The people who live on “Skid Row” come from all walks of life and circumstances, Schwartz says, but they’re defeated by life’s challenges and will gladly explain what bad incident did them in. Average, mediocre people similarly are beaten down and also will explain why. Those at the top come from many of the same situations and have faced many of the same difficulties and hardships; the difference is that they weren’t defeated. Instead, they, “bounced up, learned a lesson, forgot the beating, and moved upward” (236).

Setbacks happen to everyone, but they can, Schwartz argues, generate success. The government oversees airline travel and safety in America: Whenever there’s an accident, the federal authority investigates the crash, determines the cause, issues alerts for repairs of any suspect parts, and helps devise better and safer flight equipment. Doctors, too, perform postmortems to help them better tend to their patients. Executives sometimes use a similar approach to diagnose failed sales efforts; football coaches review games with team members to analyze and correct on-field mistakes. In short, these professionals “salvage something from every setback” (239).

One of Schwartz’s students, a senior, turned in a bad paper and failed the course.