TY  - BOOK
AU  - Weir,Stephen
TI  - Encyclopedia idiotica: history's worst decisions and the people who made them 
SN  - 0764159178
PY  - 2005///
CY  - Hauppauge, N.Y.
PB  - Barron's
KW  - History
KW  - Miscellanea
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-256); In the beginning: Adam and Eve, the original idiots -- Menelaus and his lost wife -- Hannibal and the avalanche -- Cleopatra's men -- Nero and the burning of Rome -- Erik the Red's dream island: the first real estate scam -- Pope Sylvester and the end of the world -- Pope Alexander and the search for Prester John -- George Podiebrad, the last Bohemian, and world peace -- Moctezuma and the returning God -- Johan de Witt, New Amsterdam and Pulau Run: the worst deal ever made -- Lord North and King George III's tea party -- Napoleon, the march to Russia--and Frankenstein -- The war office versus the lady with the lamp: disease in the Crimea -- The War Office versus the Indian Army: mutiny and beef fat -- Thomas Austin's rabbits -- General Custer and Little Big Horn -- King Leopold and the scramble for Africa -- Nicholas, Alexandra, and the mad monk -- Ismay's lifeboats -- Gavrilo Princip's deli sandwich: the assassination of Franz Ferdinand -- Winston Churchill and the disaster at Gallipoli -- Trench warfare, General Haig, and the Battle of the Somme -- Maginot's line -- Winston Churchill strikes again: the map of Iraq -- Stalin and the great purge --Shenton Thomas's little men and the fall of Singapore -- Suhrawardy, partition, and the Bengal rice famine -- Wakefield's nuts -- Mohammed Mossadegh, Time's man of the year, and democracy in Iran -- The British nuclear legacy: the black mist of Maralinga -- Sir Anthony Eden, Suez, and speed -- Grrünenthal's outstandingly safe drug: Thalidomide -- Vaccines, AIDS, and the chimps of the Congo -- Mao and the great leap forward -- Robert McNamara's terrible wrong: Agent Orange -- Murphy's Law and the missing hyphen -- Bernard Dowiyogo's bird droppings -- Drinking Jim Jones's kool-aid: the Jonestown suicides -- Union Carbide's cost cutting: Bhopal -- Robert Maxwell and the mirror pensioners -- The Soviet nuclear legacy: Chernobyl -- Ahmed Bahdib, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, and the CIA -- Gerald Ratneer's "crap"
ER  -