"This is a compilation of stories that cumulatively have become an explanation of how lucky and unlucky a person like me can be," Mark Owen Cope Sr. writes in the introduction to this book. In his seventy years of life, he has witnessed over and over again the manic whims of Fortune-often with hilarious consequences. Whether it's the baseball bat he'd always wanted leading to the near-drowning of an old lady ("A Lovely Little Baseball Bat") or a former circus performer's mobile home falling literally under the Arkansas Guarantee ("The Dog Poop Lady and the Arkansas Guarantee"), each story...