Search results for ""Author David Flusfeder""

‘A joy’ Philippe Sands ‘Glorious’ David Spiegelhalter A fascinating, enchanting and personal look at the meaning of luck, and the way in which it has shaped our shared history and continues to inflect our day to day lives. What does it mean to be lucky? How might we mitigate the effects of bad luck and maximise those of good? Is there really such a thing as ‘luck’ at all? To answer these questions, David Flusfeder sets out on a quest that will take him across the world and through history. Travelling from Siberia to Versailles, from his father’s life in war-time Poland to Nietzsche on the slopes of Vesuvius, Flusfeder investigates some victors of luck and those who were defeated by it. In following him, we find ourselves confronting who we are and how we might choose to live. ‘Thrilling, intelligent and wilfully unique … I loved it’ James Runcie, author of The Great Passion ‘Ruminative … page-turning’ TLS ‘Fascinating … An eminently enjoyable and engrossing page-turner’ The Jewish Chronicle

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Problem: Best friends keep giving extremely generous giftsSolution: Give better ones in return Philip has a lot on his mind. At home, in his unnecessarily large, excessively expensive house in south London, he is attempting to become a Taoist master of love with his wife Alice, but his quest is forever being interrupted by the requests of his twin daughters: Can we have a pony – please? I want to go to boarding school – please? At work, in his shed/office at the bottom of the garden, between countless games of Minesweep and FreeCell, Philip is trying to pay the mortgage by writing instruction manuals for Korean bread-making machines. And, at parties where he is concerned that he is not taken seriously (he has been variously mistaken as a doctor/waiter and sinologist) Philip tells the world he is a scriptwriter, even though all he has managed to pen is a story he calls Wang the Unlucky Scholar. But, above all, Philip is worrying about his best friends Sean and Barry. The problem is simple: they give great presents. Their gifts are exquisite: a full set of Italian crockery, a handmade corkscrew from Venice. They give them indiscriminately: on birthdays, at parties and quite often for no reason whatsoever. And, most distressingly, these presents break all bounds of generosity: two FA Cup Final tickets beside the royal box, a skiing holiday for Philip's entire family. These are gifts that hurt a man's pride, these are gifts that can never be matched.

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