Range (Adapted for Young Readers): How Exploring Your Interests Can Change the World - Hardcover

Epstein, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593624033 ISBN 13: 9780593624036

Verlag: Viking Books for Young Readers, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

Now adapted for young readers, David Epstein's #1 New York Times bestseller Range is full of inspiring stories of athletes, musicians, artists, and scientists, determining that excellence and expertise is built off of trying many things rather than specializing at a young age.

For years, experts have been saying that to become the best at something, one must focus on that skill and only that skill for thousands of hours. But recent research has shown that this school of thought is not necessarily true.

In Range, David Epstein carefully examines the world’s most successful people and discovers that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable— by far the greatest athletes, artists, musicians, and scientists are those who have garnered a wide skillset beginning at a young age, not those who specialized early in one skill.

Carefully adapted for young readers, this book follows inspirational stories of athletes, artists, scientists, and other accomplished adults across many disciplines and provides you with the tools to tap into your limitless potential. How will you expand your range?

This is an accessible and fun social sciences book, with fun behind-the-scenes stories of incredible achievers and their accomplishments, perfect for sports fans and those trying to find their path.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Epstein is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Range and The Sports Gene. He has master's degrees in environmental science and journalism and has worked as an investigative reporter for ProPublica and a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He lives in Washington, DC.

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Introduction
Team Tiger or Team Roger?

Legendary golf player Tiger Woods and tennis icon Roger Federer did not meet each other until 2006, when both athletes were at the height of their powers. Woods attended the final of the US Open tennis tournament in New York, in which Federer was playing. Knowing Woods was there made Federer especially nervous, but he still won, for the third year in a row. Woods joined him in the locker room to celebrate. They connected as only two athletes with their level of stardom could and quickly became friends.
“I’ve never spoken with anybody who was so familiar with the feeling of being invincible,” Federer would later say of his friendship with Woods. Still, their connection almost seemed to surprise him. “Even as a kid his goal was to break the record for winning the most majors. I was just dreaming of just once meeting Boris Becker or being able to play at Wimbledon sometime,” Federer told a biographer. “His story is completely different from mine.”
Federer was right. The origin story of Tiger Woods and his legendary golfing career is remarkable, and it has proved to be highly influential.
When Tiger was just a baby, his father could tell something was different about his son. At six months old, the boy could balance on his father’s hand as his father walked through their home. When Tiger was seven months old, his father gave him a golf club to fool around with, and Tiger dragged it everywhere with him. At ten months old, he climbed down from his high chair, toddled over to a golf club that had been cut down to be the right size for him, and imitated his father’s swing, which he’d been watching in the garage. Tiger was so young he couldn’t talk yet, so his father drew pictures to show him how to correctly place his hands on the club. “It is very difficult to communicate how to putt when the child is too young to talk,” his father would later note.
At age two—­when most children are reaching typical developmental milestones like kicking a ball and standing on tiptoe—­Tiger hit a ball on national television using a golf club that was tall enough to reach his shoulder. That same year, he entered his first golf tournament and won the ten‑and‑under division. At two! His father decided there was no time to waste. By age three, Tiger was learning how to hit his ball out of the sand traps found on golf courses (he called them “sand twaps”), and his father was mapping out his destiny. He knew his son had been chosen for golf greatness and that it was his duty to guide him.
He felt so certain about Tiger’s path that he started teaching his three‑year‑old how to talk to the media. Pretending to be a reporter, he quizzed Tiger, teaching him how to give brief answers and never to offer more than precisely what was asked.
When Tiger was four, his father could drop him off at a golf course at nine in the morning and pick him up eight hours later. Sometimes Tiger came home with money he’d won from those foolish enough to doubt his abilities.
At age eight, Tiger beat his father for the first time. Tiger’s father didn’t mind, because he was convinced that his son was singularly talented and that he was uniquely equipped to help him. He had been an outstanding athlete himself, against enormous odds. Tiger’s father had played baseball in college, and he was the only Black player in the entire conference at the time. He understood people, and discipline. He knew he hadn’t done his best with three kids from a previous marriage, but now he could see that he’d been given a second chance to do the right thing with Tiger. And it was all going according to plan.
Tiger was famous by the time he reached college, and soon his father began talking about his importance in history. His son would have a larger impact than legendary world leaders like Nelson Mandela and Mohandas Gandhi, even greater than the Buddha, he insisted: “There is no limit because he has the guidance. I don’t know yet exactly what form this will take. But he is the Chosen One."
Tiger’s story of becoming an elite golfer is incredible and, as Roger Federer himself noted, completely different from the way Roger’s own story of becoming a tennis champion played out.
Roger’s mom was a coach, but she never coached him. He would kick a ball around with her after he learned to walk. And as a young boy, he played squash with his father on Sundays. He also dabbled in skiing, wrestling, swimming, and skateboarding. He played basketball, handball, tennis, table tennis, badminton over his neighbor’s fence, and soccer at school. He would later give credit to the wide range of sports he played for helping him develop his athleticism and hand‑eye coordination.
Roger found that which sport he was playing really didn’t matter much to him, so long as it included a ball. “I was always very much more interested if a ball was involved,” he would later remember. He was a kid who loved to play. His parents had no particular athletic aspirations for him. “We had no plan A, no plan B,” his mother said. She and Roger’s father encouraged him to sample a wide range of sports. In fact, playing many sports was essential because it kept him busy. Roger “became unbearable,” his mother said, if he had to stay still for too long.
Though his mother taught tennis, she decided against working with him. “He would have just upset me anyway,” she said. “He tried out every strange stroke and certainly never returned a ball normally. That is simply no fun for a mother.”
When he was almost a teenager, Roger began to lean more toward tennis, and if his parents “nudged him at all, it was to stop taking tennis so seriously.” When Roger played matches, his mother often wandered away to chat with friends instead of watching every point. His father had only one rule: “Just don’t cheat.” Roger didn’t, and he started getting really good.
Roger was competitive, no doubt. But when his tennis instructors decided to move him up to a group with older players, he asked to move back so he could stay with his friends. After all, part of the fun was hanging around after his lessons to talk about music, or pro wrestling, or soccer.
By the time Roger finally gave up other sports—­soccer, most notably—­to focus on tennis, other players he faced had long since been working with strength coaches, sports psychologists, and nutritionists. To some, it may have looked like he was behind in his training. But it didn’t seem to get in the way of his development in the long run. When Roger was in his mid-­thirties, which is when many professional tennis players have typically retired, he was still ranked number one in the world.
It may seem pretty unusual for a kid like Roger, who took his sport lightly at first, to grow into a dominant champion like no one before him. Thousands of tennis players, if not more, had a head start on Roger. His was an entirely different scenario from that of Tiger, whose incredible upbringing has been the focus of bestselling books about how to develop expertise. Tiger was not merely playing golf. He was engaging in what is known as “deliberate practice,” the only kind that matters to expertise, according to a concept known as the ten‑thousand‑hours rule. The ten-­thousand-­hours idea basically says that in order to develop a skill and become an expert at it, the only thing that matters is the number of hours you devote to practicing it, no matter what the skill may be. There is a lot of data about how athletes reach the elite level, and it shows that those athletes spend...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Viking Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593624033
• ISBN 13: 9780593624036
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Zeichner: Pekmezci Berat
• Anzahl der Seiten: 208
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: VIKING BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS; https://www.vtech-jouets.com/; ; Fahrenheitstraat 22; DC Weert; 6003; Niederlande