Born Losers: A History of Failure in America

• Publisher:   Harvard University Press
• Number Of Pages:   384
• Publication Date:   2006-04-30
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   067402107X
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780674021075

What makes somebody a Loser, a person doomed to unfulfilled dreams and humiliation? Nobody is born to lose, and yet failure embodies our worst fears. The Loser is our national bogeyman, and his history over the past two hundred years reveals the dark side of success, how economic striving reshaped the self and soul of America.

From colonial days to the Columbine tragedy, Scott Sandage explores how failure evolved from a business loss into a personality deficit, from a career setback to a gauge of our self-worth. From hundreds of private diaries, family letters, business records, and even early credit reports, Sandage reconstructs the dramas of real-life Willy Lomans. He unearths their confessions and denials, foolish hopes and lost faith, sticking places and changing times. Dreamers, suckers, and nobodies come to life in the major scenes of American history, like the Civil War and the approach of big business, showing how the national quest for success remade the individual ordeal of failure.

Born Losers is a pioneering work of American cultural history, which connects everyday attitudes and anxieties about failure to lofty ideals of individualism and salesmanship of self. Sandage's storytelling will resonate with all of us as it brings to life forgotten men and women who wrestled with The Loser--the label and the experience--in the days when American capitalism was building a nation of winners.

This deals with the usually offstage history of failure and failures, what happens to them, what they have in common -- and how here in America we define ourselves as successful or failed. That is, we define our lives in business terms. But this is a colorful, even rollicking at times book, anything but programmatic or dry. One chapter, for example, deals with the literary genre of begging letters sent to John D. Rockefeller. I was stimulated and entertained. This may be a book I'll want to reread at some point.

this book is full of facts, yet easy to read.
The introduction is amazing. (You can see if you'll
like the book by reading the intro online.)
The book gracefully builds from the intro,
giving more information and examples.
The author is a historian, and uses footnotes
and includes a detailed bibliography. If you want to learn a lot about social attitudes
towards business success/failure around 100 years ago,
and also understand the social and business forces
that helped the successful and hindered the 'failures',
you'll want to read this book.
I chose this book because i want to learn why
some people succeed and some people fail, even though
both try and are intelligent.
The self-help books state 'hard work = success'.
Yet you and I know that's not always true.
Success doesn't result solely from effort.
And Failure doesn't always occur because a person was lazy.
There are a lot of uncontrollable variables in any persons success or failure.
If effort and preparation were all that are necessary, then why is Bill Gates (a college dropout), Larry Ellison (Oracle Corp) (a college dropout), Russell Simmons (Hip-hop record producer, college dropout) all much wealthier than 99% of the Ivy league MBA's who graduated in the last 20 years?
The author is able to present many examples, and give explanations to support his theories.

pass: gigle.ws

ifile.it download (Report broken link)

Bookmark Born Losers: A History of Failure in America

Hyperlink code: