Download or read book The Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures written by Stephen Pile and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2011-10-20 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SUNDAY TIMES HUMOUR BOOK OF THE YEAR 'One of the few books to make me laugh out loud' Sunday Express With Stephen Pile's The Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures, celebrate the very best in failure with this all new collection of outrageously funny misadventures from the author of the classic number one bestseller The Book of Heroic Failures. Anyone can be a success, but it takes real and original genius to foul up big time. These are the all-time greats, Gods in the field of failure, surreal artists, who spurn mere drab success ('I'm a winner, Lord Sugar') to explore the vast, magical, life-enhancing possibilities of getting it wrong. Any of us could make a mistake, but these great souls can turn the simplest everyday task into a scene of jaw-dropping wonder. These are the immortals. Failure is everywhere. The Book of Heroic Failures, takes us on an all-new and mind-bendingly hilarious tour to celebrate the most spectacular and absurd failures of the last twenty-five years. There are 235 stories in total spread from the Outer Hebrides to America, Ireland, Australia, Europe and Africa. From the most driving test failures (959), the most pointless election (in Dakota, in which not even the mayor voted), the worst robbery (when two different sets of bank robbers struck simultaneously) and the worst mugger (who left his victim $250 better off), to the holidaying rugby team of fifty-somethings from Dorchester who, due to a mis-translation, ended up playing the top team from Romania live on state TV, this is the ultimate book to make you feel better about yourself and the world around you.
Download or read book The Not Terribly Good Book of Heroic Failures written by Stephen Pile and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Last year Stephen Pile attempted to deliver a daring blow to the success ethic that so pervades Western culture. To his dismay, The Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures sold many copies and even became the Sunday Times 'Humour Book of the Year.' Nothing daunted, Stephen returns with a new selection which brings together the very best of his original classic titles - The Book of Heroic Failures and The Return of Heroic Failures. The heartwarming news that stays news is that there really is no limit to what humanity can achieve, as we move onwards and downwards to ever more immortal and breathtaking feats of incompetence. The Not Terribly Good Book of Heroic Failures lovingly chronicles the all-time heroes who have been so bad at things that they shine as beacons for future generations. It is hard not to feel boundless admiration, for example, for the fifty Mexican convicts who dug an escape tunnel out of their jail and came up in the courtroom where many of them had been sentenced. Or for the world's worst tourist, who spent three days in New York believing he was in Rome.
Download or read book The Book of Heroic Failures written by Stephen Pile and published by Longman. This book was released on 1999 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is difficult to be really bad at something, but the people in this book manage to succeed The book features tales of drivers who can't drive, travellers who get lost all the time and policemen who can't catch criminals.
Download or read book Heroic Failure and the British written by Stephanie L. Barczewski and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aan de hand van heroïsche mislukkingen zoals de Charge van de Lichte Brigade en Captain Scott wordt licht geworpen op het Brits zijn.
Download or read book Heroic Failure written by Fintan O'Toole and published by Apollo. This book was released on 2019-09 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A wildly entertaining but uncomfortable read ... Pitilessly brilliant' JONATHAN COE. 'There will not be much political writing in this or any other year that is carried off with such style' The Times. A TIMESBOOK OF THE YEAR. 'A quite brilliant dissection of the cultural roots of the Brexit narrative'David Miliband. 'Hugely entertaining and engrossing'Roddy Doyle. 'Best book about the English that I've read for ages'Billy Bragg. A fierce, mordantly funny and perceptive book about the act of national self-harm known as Brexit. A great democratic country tears itself apart, and engages in the dangerous pleasures of national masochism. Trivial journalistic lies became far from trivial national obsessions; the pose of indifference to truth and historical fact came to define the style of an entire political elite; a country that once had colonies redefined itself as an oppressed nation requiring liberation. Fintan O'Toole also discusses the fatal attraction of heroic failure, once a self-deprecating cult in a hugely successful empire that could well afford the occasional disaster. Now failure is no longer heroic - it is just failure, and its terrible costs will be paid by the most vulnerable of Brexit's supporters. A new afterword lays out the essential reforms that are urgently needed if England is to have a truly democratic future and stable relations with its nearest neighbours.
Download or read book Edward III Penguin Monarchs written by Jonathan Sumption and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edward III lived through bloody and turbulent times. His father was deposed by his mother and her lover when he was still a teenager; a third of England's population was killed by the Black Death midway through his reign; and the intractable Hundred Years War with France began under his leadership. Yet Edward managed to rule England for fifty years, and was viewed as a paragon of kingship in the eyes of both his contemporaries and later generations. Venerated as the victor of Sluys and Crécy and the founder of the Order of the Garter, he was regarded with awe even by his enemies. But he lived too long, and was ultimately condemned to see thirty years of conquests reversed in less than five. In this gripping new account of Edward III's rise and fall, Jonathan Sumption introduces us to a fêted king who ended his life a heroic failure.
Download or read book Five Days at Memorial written by Sheri Fink and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The award-winning book that inspired an Apple Original series from Apple TV+ • A landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina—and the suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice—from a Pulitzer Prize–winning physician and reporter “An amazing tale, as inexorable as a Greek tragedy and as gripping as a whodunit.”—Dallas Morning News After Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. Months later, a doctor and two nurses were arrested and accused of injecting some of those patients with life-ending drugs. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting by Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink, unspools the mystery, bringing us inside a hospital fighting for its life and into the most charged questions in health care: which patients should be prioritized, and can health care professionals ever be excused for hastening death? Transforming our understanding of human nature in crisis, Five Days at Memorial exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals how ill-prepared we are for large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, Entertainment Weekly, Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star WINNER: National Book Critics Circle Award, J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Ridenhour Book Prize, American Medical Writers Association Medical Book Award, National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award
Download or read book The Book of Heroic Failures written by Stephen Pile and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Schindler s List written by Thomas Keneally and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In remembrance of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the Nazi concentration camps, this award-winning, bestselling work of Holocaust fiction, inspiration for the classic film and “masterful account of the growth of the human soul” (Los Angeles Times Book Review), returns with an all-new introduction by the author. An “extraordinary” (New York Review of Books) novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally, author of The Book of Science and Antiquities and The Daughter of Mars, uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden—Schindler’s Jews—to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil. “Astounding…in this case the truth is far more powerful than anything the imagination could invent” (Newsweek).
Download or read book Failure Is Not an Option written by Gene Kranz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-06-23 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author, flight director in NASA's Mission Control, tells of the challenges in space flight from the very early years to the current time and of "his own bold suggestions about what we ought to be doing in space now."--Jacket.
Download or read book Patent Failure written by James Bessen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-03 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, business leaders, policymakers, and inventors have complained to the media and to Congress that today's patent system stifles innovation instead of fostering it. But like the infamous patent on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, much of the cited evidence about the patent system is pure anecdote--making realistic policy formation difficult. Is the patent system fundamentally broken, or can it be fixed with a few modest reforms? Moving beyond rhetoric, Patent Failure provides the first authoritative and comprehensive look at the economic performance of patents in forty years. James Bessen and Michael Meurer ask whether patents work well as property rights, and, if not, what institutional and legal reforms are necessary to make the patent system more effective. Patent Failure presents a wide range of empirical evidence from history, law, and economics. The book's findings are stark and conclusive. While patents do provide incentives to invest in research, development, and commercialization, for most businesses today, patents fail to provide predictable property rights. Instead, they produce costly disputes and excessive litigation that outweigh positive incentives. Only in some sectors, such as the pharmaceutical industry, do patents act as advertised, with their benefits outweighing the related costs. By showing how the patent system has fallen short in providing predictable legal boundaries, Patent Failure serves as a call for change in institutions and laws. There are no simple solutions, but Bessen and Meurer's reform proposals need to be heard. The health and competitiveness of the nation's economy depend on it.
Download or read book Sod s Law written by Sam Leith and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2009-11-01 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To every explorer with his map upside down, to every air-traffic controller suddenly receiving Magic FM through his headphones, to every astronomer whose new planet turns out to be a bit of bran-flake on the eyepiece of his telescope, Sod's Law says: you are not alone. Sam Leith tells the hilarious—and painful—stories of the unsinkable boat that sunk, the unbeatable horse that lost, and the fireproof theater that burned to the ground. Sod's Law demonstrates that the entire universe is actually set up to ensure that your toast always lands butter side down and, what's more, that it lands precisely where the cat has shed hair all over the carpet. In this age of doubt, fewer and fewer of us are able to believe that a higher power takes an interest in our fate. This book reassures us that indeed it does—and that that higher power is hell bent on buggering things up. Only by laughing heartlessly at the misfortunes of others can we make ourselves feel better. Sod's Law enables us to do just that.
Download or read book Fall of Giants written by Ken Follett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 1010 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ken Follett’s magnificent historical epic begins as five interrelated families move through the momentous dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage. A thirteen-year-old Welsh boy enters a man’s world in the mining pits. . . . An American law student rejected in love finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House. . . . A housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with a German spy. . . . And two orphaned Russian brothers embark on radically different paths when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution. From the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty, Fall of Giants takes us into the inextricably entangled fates of five families—and into a century that we thought we knew, but that now will never seem the same again. . . .
Download or read book Staying on Track written by Nigel Mansell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After finishing as runner-up three times in the drivers' world championship, in 1992 Mansell finally secured the title. It was the crowning achievement of a hugely successful career, in which he won 31 Grand Prix, a record for a British driver that stood until Lewis Hamilton overhauled him in 2014. Always an aggressive driver, his exciting style meant he was hailed as a hero by his millions of fans in the UK and around the world. Out of the car, he was outspoken and charismatic, which merely served to enhance his reputation. Now, 20 years after he retired from F1, Mansell looks back on a stellar career in which he battled against many legends of the sport, from Lauda through the Senna and Prost years and on to Schumacher. He provides vivid insights into what it was like to race against those greats in an era when the risks to drivers were enormous. He explains what motivated him to get to the top, and takes the reader behind the scenes to give an unrivalled insight into the sport and the key moments of his career. Still closely involved in Formula One, Mansell assesses how F1 has changed, and gives his authoritative verdict on the sport, the cars and the drivers. It is an unmissable account from one of Britain's greatest sporting heroes.
Download or read book The book of heroic failures written by Stephen Pile and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nuking the Moon written by Vince Houghton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Spy Museum's Historian takes us on a wild tour of missions and schemes that almost happened, but were ultimately deemed too dangerous, expensive, ahead of their time, or even certifiably insane. "Compulsively readable laugh out loud history." —Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Grunt and Stiff In 1958, the U.S. Air Force nuked the moon as a show of military force. In 1967, the CIA sent live cats to spy on the Soviet government. In 1942, the British built a torpedo-proof aircraft carrier out of an iceberg. Of course, none of these things ever actually happened. But in Nuking the Moon, intelligence historian Vince Houghton proves that abandoned plans can be just as illuminating--and every bit as entertaining—as the ones that made it. Vividly capturing the fascinating stories of how twenty-one plans from WWII and the Cold War went from conception, planning, and testing to cancellation, Houghton explores what happens when innovation meets desperation: For every plan as good as D-Day, there's a scheme to strap bombs to bats or dig a spy tunnel underneath the Soviet embassy. Along the way, he reveals what each one tells us about twentieth-century history, the art of spycraft, military strategy, and famous figures like JFK, Castro, and Churchill. By turns terrifying and hilarious—but always riveting—this is the unique story of history left on the drawing board.
Download or read book The Human Contribution written by J. T. Reason and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Human Contribution is vital reading for all professionals in high-consequence environments and for managers of any complex system. The book draws its illustrative material from a wide variety of hazardous domains, with the emphasis on healthcare reflecting the author's focus on patient safety over the last decade. All students of human factors - however seasoned - will also find it an invaluable and thought-provoking read.
