A New York City-based author, illustrator, and educator with ties to Time Magazine and The New York Times among other leading publications, Ellen Weinstein has received awards from organizations that range from the Society of Illustrators to Communication Arts. In her latest work, she turns her attention to the notion of “good luck” as it applies to top performers in their respective fields.
Recipes for Good Luck: The Superstitions, Rituals, and Practices of Extraordinary People examines the lengths to which skilled professionals will go in order to achieve exceptional results…even if these lengths don’t exactly make logical sense. For example, did you know that Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke always stands on his head for several minutes before each show? And we may have never gotten Murder on the Orient Express without Agatha Christie’s regular ritual of munching on apples while soaking in the bathtub; for some reason, this process greased the wheels of her mind as she envisioned her now-classic murder mysteries.
Weinstein pairs each of the fascinating stories in Recipes for Good Luck with an equally compelling illustration. Are these recipes for success or simply examples of the foibles that plague even the most exceptional of human minds?