This Is the Author

"I wrote this book because, over the years, I saw how my perspectives, although molded and sculpted to warrant success, weren’t really the norm of athletes or most people. It’s a false misnomer that you have to have this angst or chip on your shoulder to succeed as an athlete, and science now supports that positivity and optimism are really the drivers of success."

Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/555798/let-your-mind-run/

Listen to this special This is the Author compilation of Lidia Bastianich, Junot Diaz, Joey Coleman, Daniel José Older, Suzy Fincham-Gray, J. Stuart Ablon, Gregory Pardlo, and Sir Ken Robinson talk about how libraries have influenced their lives.

"The origin of this book came from a speech that I gave a few years ago about the importance of the first 100 days of the customer relationship. At the time, to be frank, I wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea or not. But I was asked to give a speech at an event where there was a contest, and the audience would vote on their favorite speech, and the winner would win a $10,000 prize that was a donation to the charity of their choice. Well, thankfully, the audience voted for my speech. And in that moment, I knew that there might be some legs under this idea."

Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/561172/never-lose-a-customer-again/

"This book is actually my memoir. Being a chef, a restaurateur, and a cooking show host—I'm known for that. But the more I cooked, the more I wrote cookbooks...the more people wanted to know about me, my personal life. Because my trek, my coming to America, my being an immigrant, has an interesting story. And in today’s time I felt I wanted to share my story, my experience as an immigrant coming to America—the difficulties in doing so and the joys and the rewards that I reaped in coming to America."

Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/549475/my-american-dream/

"I wrote the book and get to be in it. It’s very exciting. I casted myself as Christopher because I felt like it was a really fun departure for me as an actor. I love that Christopher is the kind of guy a piece of us wanted to be a little bit growing up, and kind of, still now. No worries in the world, and exudes this confidence that comes from, probably a six-pack, of both beer and the one on his stomach."

Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/554754/folded-notes-from-high-school/

"My book is about being a young—well, relatively young—disgusting idiot who makes terrible choices, and wants to get revenge on anyone who ever dumped me."

Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/555854/meaty/

"I’ve worked in education for a long time, and I’ve written quite a few books addressed to people as individuals and also to educators, but I’ve also had lots of conversation with parents. I am a parent. And I’m constantly being asked by parents about what’s going on in education, and what the right thing is to do for their children."

Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/315396/you-your-child-and-school/

"Our book is about so many wonderful things. It’s really about being raw, and real, and not being ashamed to speak the truth, and I get that from my mom. Growing up I could ask her any and everything, whether it be about sex, drugs, dating, relationships—it did not matter! She would answer me honestly."

Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/561936/perfect-is-boring/

"My book is about three young people: Freya, Harun, and Nathaniel. They are complete strangers who have seemingly nothing in common except for this one key thing, which is that each of them, in their own way, is lost. They collide, literally, in New York's Central Park, and that kicks off a day together where they form this intense friendship and a little bit of romance as they kind of come to understand that maybe the way out of their own loss lies is inhabiting one another’s."

Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/554278/i-have-lost-my-way/

"I wrote MY DEAD PARENTS because after my mother died I was cleaning out her house and found love letters that my parents had exchanged long before my sister and I were born. The letters were so fascinating and totally confusing because the people that my parents were in those letters were so different form the people I knew."

Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/247514/my-dead-parents/