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Encyclopedia idiotica : history's worst decisions and the people who made them / Stephen Weir.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Hauppauge, N.Y. : Barron's, 2005.Edition: 1st edDescription: 256 p. : ill. ; 24 cmISBN:
  • 0764159178
  • 9780764159176
Subject(s):
Contents:
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"
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 902 W425 Checked out 07/09/2024 33111005064163
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

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"

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