Title:
Profiles in folly : history's worst decisions and why they went wrong / Alan Axelrod.
ISBN:
9781402797781
9781402747687
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
New York : Sterling, [2008]
©2008
Physical Description:
ix, 358 pages ; 24 cm
Contents:
The decision to gamble and hope : The Trojans and the Trojan Horse (ca. 1250 BC) ; George Armstrong Custer and the Little Bighorn (1876) ; André Maginot and his line (1930-40) ; Unsinkability and the Titanic (1912) ; Isoroku Yamamoto and Pearl Harbor (1941) ; NASA and the space shuttles (1986, 2003) -- The decision to manipulate : William McKinley, the USS Maine, and the Spanish-American War (1898) ; Captain Alfred Dreyfus and the honor of France (1894-1906) ; Edward Bernays and the campaign to recruit women smokers (1929) ; Richard M. Nixon and Watergate (1973) ; Metropolitan Edison and Three Mile Island (1979) ; Ken Lay and Enron (2001) ; Dick Cheney and the Iraq War (2003) -- The decision to leap (without looking) : King George III and the American Revolution (1775-83) ; The "war hawks" and the War of 1812 (1812) ; John C. Calhoun and nullification (1832) ; Russell, Majors, and Waddell and the Pony Express (1860) ; Count Leopold von Berchtold and his ultimatum (1914) -- The decision to retreat : Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and Dred Scott (1857) ; Thomas Edison and the fight against alternating current (1893) ; The Wright Brothers and the wing warping lawsuits (1910-14) ; Alfred P. Sloan and planned obsolescence (1920) ; Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler (1938) ; The British Empire and Gandhi (1942) -- The decision to destroy : Governor William Kieft and the "slaughter of the innocents" (1643) ; Antonio López de Santa Anna and the Alamo (1836) ; Patriotism and poison gas (1914-18) ; Roberto Goizueta and the "new Coke" (1985) -- The decision to drift : James Buchanan and secession (1860) ; George Gordon Meade and Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of the Crater (1864) ; Rasputin and the Russian royals (1916) ; Ford Motor Company and the Edsel (1957) ; John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs (1961) ; Tonkin Gulf, Persian Gulf (1964, 2003) ; George W. Bush and Hurricane Katrina (2005).
Summary:
Using the same engrossing anecdotal format that has proved so popular in Profiles in Audacity, Alan Axelrod now turns to the dark side of audacious decision-making: those choices that, in retrospect, were shockingly wrongheaded. Although Axelrod investigates some dumb decisions by stupid people and some evil decisions by evil people, the overwhelming majority of these decisions were made by good, smart people whose poor judgment produced disastrous, often irreversible results. The 35 compelling and often poignant stories, which range from ancient times to today, include: The Trojan Horse; the Children's Crusade; the sailing of the Titanic, and the false belief that it just couldn't sink; Edward Bernays's 1929 campaign to recruit women smokers; Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis; Ken Lay's deception with Enron; and even the choice to create a "New Coke" and fix what wasn't broke.
OCLC Number:
ocn173809076
Availability:
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