Most Popular Books by David Epstein

The #1 New York Times bestseller that has all America talking: as seen/heard on CNN''s Fareed Zakaria GPS, Morning Joe, CBS This Morning, The Bill Simmons Podcast, Rich Roll, and more. “The most important business—and parenting—book of the year.” —Forbes “Urgent and important. . . an essential read for bosses, parents, coaches, and anyone who cares about improving performance.” —Daniel H. Pink Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see. Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.

Is Usain Bolt a genetic one-off? Could we all beat Bradley Wiggins if we trained hard enough? To what extent is our ability on the sports field dictated by our genes? In this controversial and engaging exploration of athletic success, Sports Illustrated writer David Epstein tackles the great nature vs. nurture debate and traces how far science has come in solving this great riddle.

A pathbreaking new perspective on derivation, the series of operations by which sentences are formed.

This study investigates the distribution of traces and their antecedents. The first chapter outlines the Government and Binding theory, enabling those unfamiliar with this framework to understand the ensuing discussion. The second chapter concerns the Empty Category Principle. Argument/adjunct asymmetries are shown to follow from an independently motivated indexing algorithm, which entails that adjuncts display an impoverished indexing. The third chapter deduces the properties of A-chains from independently motivated principles, offering a thorough examination of Super-Raising, Improper Movement, and the Local Binding Condition. The final chapter challenges the standard assumptions regarding Case requirements on traces.

Epstein investigates the relationship between the ineffable art of music and the hard science of neurobiology. He integrates philosophic and scientific inquiry to formulate a theory of the fundamental yet elusive quality in music time. Derived from an analytical study of motion, tempo and emotion, Shaping Time offers a theory of the way we percieve, perform and interpret music. Epstein suggests that audience satisfaction with a musical performance results from timing trajectories established by the performer at the beginning of the piece. When the timing of a performance conflicts with audience anticipation, listeners experience physical and affective discomfort. Epstein applies his thesis to a wide range of examples for the repertoire.

THE STORY: Three lifelong buddies, Vietnam vets, are about to pay off a balloon on money borrowed from a local heavy. They meet at their New Jersey bar and grill to set up for a celebration: After years of hard work, they will finally own the pla

The new Fourth Revised Edition of International Litigation provides U.S. courts practitioners with a step-by-step guide through international litigation, from pre-litigation considerations (obtaining foreign counsel, jurisdiction, choice of forum, etc.) to enforcement of judgments and arbitral awards. Supplemented by practical checklists and strategies throughout, solutions are offered to pressing questions: Does arbitration or litigation afford the better chance for success? What contract drafting, jurisdictional, or enforcement of judgment issues are posed when a foreign sovereign is a party? What Act of State immunities apply to sensitive sovereign or political issues? What motions to dismiss or other procedural issues should be anticipated? Can international differences in service of process, evidence gathering, and jurisdictional points improve or jeopardize the chances for success?

A fundamental concept in all syntactic theories is that of a syntactic relation between syntactic objects. While recent work in the Minimalist Framework has attempted to explain the nature of syntactic objects in terms of simple and conceptually necessary assumptions regarding the language faculty, the relations that hold between syntactic objects has not been similarly explored. The authors initiate such an exploration and argue that certain fundamental relations such as c-command, dominance, and checking relations can be explained within a derivational approach to structure-building.This approach has significant consequences concerning the architecture of the syntactic component. Semantic and phonological interpretation need not operate upon the output phrase-structure representation created by the syntactic derivation. Interpretation is more readily computed derivationally, by interpreting the steps of a derivation, rather than the single output structure created by it. The result is a new and controversial level-free model of the syntactic component of the human language faculty. This topical and timely Minimalist analysis will interest professional and theoretical linguists, syntacticians, and anyone interested in contemporary approaches to syntactic theory.

The essays in this important collection explore wide-ranging aspects of the syntax and semantics of human languages. Key topics covered include movement phenomena and the syntax of logical form, methods in generative linguistics and the role of rules vs. principles in syntactic theory. This volume makes a vital contribution to substantive and methodological debates in linguistic theory.

Examining the elements of musical structure and the ways they provide unity, coherence and uniqueness in classic-romantic music, the author defines the concept of Grundgestalt, or "basic shape" and follows its development from the music of the classic-romantic Viennese school to the twelve-tone compositions of Schoenberg.

A comparison of various criminal procedures in the United States.

This study, first published in 1987, explores how personal hatred - ''inimicitia'' - could arise and how it was often central in the formation of political factions. In particular, groups opposing such powerful figures as Pompey and Caesar might be united by nothing more than common hatred of the individual. An important feature too was the criminal trial, because of the highly personal nature of the Roman adversary system at the time.

Making and Doing Deals is a book that your students will learn from long after they graduate. It is also a book that should be fun for you to teach from. It''s a book that students will enjoy, and, therefore, a book that they will read. Since the First Edition, students have been reading Making and Doing Deals because the cases, problems, and text not only help them learn what they need to know as first-year law students, but also address the real-world problems and situations they will encounter after their final exam.

This Supplement is designed to accompany Baldwin, Brand, Epstein, and Gordon''s International Civil Dispute Resolution: A Problem-Oriented Coursebook, which sets forth the key legal and practical issues to successfully handle international dispute resolutions.

"This collection explicates one of the core ideas underpinning Minimalist theory-explanation via simplification-and its role in shaping some of the latest developments within this framework, specifically the simplest Merge hypothesis and the reduction of syntactic phenomena to third factor considerations. Bringing together recent papers on the topic by Epstein, Kitahara, and Seely, with one by Epstein, Seely and Obata, and one by Kitahara, the book begins with an introduction which situates the papers in a cohesive overview of some of the latest research on Minimalism, as facilitated by current theoretical developments. The volume integrates a historical overview of evolutions in Merge starting with Chomsky''s (pre-Merge) Aspects model to current theoretical models, including a primer of Chomsky''s most recent theory of Merge based on the concept of Workspace. The Minimalist notions of ''perfection'' and ''simplification'' are also outlined, providing clearly-explicated coverage of key technical concepts within the framework as applied to grammatical phenomena. Taken as a whole, the collection both introduces and advances Minimalist theory for students and scholars in linguistics and related sub-disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science, as well as offering new directions for future research for researchers in these fields"--

In this path-breaking book, David Epstein and Sharyn O''Halloran produce the first unified theory of policy making between the legislative and executive branches. Examining major US policy initiatives from 1947 to 1992, the authors describe the conditions under which the legislature narrowly constrains executive discretion, and when it delegates authority to the bureaucracy. In doing so, the authors synthesize diverse and competitive literatures, from transaction cost and principal-agent theory in economics, to information models developed in both economics and political science, to substantive and theoretical work on legislative organization and on bureaucratic discretion.

Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. David Epstein discovered that in most fields generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel.