Why are some people born with the golden touch, "....whereas everything others of us touch turns into fecal matter?" What is the origin of good luck and bad luck - fortune and misfortune? Is superstition nothing but foolishness? Or, is there a solid and logical reason for its existence? With unique and original reasoning, wry drollery, and innumerable examples from antiquity and from modern times, Armando Benitez endeavors to answer those questions. Along the way, he addresses the matter of preordained destiny. Our fate is immutable, Benitez says, and yet there is an escape. If you want to find out how this can be, read this thoughtful, entertaining and remarkable work.
-- Betsy Olavarueth,
Editor, The Puerto Escondido Times
The Roots and Origins of Fortune and Misfortune was originally published in 2000 by Hampton Roads Publishing, of Virginia. Hampton Roads insisted, over the author’s strenuous objections, in combining another of the author’s works, Fate, Coincidence, and the Outcome of Horse Races with the present work, under the title of Sheer Superstition, allowing the first-named work to go out of print. The author eventually recovered the publishing rights to both books and Alondra Press has subsequently reprinted Fate, Coincidence, and the Outcome of Horse Races in a new edition. The present Alondra Press edition of The Origins of Fortune and Misfortune has excised the Coincidence and the Outcome of Horse Races chapters, introduced some corrections and some updates, but remains substantially unchanged. Alondra Press agrees with the author that each of these books deserves its own separate edition. The author wishes to express once more his gratitude towards Hampton Roads for the original publication of his two books, despite his unhappiness with the way they were handled.
-- Pennelope Aletras-Leight, Editor --
