The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success – Large Print Author: Visit Amazon's Megan McArdle Page | Language: English | ISBN:
067002614X | Format: EPUB
The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success – Large Print Description
Review
Praise for The Up Side of Down
“A thought-provoking study of failure—our greatest fear and greatest motivator. McArdle’s lively prose underscores an entertaining roster of tales of risk-taking. . . . Her advice is important not only for individuals, but for wider economic growth; society has to reward experimentation, risk-taking, and working outside our comfort zones. This funny, cheerful look at helping teams overcome failure and find room to experiment will be a boon to business readers.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An illuminating look at the psychology behind rebounding from defeat. . . . McArdle has found a humble, intelligent way of infusing positivity and opportunity into personal losses. . . . Her message is a significant one with both personal and economic impact: There can be no vast success without initial failures, and it’s important to foster a culture of risk-takers who embrace experimentation in working outside of their comfort zones. . . . Sage counsel on how to learn from failure with humor and grace.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The Up Side of Down reveals a forgotten secret to success: failure. This gracefully written, carefully researched book offers a timely and critical message. In a world that’s obsessed with perfection, Megan McArdle shows that our accomplishments depend on whether we can make mistakes and learn from them.”
—Adam Grant, Wharton professor and author of Give and Take
“This is a vibrant book on a vital subject. It’s full of unexpected insights and is a pleasure to read.”
—Tim Harford, author of Adapt and The Undercover Economist and the “Dear Economist” column at the Financial Times
“Megan McArdle has written the seminal book about renewal and American greatness: The Up Side of Down will teach you to embrace failure and use it to reinvent yourself and your organization.”
—Tyler Cowen, author of Discover Your Inner Economist and The Great Stagnation, co-creator of the economics blog Marginal Revolution
“This is both a surprising and an immensely comforting book. Drawing on academic research, reporting, and not least the failures in her own life, Megan McArdle convincingly demonstrates that avoiding failure isn’t what matters, but how we cope with failure. Sparkling with wit and insight in every chapter, The Up Side of Down has something for anyone who has ever failed, or lived in fear of failure—in other words, all of us.”
—Greg Ip, author of The Little Book of Economics
“It’s time for defeat, not just victory, to have a thousand fathers. In this wise, thought-provoking, and personal book, Megan McArdle makes the powerful case that we have as much or more to learn from our failures as we do from successes. With relevant case studies from Detroit to Hollywood, she seamlessly weaves together strategic and tactical insights into how to make big decisions right—and learn from the many bad decisions we inevitably make along the way. Essential reading for executives, entrepreneurs, and students of life.”
—Parag Khanna, author of How to Run the World and Director of the Hybrid Reality Institute
About the Author
Megan McArdle is a special correspondent for Newsweek/The Daily Beast. A graduate of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, she has been a finance and economics correspondent for The Economist and a business columnist and blogger for The Atlantic. She lives with her husband, Peter, in Washington, D.C.
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- Series: For readers of Drive, Outliers, and Daring Greatly, a counterintuitive, paradigm-shifting new take on what makes people and companies succeed
- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (February 11, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 067002614X
- ISBN-13: 978-0670026142
- Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Failure. We've all experienced it. Can we benefit from it? The answer is maybe, depending on the costs of failure.
If the costs of failure are high, e.g., repaying debts for the rest of life, people will avoid taking risks. As a result, society will stagnate, because few take risks.
But if the costs of failure are low, people will take more chances, start more businesses, try experiments that might prove something bold. That is one great thing about America; the penalties for failure are low. Some have said we are the land of unlimited second chances. After resigning from the presidency, Richard Nixon became an influential voice on foreign policy.
Megan McArdle uses her own life and many other societal problems to illustrate how a proper use of failure can benefit individuals and society as a whole. Failure is how we learn. As some have said, "The wise learn from the failures of others, normal people learn from their own failures, but the stupid don't learn."
I enjoyed this book a great deal, but I want to point out a few of the chapters that particularly struck me.
In Chapter 8, she described the various ways that ideologues described the causes of the financial crisis. The Left and the Right chose their own monologues to explain the economic failure that occurred. The truth was far more banal, as average people bought into a housing mania, with financial institutions more than willing to facilitate it, levered as they were. When the bull market ended, many people found themselves with too much debt relative to the value of their houses.
Chapter 9 was the one from which I learned the most, as it described a probation method used in Hawaii, that I would describe as the judicial equivalent of spanking.
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