Sublime

Now he had a machine for creating wagers in which both parties enjoyed positive expected value. That machine was named Asher. Interns were lined up to take the bet. “People get so obsessed with free dollars when you frame it correctly,” said Sam. He was by then in full obsessive gaming mode. “There was nothing that was going to stop me. If I’d have

or Sud-americano

“So guy walks into a bar,” I said again. “With an octopus. Says to the bartender ‘I’ll bet a hundred dollars this octopus can play any instrument in the place.’”

In the first pew, Beamer and Jenny couldn’t move. They had watched all this, as the understanding of what had really gone wrong in their lives revealed itself to them, which was that the tide pool you’re born into is only manageable if someone gives you swimming lessons. Or, put more simply, in order to be a normal person, you had to at least see n

But in the world of satisfying stories—her preferred domain—both of Olivia’s parents are so much less than they should have been.

By far the best account of Benny Leonard, both of his mystique and of his fighting style, I discovered, is by Budd Schulberg in one of his collections of boxing pieces. Schulberg, to my mind, may be the most underrated of all American authors, the author of the best firsthand account of F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his novel The Disenchanted, and the in