Complete & Utter Failure: A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres & Total Flops

by Neil Steinberg

So you've got these fond hopes for blissful love,  professional glory, fame, and fortune. But in the  back of your mind there's that nagging fear. The  man of your dreams will laugh in your face. Your  hated office rival will come up with some whizbang  marketing idea and get promoted, while you'll be  asked to "help out with the phones."  Steven Spielberg will buy the rights to your  screenplay, spend $40 million producing it, and the critics  will savage the film, mercilessly singling out  your work for especially contemptuous, poisonous  derision. But hey, everybody fails sometime. It's  inevitable. So don't fear failure.   Embrace it. In Complete And Utter  Failure , Neil Steinberg joyfully explores the many  fascinating facets of failure, from pointless  failure (a brief history of several very dumb  attempts to climb Mount Everest) to product failure  (Reddi-Bacon, smokeless cigarettes, and Baby Jesus  dolls) to institutionalized failure (the horrifying  Dickensian spectacle of the National Spelling Bee,  in which 8,999,999 children out of 9,000,000 fail  in an excruciatingly public and humiliating  fashion). This delightful book is filled with surprising  and useless arcana--who really invented the  telephone, what turned on Isaac Newton--guaranteed to  help you annoy people at cocktail parties. Along  the way Steinberg meditates on his own myriad  miscues and disappointments, beginning with his failure  to perform a magic trick in front of the  neighborhood kids at age four (he blames Captain Kangaroo).   Complete And Utter Failure is a  wonderfully literate, witty book that issues a  ringing message for our If at first you don't  succeed, have a scotch and forget about it.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Business, Humor

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1994

About the author

Neil Steinberg is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, where he has been on staff since 1987.

Reviews

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

excursions into human folly measured lovingly against the author's own. this is some subversive shit.

[Wenzel Roessler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book, worth reading. There are times when the authors commentary on his life growing up feels a bit self-serving. Other times, like in conjunction with climbing Mount Everest, it works extremely well.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun read

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing was funny at first, but quickly turned too snarky for me. I almost stopped reading, but I'm glad I didn't. Very interesting examples of failures, and the whys of what happened.

[Eucryphia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so ^%$#^%$ awesome in so many ways, and it seems to be out of print these days, which is inescusable. Covering topics from failed products and foods (the anatomically correct Jesus doll/toaster eggs), to the Mallory Irvine Everest expedition (tragic/doomed), and ultimately and gloriously: The National Spelling Bee (horrendous/funny as all hell). Any of my friends who have not read this need to immediately rectify that situation. That means you. Now. Chop chop.

[Lenny Husen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book and I wish it were still in print. I am increasing my earlier rating from 4 to 5 stars because this book had such an impact on me. And I just loved the author, as a person. Wherever he is, I hope he is happy.

[Tom Conwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in 1995 and laughed out loud multiple times. I wrote a letter to Neil Steinberg telling him how much I liked the book, and because the return address was mangled in the mail, he looked me up in the phone book and CALLED ME! I'm a fan forever.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an amusing read about a history of people that attempted and failed at things. Sadly, it's been quite a while since I finished it and have since forgotten much about the book.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are looking for new and inventive ways to muck things up, here's a book to get the creative bozocity flowing.

[Deidre Le Maistre]

Got through it but not my style