Born Losers

		Interviews Media organizations interested in interviewing Scott Sandage about Born Losers should contact Rose Ann Miller, Senior Publicist at Harvard University Press, 617/495-4714, RoseAnn_Miller@harvard.edu. Newsday "Loser has evolved into anything but a neutral term, Sandage says, implying that a person is, at best, inadequate and, at worst, a criminal or monster. "The stigma of being a loser is more intense than the aura of being a winner," Sandage says. "A winner is what we all want to be. The problem is not that winners gloat too much or winners take all, even though sometimes they do, but that equating success with being first makes all the rest of us losers, and that's the thing we can't live with." History on Book TV Sunday May 8, 2005 at 7 p.m. The Brian Lehrer Show (WNYC / NPR), April 25, 2005 Historian Scott Sandage on the changing definition of failure in America. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 25, 2005 "Most Americans know that Donald Trump didn't rise to success solely by pulling himself up by his bootstraps, and yet I think we mostly still believe -- hook, line and sinker -- the notion that when someone fails, it's his own fault." The Tavis Smiley Show (PBS) April 14, 2005 "In a thought-provoking new book, author Scott Sandage argues failure is an inherent part of the American fabric, and that what failure means today is very different from what it meant generations ago. Tonight, a conversation with Carnegie Mellon University Professor Scott Sandage, author of the new book 'Born Losers.'" The Diane Rehm Show "The American Dream stresses winning over losing. But not everyone makes it. A historian examines the flip side of success through the stories of dreamers, suckers, and other misfits." (National Public Radio), 28 March 2005 Focus 580 with David Inge (WILL-radio, Urbana, Ill.), 8 April 2005 Four O'Clock Wednesdays with Jon Wiener "The history of FAILURE IN AMERICA: Scott Sandage has a terrific book on the topic." (KPFK Los Angeles), 30 March 2005 Des Moines Register (Iowa) “The four-year project stretched to 10 as people who put faith in [Sandage] wondered if he would ever finish the book. 'What if you fail to write your book about failure?' they asked him. 'As I took more and more years to crank this out, I fell into the same traps I write about, calling myself a loser and feeling I wasn't good enough to do this work,' he said.” Mason City Globe-Gazette (Iowa) “[Sandage] said if there's a basic message for readers, it is this: 'Americans are too hard on themselves. Being rich equals success. Having an ordinary life equals failure. That's a pretty hard standard to live up to, a dark and dangerous way to think.'” Washington Post 1/28/05 "You are not what you do," he tells his students. "Your career is rightly part of who you are," especially if you choose work you love. But believing it's the whole enchilada makes failure a deadly thing: "If your achievements implode, there is literally nothing left of you." The New York Times Magazine "If you go back to the early 1800's, to be a failure meant basically one thing: to go bankrupt in business. Today if we say I feel like such a failure, we think generally of someone who's a loser, somebody who has some defect in his personality." NPR / WBUR: On Point "Americans hold special scorn for the term "loser," but in a nation that worships success, their stories might say more about the American struggle than the great lions of any age. In this radio diary, history professor Scott Sandage, author of the new book, "Born Losers," tells the rich, revealing tale of the American dream, gone wrong." Seattle Public Radio "In this hour of The Conversation, we talk to the editor of Failure Magazine and Scott Sandage, author of Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Sandage concludes that failure isn’t the dark side of the American dream… failure is the foundation of the American dream." Wisconsin Public Radio "Scott Sandage is the author of "Born Losers: A History of Failure in America." He tells Anne Strainchamps that the very meaning of failure has changed in American society over 200 years, and we hear some examples of famous American failures." Fast Company Magazine "In America, failure is considered a disruption in progress," says Scott A. Sandage, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon University who teaches a course on success and failure. "Even as the understanding of economic challenges increases, there's an intensification of shame around failure."
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