Born Losers

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.

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.

Everyone was born a Champion, but the labels that society places on individuals make them question their status as a Champion that has a right to achieve massive success. In this book, John Di Lemme digs into the fact that Champions are Born, Losers are Made plus adds a Bonus Section on the Inner Secrets of Leadership.

I'm Raymond, and my school is a joke. It's full of bullies and troublemakers. My solution? Be a nobody and fade into the background. But our new principal has blown my cover because he's chosen me as a prefect! It was looking pretty bad, until I made a crazy promise to get new air con for the classrooms. Now I'm REALLY in trouble!

Revealing that adolescent boys often identify themselves as losers, loners, and rebels, this book investigates the interior lives of boys as they develop their sense of self and begin the spiritual journey that will carry them throughout their lives. (Practical Life)

“Actually, suicidal persons don ́t want to die, they just want to stop living the way they have been up to now.” People who suffer intensely and think about taking their life are experiencing a severe depression and high degree of hopelessness and confusion which darken and limit their vision of life. It is a perspective that only allows them to see death as the solution to heal the suffering their existence has become. Joseluis Canales (Dado) reveals in this book that suicide is not the only solution to pain. The text provides a searing reflection on this tragic subject while offering perspectives to overcome it. This expert on psychotrauma delicately unpacks the intricacies of the act so that those with a suicidal risk can begin to heal their pain and see the life options before them—options which right now seem unassailable. Dado accomplishes, through intelligent and thought-provoking arguments, an intimacy with readers who may be dealing with this life crisis, to help them find an escape from the haziness and confusion enveloping them. “My dream, my hope behind all this work, is that this book falls into the hands of someone that’s considering suicide as the only way out from the hell they are suffering. This person may be you, and perhaps by reading this book you can overcome the existential crisis you are living through, and your life can go on. My fantasy is that someone at suicidal risk unable to imagine that this suffering can be left behind, decides to seek help...Maybe, just maybe, this book can save one life. That life may be yours and because of that and nothing else, it will have been worth it to write this book”—Dado