Fortunate Accidents could be summarized as a serendipitous meeting or event that contributes something positive to a person's life. This collection of stories and experiences share one person's path as an athlete, a paramedic, and an entrepreneur as he learns how mindfulness and resilience work together to build leadership, growth, and surprising opportunities.

"Fascinating and exhilarating—Sean B. Carroll at his very best."—Bill Bryson, author of The Body: A Guide for Occupants From acclaimed writer and biologist Sean B. Carroll, a rollicking, awe-inspiring story of the surprising power of chance in our lives and the world Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world. Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things—any of which might never have occurred—had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death. This is a relatively small book about a really big idea. It is also a spirited tale. Drawing inspiration from Monty Python, Kurt Vonnegut, and other great thinkers, and crafted by one of today's most accomplished science storytellers, A Series of Fortunate Events is an irresistibly entertaining and thought-provoking account of one of the most important but least appreciated facts of life.

More than likely, you have always wanted to write a book, screenplay, or stage play. Now you can and base it on your personal life experiences. Let this handbook be your guide into the writing world as a hobby or profession. You will find in this book a large number of writing secretes, tips, advice, and pitfalls. The material is not complicated, theoretical, or analytical. It is presented in an easy-to-grasp format. As you go through the pages, you will feel like you are having a cup of coffee with your own private mentor. This is a fun book, and the subject matter is humorously presented. You will be shown how to take the various events of your life and develop them into a writing project. In addition, essentials such as grammar, punctuation, and good writing skills are painlessly presented. We have all had interesting experiences in our lives. You can now join countless others who have used their backgrounds as the basis of a book, screenplay, or stage play.

Thirty-three stories about stranded aliens, a horrifying cheesemaker, a boy with the power to make stars vanish, and other frightening things. Includes notes on how the author got his ideas for these stories.

Photography has a unique relationship to chance. Anyone who has wielded a camera has taken a picture ruined by an ill-timed blink or enhanced by an unexpected gesture or expression. Although this proneness to chance may amuse the casual photographer, Robin Kelsey points out that historically it has been a mixed blessing for those seeking to make photographic art. On the one hand, it has weakened the bond between maker and picture, calling into question what a photograph can be said to say. On the other hand, it has given photography an extraordinary capacity to represent the unpredictable dynamism of modern life. By delving into these matters, Photography and the Art of Chance transforms our understanding of photography and the work of some of its most brilliant practitioners. The effort to make photographic art has involved a call and response across generations. From the introduction of photography in 1839 to the end of the analog era, practitioners such as William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, Frederick Sommer, and John Baldessari built upon and critiqued one another’s work in their struggle to reconcile aesthetic aspiration and mechanical process. The root problem was the technology’s indifference, its insistence on giving a bucket the same attention as a bishop and capturing whatever wandered before the lens. Could such an automatic mechanism accommodate imagination? Could it make art? Photography and the Art of Chance reveals how daring innovators expanded the aesthetic limits of photography to create art for a modern world.