Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success

Through a series of unfortunate setbacks and questionable decisions, business journalist Newman (coauthor of Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11) was at a crossroads as he entered middle age and decided to research the concept of failure. What he found proved to be rich fodder for this insightful look at how setbacks can actually be a springboard to success and how certain personality traits allow individuals to rebound from adversity. Newman draws on the lives and experiences of noteworthy businesspeople, innovators, and artists, including Ben Franklin, who as a young man faced numerous financial obstacles, and Thomas Edison, who overcame deafness, failed experiments, and economic difficulties to become one of the greatest inventors of our time. He also examines the lives of contemporary rebounders like Tim Westergren, the eventually successful founder and CEO of radio juggernaut Pandora; Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, who struggled for decades before achieving artistic renown; and Jack Bogle, who suffered a rough childhood and an unceremonious firing from a prestigious CEO job before founding the legendary Vanguard Group. This engaging work is sure to inspire readers to view adversity and failure from a new perspective, much as Bogle did when he said, “I have come to regard failure as another essential of leadership.” Agent: Lisa Gallagher, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. (May)