A story about the will? Doesn't sound particularly exciting or extraordinary. Maybe not. Depends on what a person goes through to discover their will. I see. You mean a will to live? Yes. And that's what American Loser is about? Primarily, yes. About discovering how powerful a person's will can be. That's certainly more interesting. Who might read such a story? Someone who's been in pain; who's questioned their own existence and considered maybe not being around tomorrow. Anyone else who might like this story? People amused by extreme behavior: sexual oddity and odysseys, drug use, and other absurdities that arise from passionate living.

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.

The 1992 presidential election campaign showed just how deep were the divisions within the Republican party. In Beautiful Losers, Samuel Francis argues that the victory of the Democratic party marks not only the end of the Reagan-Bush era, but the failure of the American conservatism.

A collection of essays by the late Tony Tanner on a wide range of key American authors.

Hilarious and oddly inspiring, Trainwreck is proof that a life disastrously lived can still turn out beyond anybody's wildest imaginings. Growing up a privileged Manhattan kid, Jeff Nichols should have had it all. Instead, he got a plethora of impairments: learning disabilities, a speech impediment, dyslexia, ADD, and a mild case of Tourette's syndrome. In Trainwreck, his weird and witty memoir of utter dysfunction, Nichols gives an irreverent look at how one "idoit" made good.

A Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller: This "vivid" inside story of WeWork and its CEO tells the remarkable saga of one of the most audacious, and improbable, rises and falls in American business history (Ken Auletta). Christened a potential savior of Silicon Valley's startup culture, Adam Neumann was set to take WeWork, his office share company disrupting the commercial real estate market, public, cash out on the company's forty-seven billion dollar valuation, and break the string of major startups unable to deliver to shareholders. But as employees knew, and investors soon found out, WeWork's capital was built on promises that the company was more than a real estate purveyor, that in fact it was a transformational technology company. Veteran journalist Reeves Weideman dives deep into WeWork and it CEO's astronomical rise, from the marijuana and tequila-filled board rooms to cult-like company summer camps and consciousness-raising with Anthony Kiedis. Billion Dollar Loser is a character-driven business narrative that captures, through the fascinating psyche of a billionaire founder and his wife and co-founder, the slippery state of global capitalism. A Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller “Vivid, carefully reported drama that readers will gulp down as if it were a fast-paced novel” (Ken Auletta)

This collection of more than 150 speeches aims to capture the essence of American oration, presented in chronological order from 1900 across a range of themes and experience. The book includes many historically important speeches. This collection of more than 150 speeches aims to capture the essence of American oration, presented in chronological order from 1900 across a range of themes and experience. The book includes many historically important speeches, from the early years of the century and Plunkitt's honest grafy' to Clinton's apology to the American people over'

Vols. 227-230, no. 2 include: Stuff and nonsense, v. 5-6, no. 8, Jan. 1929-Aug. 1930.

How did the U.S. get into a war over non-existent "weapons of mass destruction"? How did we allow our civil rights to be hijacked and our environment raped? How did we manage to let our personal savings be plundered? How did we get into an exploding financial depression? The greed of Wall Street and many CEOs is linked to the poor parenting of some conservatives, who learned to value success and personal gain more than caring for others. The character disorders of a Bernie Madoff, many investment bankers, sub-prime realtors, past U.S. presidents, and bellicose leaders such as Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin may spring from early childhood trauma, especially from men's conflicts with their fathers. A series of losses abetted by rapid social change and life in an increasingly complex society instead of close-knit communities has accelerated the move to the Right over the past thirty years. It even brought us to the brink of dictatorship. These losses-of identity, self-esteem, love and affection, social supports, and control over life events-are still threatening. Add to the mix poor parenting and you have a perfect recipe for the intense longing for authority, religion, and a homogeneous community life that preceded Hitler's Germany. With luck, President Obama and his team can save us from this authoritarian tide.

Thomas Bernhard was one of the most original writers of the twentieth century. His formal innovation ranks with Beckett and Kafka, his outrageously cantankerous voice recalls Dostoevsky, but his gift for lacerating, lyrical, provocative prose is incomparably his own.One of Bernhard's most acclaimed novels, The Loser centers on a fictional relationship between piano virtuoso Glenn Gould and two of his fellow students who feel compelled to renounce their musical ambitions in the face of Gould's incomparable genius. One commits suicide, while the other-- the obsessive, witty, and self-mocking narrator-- has retreated into obscurity. Written as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, The Loser is a brilliant meditation on success, failure, genius, and fame.