Download or read book 101 Stumbles in the March of History written by Bill Fawcett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An all-new compendium of 101 historic screw-ups from the author of 100 Mistakes that Changed History. DID I DO THAT??? When asked to name a successor, Alexander the Great declared that his empire should go “to the strongest”. . . but would rival factions have descended into war if he’d been a little more specific? What if the Vienna Academy of Art took a chance on a hopeful young student named Adolf Hitler? If Pope Clement VII granted King Henry VIII an annulment, England would likely still be Catholic today—and so would America. Bill Fawcett, author of 100 Mistakes That Changed History, offers a compendium of 101 all-new mammoth mistakes—from the ill-fated rule of Emperor Darius III to the equally ill-fated search for WMDs in Iraq—that will, unfortunately, never be forgotten by history.

Download or read book 100 Mistakes that Changed History written by Bill Fawcett and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collected in one volume, here are backfires and blunders that collapsed empires, crashed economies, and altered the course of the world. From the Maginot Line to the Cuban Missile Crisis, history is filled with bad moves and not-so-bright ideas that snowballed into disasters and unintended consequences. This engrossing book looks at one hundred such tipping points. Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. The Caliphs of Baghdad spend themselves into bankruptcy. The Aztecs greet the Conquistadors with open arms. Mexico invites the Americans to Texas-and the Americans never leave. And the rest is history...

Download or read book 100 Mistakes that Changed History written by Bill Fawcett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collected in one volume, here are backfires and blunders that collapsed empires, crashed economies, and altered the course of the world. From the Maginot Line to the Cuban Missile Crisis, history is filled with bad moves and not-so-bright ideas that snowballed into disasters and unintended consequences. This engrossing book looks at one hundred such tipping points. Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. The Caliphs of Baghdad spend themselves into bankruptcy. The Aztecs greet the Conquistadors with open arms. Mexico invites the Americans to Texas-and the Americans never leave. And the rest is history...

Download or read book Compromise written by Richard K. Laird and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-06-25 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. political system may be getting polarized to the point where it is not only dysfunctional, but could be conducive to a single-party authoritarian transition. This book promotes a renewed appreciation for its exercise, through an examination of its history, an analysis of how and why polarization has increased in the U.S., and how compromise could better serve our approach to some current contentious issues. All of this is within the context of maintaining the priority of education for society-at-large, to improve our chances of finding common ground, pursuing non-zero sum outcomes, and reducing the political paralysis.

Download or read book Men at War written by Bill Fawcett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epic battles?as seen through the eyes of the men who fought them. From Gettysburg to D-Day, history?s most momentous battles have been recounted to the world on a grand scale. This book, for the first time ever, looks at man?s most epic battles from the point of view of the soldiers on the front lines; providing new insight into the great wars of history. Stories told by the Roman Legionaire, the British Doughboy, and the American Doggie, delve into these battles and battlefronts: Roman Legion Third Crusade under Richard Lionheart Waterloo, French under Napoleon American Civil War: Gettysburg WWI: Americans at Ardennes WWII: Japanese Island Defense WWII: D-Day, Americans at Normandy Marines at Chosin.

Download or read book Trust Me I Know What I m Doing written by Bill Fawcett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-12-04 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hindsight hurts. * The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act, having the American colonies pay for their own defense—which instead starts a revolution. * In 1929, President Herbert Hoover decides to let the economy fix itself…and the Great Depression gets greater. * Nixon tapes everything he says in the Oval Office, believing it will all be of great historical value. He turns out to be right when those same tapes cost him his presidency. * Charles the First cuts a deal with the Irish to fight Parliament that instead loses him public support—and later his head. Along with 100 Mistakes that Changed the World, Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing proves once again that when global leaders drop the ball, the whole world shakes. With a hundred more bombshell blunders—from Pickett’s Charge to the Lewinski scandal—this compendium takes a fascinating look at some of history’s greatest turns for the worse.

Download or read book Global Weirdness written by Climate Central and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global Weirdness summarizes everything we know about the science of climate change, explains what is likely to happen to the climate in the future, and lays out, in practical terms, what we can do to avoid further shifts. In sixty easy-to-read entries, Climate Central tackles basic questions such as: -Is climate ever “normal”? -Why and how do fossil-fuel burning and other human practices produce greenhouse gases? -What natural forces have caused climate change in the past? -What risks does climate change pose for human health? -What accounts for the diminishment of mountain glaciers and small ice caps around the world since 1850? -What are the economic costs and benefits of reducing carbon emissions? Illustrated throughout with clarifying graphics, Global Weirdness enlarges our understanding of how climate change affects our daily lives, and arms us with the incontrovertible facts we need to make informed decisions about the future of the planet, and of humankind.

Download or read book Empire of Guns written by Priya Satia and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as inextricable from the gun trade "A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war. Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it. Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history -- a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.

Download or read book The State and the Tributary Mode of Production written by John F. Haldon and published by Verso. This book was released on 1993 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking critique of both traditional and Marxist notions of feudalism and of the pre-capitalist state, John Haldon considers the configuration of state and social relations in medieval Europe and Mughal India as well as in Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire. He argues that a Marxist reading of the pre-capitalist state can take account of the autonomy of power relations and avoid economic reductionism while still focusing on the forms of tribute which sustained the ruling power. Haldon explores the conflicts to which these gave rise and shows the Ottoman state elite, often held to be a clear example of independence from underlying social relations, to be deeply enmeshed in economic relationships and the extraction of tribute. Haldon argues that feudalism was the specifically European form of a much more widely diffused tributary mode, whose characteristic social relations and structural constraints can be seen at work in the Byzantine, Ottoman and Mughal empires as well. While acknowledging the range of ideological and cultural variation within and between these examples of the tributary mode, Haldon denies the thesis that such “superstructural” variations themselves yielded fundamentally contrasting social relations.

Download or read book Doomed to Repeat written by Bill Fawcett and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” And so we have. Time and again, mankind has faced down problems, but have often failed to take the hard-earned knowledge into the next battle. Doomed to Repeat is a collection of essays, edited by Bill Fawcett, that illuminates some of the problems we've faced repeatedly throughout history, including Islamic jihad, terrorism, military insurgencies, inflation and the devaluation of currency, financial disasters, ecological collapses, radical political minorities like the Nazis and Bolsheviks, and pandemics and epidemics like the Black Death. With more than 35 chapters of the Groundhog Days of world history, both infamous and obscure, Doomed to Repeat: The Lessons of History We've Failed to Learn is chock-full of trivia, history, and fascinating looks at the world’s repeated mistakes.

Download or read book 23 Things They Don t Tell You about Capitalism written by Ha-Joon Chang and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-01-02 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER "For anyone who wants to understand capitalism not as economists or politicians have pictured it but as it actually operates, this book will be invaluable."-Observer (UK) If you've wondered how we did not see the economic collapse coming, Ha-Joon Chang knows the answer: We didn't ask what they didn't tell us about capitalism. This is a lighthearted book with a serious purpose: to question the assumptions behind the dogma and sheer hype that the dominant school of neoliberal economists-the apostles of the freemarket-have spun since the Age of Reagan. Chang, the author of the international bestseller Bad Samaritans, is one of the world's most respected economists, a voice of sanity-and wit-in the tradition of John Kenneth Galbraith and Joseph Stiglitz. 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism equips readers with an understanding of how global capitalism works-and doesn't. In his final chapter, "How to Rebuild the World," Chang offers a vision of how we can shape capitalism to humane ends, instead of becoming slaves of the market.

Download or read book How to Lose WWII written by Bill Fawcett and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-08-10 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to Lose WWII is an engrossing, fact-filled collection from Bill Fawcett that sheds light on the biggest, and dumbest, screw-ups of the Great War. In the vein of his other phenomenal compendiums of amazing battlefield blunders, How to Lose a Battle and How to Lose a War, Fawcett focuses on some amazing catastrophic missteps of Axis and Allies alike.

Download or read book Cats in Space and Other Places written by BIll Fawcett and published by Baen Books. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Space. The Feline Frontier. It has been said (by Mark Twain) that “If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.” In this volume we explore the many and manifest reasons why humans should voluntarily accord first place in space to their feline brethren. From Robert A. Heinlein’s “Ordeal in Space” in which the merest kitten confers the gift of courage on his human, to Cordwainer Smith’s “Ballad of Lost C’mell,” which answers the very question of what would be the outcome of the melding of human and cat, we offer here sixteen reasons why cats are Number One in our book. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Download or read book Masters of Fantasy written by Martin Harry Greenberg and published by Bristol Park Books. This book was released on 1994-05 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty-one tales of fantasy and horror by such authors as H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, James Blish, Philip Jose Farmer, Robert Bloch and Shirley Jackson.

Download or read book Sketches of the History of Man written by Lord Henry Home Kames and published by . This book was released on 1779 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hitler s Willing Executioners written by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival materials, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units, to the camps, to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion. "Hitler's Willing Executioner's is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to the...literature on the Holocaust."--New York Review of Books "The most important book ever published about the Holocaust...Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned...A model of moral and scholarly integrity."--Philadelphia Inquirer

Download or read book You Did What written by Bill Fawcett and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History has never been more fun than it is in this fact-filled compendium of historical fiascoes and embarrassingly bad ideas. Throughout history, the rich and powerful, and even just the dim-witted, have made horrifically bad decisions that have had resounding effects on our world. From kings to corporate leaders, from captains to presidents, no one is immune to bad decisions and their lasting legacy. The fiascoes that litter our history are innumerable ... and fascinating in their foolishness. This witty collection of historical mayhem chronicles unwise decisions from ancient Greece to modern-day Hollywood and everything in between. Learn such lessons as: Never trust Greeks bearing gifts of large wooden horses. Avoid building elementary schools on toxic waste dumps, even those with sweet monikers like Love Canal. Rabbits multiply like rabbits Down Under. Even if you use brightly colored paint on the boats, it's quite easy to misplace an entire country's navy. With more than forty-five chapters of mind-boggling flubs and follies, fans of history, trivia, and those who just want a good laugh will adore this intriguing and fun read.