you to achieve your wishes and dreams.
The Secret was published in 2006, and by the spring of 2007 had sold more than 19 million copies in more than 40 languages, and more than two million DVDs. The Secret book and film have grossed $300 million.
Byrne was a producer for the TV show Sensing Murder and has also worked on the Australian TV series World's Greatest Commercials and Marry Me.
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Criticism
In a harshly critical review, The New York Times stated: "'The Power' and 'The Secret' are larded with references to magnets, energy and quantum mechanics. This last is a dead giveaway: whenever you hear someone appeal to impenetrable physics to explain the workings of the mind, run away - we already have disciplines called 'psychology' and 'neuroscience' to deal with those questions. Byrne's onslaught of pseudoscientific jargon serves mostly to establish an 'illusion of knowledge,' as social scientists call our tendency to believe we understand something much better than we really do."
[ Source: Wikipedia ]
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