Josh Piven, an alumnus of Creative Writing at Penn, has published a new book, _As Luck Would Have It_ (Villard/Random House, on sale date October 7th)

"Luck" is a narrative, non-fiction work about the phenomenon of luck, as examined through the stories of people who have had amazing good or bad luck in their lives. The stories range from the whimsical (the guy who invented the Pet Rock, the guy who discovered Cabbage Patch Kids and Pokemon) to the extreme (a guy struck by lightning, a $180 million lottery winner, a woman who survived a plane crash at sea) and also include research on how luck works and how people deal with and prepare for it.