History's Worst Decisions

History's Worst Decisions PDF Author: Stephen Weir
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781740456692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
History is strewn with mistakes. Many made by well intentioned people who were bright, intelligent, capable, but just made the wrong decision.

History's Worst Decisions

History's Worst Decisions PDF Author: Stephen Weir
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781740456692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
History is strewn with mistakes. Many made by well intentioned people who were bright, intelligent, capable, but just made the wrong decision.

Encyclopedia Idiotica

Encyclopedia Idiotica PDF Author: Stephen Weir
Publisher: B.E.S. Publishing
ISBN: 9780764159176
Category : Errors
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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.

Profiles in Folly

Profiles in Folly PDF Author: Alan Axelrod
Publisher: Union Square + ORM
ISBN: 1402798822
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
The bestselling author of Profiles in Audacity returns with an “illuminating [and] entertaining” study of historically bad decisions (Publishers Weekly). In an engrossing anecdotal format, historian and bestselling author Alan Axelrod turns to the dark side of audacious decision-making—and explores history’s most tragic errors, the people who made them, and why they happened. While Axelrod looks at the hopelessly dumb and the overtly evil, the main focus is on smart people who had the best of intentions—but whose plans went disastrously wrong. The 35 compelling stories include the sailing of the “unsinkable” Titanic; 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. These are cautionary tales that any decision-maker can learn from—albeit with exquisite twists ranging from acerbic to horrific.

Making the Best of a Bad Decision

Making the Best of a Bad Decision PDF Author: Erwin W. Lutzer
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 1414360827
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Maybe you worry you’ve married the wrong person. Maybe you’re carrying the burden of a secret or have gone down a dangerous road. Maybe you’ve made a life choice that’s hurt someone else so badly you feel the relationship can never be restored. But there’s good news: you have the opportunity to clear your conscience, make things right with God and others, and get to a place of grace and new beginnings. Join pastor and bestselling author Erwin Lutzer as he shows you how to make the best of even your worst decisions and move forward into a better future.

Thinking in Bets

Thinking in Bets PDF Author: Annie Duke
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735216371
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
A Wall Street Journal bestseller, now in paperback. Poker champion turned decision strategist Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions. Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there's always information hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making? Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most people, it's difficult to say "I'm not sure" in a world that values and, even, rewards the appearance of certainty. But professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don't always lead to great outcomes, and bad decisions don't always lead to bad outcomes. By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don't, you'll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You'll become more confident, calm, compassionate, and successful in the long run.

Black Mondays

Black Mondays PDF Author: Joel D. Joseph
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description


Fateful Choices

Fateful Choices PDF Author: Ian Kershaw
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141915048
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
In 1940 the world was on a knife-edge. The hurricane of events that marked the opening of the Second World War meant that anything could happen. For the aggressors there was no limit to their ambitions; for their victims a new Dark Age beckoned. Over the next few months their fates would be determined. In Fateful Choices Ian Kershaw re-creates the ten critical decisions taken between May 1940, when Britain chose not to surrender, and December 1941, when Hitler decided to destroy Europe’s Jews, showing how these choices would recast the entire course of history.

History's Greatest Decisions

History's Greatest Decisions PDF Author: Bill Price
Publisher: Chartwell Books
ISBN: 0785835210
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
History’s Greatest Decisions identifies and profiles the many important and difficult decisions leaders have made through history which shaped the world as we know it today. One of the defining features of being human is our capacity for complex problem solving. Most of the time we deal with mundane concerns, like what to have for breakfast or which pair of shoes to wear, but occasionally people face decisions about rather weightier matters. History’s Greatest Decisions is concerned with this second category, those important and difficult decisions which only a very few people get to make and which can impact on the lives of millions of others and have the potential to change the world. From our unknown ancestors who made the first stone tools, to those people in Northern Ireland who managed to put aside their differences in order to create a better future for their children; from the most powerful man in the world deciding not to start a nuclear war, to a woman on a bus standing up for her rights refusing to move seats. History's Greatest Decisions looks at well-known and not-so-well-known examples of people who made the crucial decisions and got them right.

Great Naval Blunders

Great Naval Blunders PDF Author: Geoffrey Regan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780233005102
Category : Marine accidents
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Who was responsible for the design of the Admiral Popov, the circular Russian battleship that wouldn't steer straight? Why did Lord Ansonset set out to circumnavigate the world with a crew of Chelsea pensioners? And how did the British cruiser HMS Trinidad manage to torpedo itself in the Arctic? The answers to these questions and details of numerous other entertaining and unbelievable historical events are revealed in this absorbing survey of naval incompetence from Roman times to the Falklands War. Geoffrey Regan certainly sets out to prove that there is truth in the old adage "Worse things happen at sea." Crammed with intriguing and often bizarre anecdotes and more than 50 illuminating illustrations, Great Naval Blunders takes a serious, but often entertaining, look at the misjudgments and oversights of captains, fleet commanders, strategic planners, and ship designers over the ages. Peppered with quotes from those who did their utmost (albeit unwittingly) to hinder naval progress, this entertaining and instructive book will appeal to the naval enthusiast and general reader alike.

Seventy-five Greatest Management Decisions Ever Made

Seventy-five Greatest Management Decisions Ever Made PDF Author: Stuart Crainer
Publisher: Amacom Books
ISBN: 9780814404911
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Publisher Fact Sheet A pithy compendium celebrating pinnacles of decision-making that have shaped management through the ages.