History's Worst Decisions: And the People who Made Them

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Allen & Unwin, 2005 - History - 256 pages
The 64 A.D. burning of Rome during the reign of Nero ... Winston Churchill's ill-conceived and disastrous World War I plan to invade Turkey at Gallipoli ... the Maginot Line, built in France in 1929-34 in a foolhardy effort to prevent the feared German invasion ... the 1950s thalidomide pharmaceutical disaster that resulted in at least 20,000 babies born with deformities ... the 1989-91 misappropriation of company funds by publishing executive Robert Maxwell, and the collapse of his financial empire ... the Enron scandal of 2000 that brought down a yet larger business empire. Chronicled in these pages are stories of corporate chicanery, poor military decisions, engineering disasters, diplomatic blunders, and other appalling, large-scale mistakes that resulted in ruin and misery for countless innocent bystanders. Here are baleful tales motivated by false hope, anger, greed, pride, lust, and many other instances of erratic human behavior. A selection of approximately 50 disastrous decisions are presented, each grim account summarized in a report of roughly a half-dozen pages and enhanced with sidebars and thumbnail-sized cartoon-style illustrations. Each account opens with its cast of characters, then sets the story's background before reporting the grim details and concluding with the unhappy moral. Here is a page-turner of a book that recounts some of history's most dramatic-but also catastrophic-moments.
 

Contents

Disease in the Crimea
73
Mutiny and Beef Fat
78
Thomas Austins Rabbits
83
General Custer and Little Big Horn
88
King Leopold and the Scramble for Africa
94
Nicholas Alexandra and the Mad Monk
100
Ismays Lifeboats
105
The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
110

Pope Alexander and the Search for Prester John
45
George Podiebrad the Last Bohemian and World Peace
49
Moctezuma and the Returning God
55
The Worst Deal Ever Made
60
Lord North and King George Ills Tea Party
64
Napoleon the March to Russiaand Frankenstein
68
Winston Churchill and the Disaster at Gallipoli
116
Trench Warfare General Haig and the Battle of the Somme
120
Maginots Line
126
The Map of Iraq
131
Stalin and the Great Purge
136
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About the author (2005)

Stephen Weir has worked on three continents as a book publisherbooks and authors he has worked with have won National Book Awards and Nobel Prizes among others, and include writers from Patrick White to John Keegan to George Soros. He has written many articles on book publishing for a number of professional journals including The Bookseller, and been featured in the Financial Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and as a featured speaker at conferences and on WGN radio. He was also President of the Publishers Marketing Association and Director of Northwestern University Press. He has a double first in History from Cambridge University as well as a Masters in History from there.

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