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 119 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 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 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 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 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 The Up Side of Down written by Megan McArdle and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Clever, surprisingly fast-paced, and enlightening.” —Forbes Most new products fail. So do most businesses. And most of us, if we are honest, have experienced a major setback in our personal or professional lives. So what determines who will bounce back and follow up with a home run? What separates those who keep treading water from those who harness the lessons from their mistakes? One of our most popular business bloggers, Megan McArdle takes insights from emergency room doctors, kindergarten teachers, bankruptcy judges, and venture capitalists to teach us how to reinvent ourselves in the face of failure. The Up Side of Down is a book that just might change the way you lead your life.
Download or read book Nuking the Moon written by Vince Houghton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 320 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 Failures of Feeling written by Wendy Anne Lee and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-18 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book recovers the curious history of the "insensible" in the Age of Sensibility. Tracking this figure through the English novel's uneven and messy past, Wendy Anne Lee draws on Enlightenment theories of the passions to place philosophy back into conversation with narrative. Contemporary critical theory often simplifies or disregards earlier accounts of emotions, while eighteenth-century studies has focused on cultural histories of sympathy. In launching a more philosophical inquiry about what emotions are, Failures of Feeling corrects for both of these oversights. Proposing a fresh take on emotions in the history of the novel, its chapters open up literary history's most provocative cases of unfeeling, from the iconic scrivener who would prefer not to and the reviled stock figure of the prude, to the heroic rape survivor, the burnt-out man-of-feeling, and the hard-hearted Jane Austen herself. These pivotal cases of insensibility illustrate a new theory of mind and of the novel predicated on an essential paradox: the very phenomenon that would appear to halt feeling and plot actually compels them. Contrary to the assumption that fictional investment relies on a richness of interior life, Lee shows instead that nothing incites the passions like dispassion.
Download or read book Do The Gods Wear Capes written by Ben Saunders and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-02 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brash, bold, and sometimes brutal, superheroes might seem to epitomize modern pop-culture at its most melodramatic and mindless. But according to Ben Saunders, the appeal of the superhero is fundamentally metaphysical - even spiritual - in nature. In chapter-length analyses of the early comic book adventures of Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and Iron-Man, Saunders explores a number of complex philosophical and theological issues, including: the problem of evil; the will-to-power; the tension between intimacy and vulnerability; and the challenge of love, in the face of mortality. He concludes that comic book fantasies of the superhuman ironically reveal more than we might care to admit about our human limitations, even as they expose the falsehood of the characteristically modern opposition between religion and science. Clearly and passionately written, this insightful and at times exhilarating book should delight all readers who believe in the redemptive capacity of the imagination, regardless of whether they consider themselves comic book fans.
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 the Damned written by Charles Fort and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Time travel, UFOs, mysterious planets, stigmata, rock-throwing poltergeists, huge footprints, bizarre rains of fish and frogs-nearly a century after Charles Fort's Book of the Damned was originally published, the strange phenomenon presented in this book remains largely unexplained by modern science. Through painstaking research and a witty, sarcastic style, Fort captures the imagination while exposing the flaws of popular scientific explanations. Virtually all of his material was compiled and documented from reports published in reputable journals, newspapers and periodicals because he was an avid collector. Charles Fort was somewhat of a recluse who spent most of his spare time researching these strange events and collected these reports from publications sent to him from around the globe. This was the first of a series of books he created on unusual and unexplained events and to this day it remains the most popular. If you agree that truth is often stranger than fiction, then this book is for you"--Taken from Good Reads website.
Download or read book The Last Viking written by Stephen R. Bown and published by White Lion Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One hundred years have passed since Robert Falcon Scott's beleagured expeditionary team arrived at the South Pole, only to find that they had been beaten by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. The most feted explorer of his generation, Amundsen counted the discovery of the Northwest Passage, in 1905, as well as the North Pole amongst his greatest achievements. In the golden age of polar exploration Amundsen, whose revolutionary approach to technology transcends polar and nautical significance, was a titan among men. However, until now, his story has rarely featured as more than a footnote to Scott's tragic failure. Reviled for defeating Scott but worshipped by his men, Amundsen was pursued by women and creditors throughout his life before disappearing on a rescue mission for the Italian Fascist who had set off in an airship to claim the North Pole for Mussolini. The Last Viking is the life of a visionary and a showman, who brought the era of Shackleton to an end, put the newly independent Norway on the map and was the twentieth century's brightest trailblazing explorer. Against the backdrop of the race to conquer the most inhospitable corners of the earth, The Last Viking stands alongside The Worst Journey in the World for its grim immediacy of heroism and hardship. Bestriding the generation defined by adventure and the unquenchable desire for discovery, it is the mesmerising story of courage, misery, friendship and the ultimate price paid for immortality.
