Download or read book Smart Wrong and Lucky written by Jonathan Mayo and published by Triumph Books. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating look at how MLB teams find diamonds in the roughIn the plainest of terms, baseball scouts are tasked with seeing the future— a distant future, at that. Baseball's long developmental arc leaves room for plenty of twists and turns on the way to The Show. Some prospects shoot like arrows toward their projected potential, while others fizzle out or chart an unexpected course.Joey Votto was a lightly scouted high schooler out of Ontario, Canada. Charlie Blackmon was once coveted for his left arm more than his offensive potential. Mookie Betts "lost interest in the draft" as he went unselected round after round. Jacob deGrom refused to relinquish his role as a shortstop. Lorenzo Cain never even put on a baseball glove until high school— and then wore it on the wrong hand.Smart, Wrong, and Lucky explores how first impressions measure up to their aftermaths: the draft, years of progression, and for a talented few, major league success. MLB.com writer Jonathan Mayo profiles a diverse range of modern stars and looks at them through the eyes of those who noticed them first as prospects.Featuring exclusive interviews with scouts, players, coaches, and more, this fascinating collection of origin stories is an ode to baseball's endless possibilities.

Download or read book Good Luck with That written by Kristan Higgins and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Purewow’s “Best Beach Reads of Summer 2018” Winner for Best Book of 2018 of the Fresh Fiction Awards! New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins is beloved for her heartfelt novels filled with humor and wisdom. Now, she tackles an issue every woman deals with: body image and self-acceptance. Emerson, Georgia, and Marley have been best friends ever since they met at a weight-loss camp as teens. When Emerson tragically passes away, she leaves one final wish for her best friends: to conquer the fears they still carry as adults. For each of them, that means something different. For Marley, it's coming to terms with the survivor's guilt she's carried around since her twin sister's death, which has left her blind to the real chance for romance in her life. For Georgia, it's about learning to stop trying to live up to her mother's and brother's ridiculous standards, and learning to accept the love her ex-husband has tried to give her. But as Marley and Georgia grow stronger, the real meaning of Emerson's dying wish becomes truly clear: more than anything, she wanted her friends to love themselves. A novel of compassion and insight, Good Luck With That tells the story of two women who learn to embrace themselves just the way they are.

Download or read book Don t Get Lucky Get Smart written by Alan Cohen and published by Da Capo Lifelong Books. This book was released on 2007-10-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the same humor, real-world examples, and charming directness as Why Your Life Sucks, Don't Get Lucky — Get Smart spells out why many of us have been unlucky in love — and also offers practical ways to increase our relationship intelligence. From a self-help guru who admittedly owned a lot of unreal estate in dating hell for years, Don't Get Lucky distils the common reasons we all have bad — or just not great — relationships, showing us how to recognize our own patterns, and ultimately how to change for the better. An original voice with highly practical information: Cohen debunks the common myths we bring to dating and offers new insight into the realities of relationships. For example, chances are your love life sucks if you often… -Mistake "hope at first sight" for "love at first sight" -Date out of desperation. People who feel desperate do desperate things — and create desperate results -Seek only The Right Person — which may be a way of avoiding relationship -Get stuck on The Wrong Person — again and again and again

Download or read book Lucky T written by Kate Brian and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some girls have all the luck. So far, Carrie Fitzgerald's sixteen years have been pretty sweet. Straight A's, an adorable boyfriend, a starting position on the varsity basketball team... But Carrie's luck is about to, well, change. Suddenly, her boyfriend dumps her (to "hang out with his friends"!), she and her best friend have a massive blowout, and she gets a D on a biology test. Carrie knows what's wrong -- her mom accidentally donated her lucky T-shirt to Help India. That one adorable, perfect T-shirt was the source of all her good fortune. So Carrie does what any girl would do: She's going to India. Cross your fingers and hope that Carries finds adventure, love, and maybe just a little good luck along the way....

Download or read book Can You Learn to Be Lucky written by Karla Starr and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I don't know when I've been so wowed by a new author” –Chip Health, co-author of The Power of Moments and Switch A talented journalist reveals the hidden patterns behind what we call "luck" -- and shows us how we can all improve outcomes despite life’s inevitable randomness. "Do you believe in luck?" is a polarizing question, one you might ask on a first date. Some of us believe that we make our own luck. Others see inequality everywhere and think that everyone’s fate is at the whim of the cosmos. Karla Starr has a third answer: unlucky, "random" outcomes have predictable effects on our behavior that often make us act in self-defeating ways without even realizing it. In this groundbreaking book, Starr traces wealth, health, and happiness back to subconscious neurological processes, blind cultural assumptions, and tiny details you're in the habit of overlooking. Each chapter reveals how we can cultivate personal strengths to overcome life’s unlucky patterns. For instance: • Everyone has free access to that magic productivity app—motivation. The problem? It isn’t evenly distributed. What lucky accidents of history explain patterns behind why certain groups of people are more motivated in some situations than others? • If you look like an underperforming employee, your resume can't override the gut-level assumptions that a potential boss will make from your LinkedIn photo. How can we make sure that someone’s first impression is favorable? • Just as people use irrelevant traits to make assumptions about your intelligence, kindness, and trustworthiness, we also make inaccurate snap judgments. How do these judgments affect our interactions, and what should we assume about others to maximize our odds of having lucky encounters? We don’t always realize when the world's invisible biases work to our advantage or recognize how much of a role we play in our own lack of luck. By ending the guessing game about how luck works, Starr allows you to improve your fortunes while expending minimal effort.

Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

Download or read book You Are Not So Smart written by David McRaney and published by Avery. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains how self-delusion is part of a person's psychological defense system, identifying common misconceptions people have on topics such as caffeine withdrawal, hindsight, and brand loyalty.

Download or read book Lucky written by Jackie Collins and published by Chances Inc.. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 917 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “So hot it will have to be printed on asbestos.” - Liz Smith, New York Daily News Fierce, sharp, and wildly beautiful Lucky Santangelo, Jackie Collins’s own favorite character, returns for more scandal, scheming, and pulse-pounding drama in the second book of the internationally bestselling Lucky Santangelo series. As she arrives in Las Vegas, Lucky’s focused on getting her father Gino to sign off on some new developments underway in Atlantic City. But when opportunity strikes, Lucky’s always ready—and now she has the chance to take on heading a casino complex right in Vegas. Lucky’s past always seems to catch up with her though, and she’s surprised to discover that aging billionaire Dimitri Stanislopoulos is also in Vegas, with his daughter, Olympia, Lucky’s long lost friend. Kindred spirits who were both painfully out of place in the stodgy boarding school they were forced to attend, Lucky and Olympia had run off together, landing at a French villa where they stayed with Olympia’s much older Hollywood producer lover—until their dads found out. They never spoke again, for decades, until now, although Lucky may learn some friendships are best left behind. Maybe the most unexpected surprise for Lucky, though, is finding love with rising comedian Lennie Golden. But will she be too much for him. . . and will he be enough for her? Packed with colorful characters and coursing with passion, suspense, and round-the-world adventure, from California, to Paris, from New York to a private Greek island, this decadent story is a gripping thrill ride of dangerous passion and power at any cost—at once a richly satisfying saga and a perfect poolside read as only Jackie Collins could write it! Adapted in the 90s into a highly successful NBC mini-series, the Santangelo novels are currently being developed for TV once again by Working Title Productions and the updated series is set to be compulsive, sexy and totally binge-worthy! hr "Marvelous...Fast-moving...Suspense-filled." -Houston Chronicle "Impossible to put down." -Wall Street Journal hr Read the whole Lucky Santangelo series! 1. Chances 2. Lucky 3. Lady Boss 4. Vendetta: Lucky's Revenge 5. Dangerous Kiss 6. Drop Dead Beautiful 7. Poor Little Bitch Girl 8. Goddess of Vengeance 9. Confessions of a Wild Child - Lucky: The Early Years 10. The Santangelos 11. A Santangelo Story hr

Download or read book That Second Chance written by Meghan Quinn and published by Montlake Romance. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It only took one rowdy night with his brothers to flip Griffin's world upside down. One unlucky encounter saddled them with a family curse and the promise of doomed relationships. Word spread quickly, and rumors about that night made them the most eligible yet untouchable bachelors in Port Snow, Maine. Then Ren Winters, the new girl in town, crashed into his life. Her thirst for a fresh start gave Griffin hope that maybe, just maybe, he could have one, too. Everyone wishes for that second chance ... -- adapted from back cover

Download or read book The Harder You Work the Luckier You Get written by Joe Ricketts and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade, shares the epic inside story of how a working-class kid from the Nebraska prairie took on Wall Street’s clubby brokerage business, busted it open, and walked away a billionaire. Joe Ricketts always had the gift of seeing what others missed. The son of a house builder, he started life as a part-time janitor, but by the age of thirty-three he saw the chance to challenge the big brokerage firms by offering Americans an inexpensive way to take control of their own stock trading. Nowadays, we take for granted that Main Street is playing right there on Wall Street, but Ricketts made that happen. His company, begun with $12,500 borrowed from friends and family, took off like a rocket thanks to an early embrace of digital technology and irreverent marketing. But Ameritrade also faced a series of near-disasters: the SEC almost shut him down; his partners tried to force him out because of his relentless risk-taking; penny brokers swindled the company; the crash of 1989 nearly cost him everything; and he was almost shut down again when a customer committed massive fraud. By the time of the dot-com bust, he had proven that his strategy based on frontier values could survive just about anything. The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get offers a view inside Joe Ricketts’ mind, giving readers a visceral understanding of how entrepreneurs think and act differently from the rest of us—how they see the horizon where we just see a spreadsheet. As unvarnished as the prairie he comes from, Ricketts also talks honestly about his shortcomings as a manager, the career sacrifices his wife made for his business, the complexity of being a father, and the pain of splitting with his mentor and of his brother’s death from AIDS. Overcoming these and other challenges, he built a company now worth $30 billion. A must-read for anyone who’s ever dreamed of starting their own business, The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get is the ultimate only-in-America story.

Download or read book How Lucky written by Will Leitch and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Curl up with this page-turning mystery perfect for fall 2022 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Novel “A fantastic novel. . . . You are going to like this a lot.”—Stephen King “What’s more thrilling than a fictional character speaking to us in a voice we haven’t heard before, a voice so authentic and immediate—think Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Mattie Ross—that we suspect it must’ve been there all along, that we somehow managed to miss it? Daniel, the protagonist of Will Leitch’s smart, funny, heartbreaking new novel How Lucky, is just such a voice, and I’m not sure it will ever completely leave my head, or that I want it to.”—Richard Russo For readers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Nothing to See Here, a first novel as suspenseful and funny as it is moving, the unforgettable story of a fiercely resilient young man living with a physical disability, and his efforts to solve a mystery unfolding right outside his door. Daniel leads a rich life in the university town of Athens, Georgia. He’s got a couple close friends, a steady paycheck working for a regional airline, and of course, for a few glorious days each Fall, college football tailgates. He considers himself to be a mostly lucky guy—despite the fact that he’s suffered from a debilitating disease since he was a small child, one that has left him unable to speak or to move without a wheelchair. Largely confined to his home, Daniel spends the hours he’s not online communicating with irate air travelers observing his neighborhood from his front porch. One young woman passes by so frequently that spotting her out the window has almost become part of his daily routine. Until the day he’s almost sure he sees her being kidnapped...

Download or read book Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them written by Gary Belsky and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-12-26 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Protect and grow your finances with help from this definitive and practical guide to behavioral economics—revised and updated to reflect new economic realities. In their fascinating investigation of the ways we handle money, Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich reveal the psychological forces—the patterns of thinking and decision making—behind seemingly irrational behavior. They explain why so many otherwise savvy people make foolish financial choices: why investors are too quick to sell winning stocks and too slow to sell losing shares, why home sellers leave money on the table and home buyers don’t get the biggest bang for their buck, why borrowers pay too much credit card interest and savers can’t sock away as much as they’d like, and why so many of us can’t control our spending. Focusing on the decisions we make every day, Belsky and Gilovich provide invaluable guidance for avoiding the financial faux pas that can cost thousands of dollars each year. Filled with fresh insight; practical advice; and lively, illustrative anecdotes, this book gives you the tools you need to harness the powerful science of behavioral economics in any financial environment.

Download or read book The Luck Uglies written by Paul Durham and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in a series with the makings of a modern classic, The Luck Uglies is an irresistible cross between Chris Colfer's Land of Stories series and Kelly Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon, overflowing with adventure, secrets, friendship, and magic. Rye O'Chanter has seen a lot of strange things happen in Village Drowning: Children are chased through the streets. Families are fined for breaking laws that don't even exist. Girls aren't allowed to read anymore, and certain books—books that hold secrets about Drowning's past—have been outlawed altogether. Now a terrifying encounter has eleven-year-old Rye convinced that the monstrous, supposedly extinct Bog Noblins have returned. Before the monsters disappeared, there was only one way to defeat them—the Luck Uglies. But the Luck Uglies have long since been exiled, and there's nobody left who can protect the village. As Rye dives into Drowning's maze of secrets, rules, and lies, she begins to question everything she's been told about the village's legend of outlaws and beasts . . . and what she'll discover is that it may take a villain to save them from the monsters. This critically acclaimed debut middle grade novel was named an ALA Notable Book and a New York Public Library Title for Reading and Sharing and won the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Speculative Fiction and a Sunshine State Young Readers Award.

Download or read book A Little Life written by Hanya Yanagihara and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

Download or read book Lucky Broken Girl written by Ruth Behar and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2018 Pura Belpre Award! “A book for anyone mending from childhood wounds.”—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street In this unforgettable multicultural coming-of-age narrative—based on the author’s childhood in the 1960s—a young Cuban-Jewish immigrant girl is adjusting to her new life in New York City when her American dream is suddenly derailed. Ruthie’s plight will intrigue readers, and her powerful story of strength and resilience, full of color, light, and poignancy, will stay with them for a long time. Ruthie Mizrahi and her family recently emigrated from Castro’s Cuba to New York City. Just when she’s finally beginning to gain confidence in her mastery of English—and enjoying her reign as her neighborhood’s hopscotch queen—a horrific car accident leaves her in a body cast and confined her to her bed for a long recovery. As Ruthie’s world shrinks because of her inability to move, her powers of observation and her heart grow larger and she comes to understand how fragile life is, how vulnerable we all are as human beings, and how friends, neighbors, and the power of the arts can sweeten even the worst of times.

Download or read book Heads I Win Tails I Win written by Spencer Jakab and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opines that most people lack the skills and knowledge to invest their money but do it anyway, and unsuccessfully. Explains how to invest wisely and how markets really work. Looks at how to double a retirement fund.

Download or read book The Dumb Things Smart People Do with Their Money written by Jill Schlesinger and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You’re smart. So don’t be dumb about money. Pinpoint your biggest money blind spots and take control of your finances with these tools from CBS News Business Analyst and host of the nationally syndicated radio show Jill on Money, Jill Schlesinger. “A must-read . . . This straightforward and pleasingly opinionated book may persuade more of us to think about financial planning.”—Financial Times Hey you . . . you saw the title. You get the deal. You’re smart. You’ve made a few dollars. You’ve done what the financial books and websites tell you to do. So why isn’t it working? Maybe emotions and expectations are getting in the way of good sense—or you’re paying attention to the wrong people. If you’ve started counting your lattes, for god’s sake, just stop. Read this book instead. After decades of working as a Wall Street trader, investment adviser, and money expert for CBS News, Jill Schlesinger reveals thirteen costly mistakes you may be making right now with your money. Drawing on personal stories and a hefty dose of humor, Schlesinger argues that even the brightest people can behave like financial dumb-asses because of emotional blind spots. So if you’ve saved for college for your kids before saving for retirement, or you’ve avoided drafting a will, this is the book for you. By following Schlesinger’s rules about retirement, college financing, insurance, real estate, and more, you can save money and avoid countless sleepless nights. It could be the smartest investment you make all year. Praise for The Dumb Things Smart People Do with Their Money “Common sense is not always common, especially when it comes to managing your money. Consider Jill Schlesinger’s book your guide to all the things you should know about money but were never taught. After reading it, you’ll be smarter, wiser, and maybe even wealthier.”—Chris Guillebeau, author of Side Hustle and The $100 Startup “A must-read, whether you’re digging yourself out of a financial hole or stacking up savings for the future, The Dumb Things Smart People Do with Their Money is a personal finance gold mine loaded with smart financial nuggets delivered in Schlesinger’s straight-talking, judgment-free style.”—Beth Kobliner, author of Make Your Kid a Money Genius (Even If You’re Not) and Get a Financial Life