With the born storyteller's command of narrative and imaginative approach, Leonard Mlodinow vividly demonstrates how our lives are profoundly informed by chance and randomness and how everything from wine ratings and corporate success to school grades and political polls are less reliable than we believe. By showing us the true nature of chance and revealing the psychological illusions that cause us to misjudge the world around us, Mlodinow gives...

Looks at coincidences and unlikely occurrences, delving into the mathematical concepts of probability and sharing stories of striking flukes and coincidences from around the world.

"A frustrated general in Napoleon's army, billeted with one of Berlin's finest families. Elisabeth, a passionate young woman living in that house. The young man with whom she locks eyes through a window as he's engaged in a sexual encounter at the momentNapoleon makes his grand entrance. An entrepreneur in New World exotica, whose house is the setting for the tryst. A slave from Suriname, Mr. Hendrik, with his resentful white American companion, who...

A social scientist dispels people's tidy versions of reality and delves deeply into the theories of random chance and chaos to demonstrate that the world really works through random events that can alter the trajectory of our lives.

"Greg Heffley's on a losing streak. His best friend, Rowley Jefferson, has ditched him, and finding new friends in middle school is proving to be a tough task. To change his fortunes, Greg decides to take a leap of faith and turn his decisions over to chance. Will a roll of the dice turn things around, or is Greg's life destined to be just another hard-luck story?"-- Provided by publisher.

Maddie is a hard working high school senior, waiting to hear from the colleges she applied to, when on a whim she buys a lottery ticket and wins; suddenly she is the center of everybody's attention, including her struggling family, and not necessarily in a good way--only Seth Nguyen, her charming coworker at the local zoo, seems oblivious to her luck, and Maddie is not sure whether telling him will change their developing relationship.