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OOPS!: The Worst Blunders of All Time
Travel through history and around the world to learn about the greatest mistakes, blunders, and bloopers of all time!
Everyone makes mistakes and nearly everyone likes to know about them, especially when made by someone else! The Worst Blunders of All Time : Shocking Tales from Pandora's Box to Putin's Invasion presents some of our most notable blunders, from the silly to the consequential, from ancient history to current events. It offers the pleasure of Schadenfreude and of an easy-going reading experience, as well as—here and there—some learning opportunities. The reader will see when relatively big things have gone wrong and couldn’t be called back, such as iconic, mythical blunders like Pandora opening that troublesome box and Eve taking her ill-advised bite, to great historical oops such as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, as well as some less monumental but nonetheless exemplary mistakes, such as the “Curse of the Bambino,” when the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth—at the time, a pitcher—to the New York Yankees. These and other exemplary oops are presented in a light-hearted way, with some exceptions being catastrophic, current catastrophes, such as Trump’s egregious mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Author David P. Barash will take readers from the tragic to the whimsical, with the latter represented by, for example, “Wrong Way Corrigan,” an early twentieth century aviator who thought he was flying nonstop from New York to California, but, confused by a heavy fog, ended up in Ireland. Pointing out these and other mistakes will be an exercise in Monday morning quarterbacking and 20-20 hindsight. Thus, The Worst Blunders of All Time shall “backstrapolate”: looking in the rear-view mirror at mistakes made by others.
The Worst Blunders of All Time is neither an advice book nor a series of cautionary tales. It’s an easy and accessible read, especially useful as therapy in these difficult times. However, its nonetheless accurate and informative, giving rise to some potentially useful take-home messages, keyed to its material. Ideally, we should all benefit from our own mistakes, making lemonade out of lemons, while also following Eleanor Roosevelt’s “Learn from the mistakes of others. You cannot live long enough to make them all yourself.”
Everyone makes mistakes and nearly everyone likes to know about them, especially when made by someone else! The Worst Blunders of All Time : Shocking Tales from Pandora's Box to Putin's Invasion presents some of our most notable blunders, from the silly to the consequential, from ancient history to current events. It offers the pleasure of Schadenfreude and of an easy-going reading experience, as well as—here and there—some learning opportunities. The reader will see when relatively big things have gone wrong and couldn’t be called back, such as iconic, mythical blunders like Pandora opening that troublesome box and Eve taking her ill-advised bite, to great historical oops such as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, as well as some less monumental but nonetheless exemplary mistakes, such as the “Curse of the Bambino,” when the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth—at the time, a pitcher—to the New York Yankees. These and other exemplary oops are presented in a light-hearted way, with some exceptions being catastrophic, current catastrophes, such as Trump’s egregious mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Author David P. Barash will take readers from the tragic to the whimsical, with the latter represented by, for example, “Wrong Way Corrigan,” an early twentieth century aviator who thought he was flying nonstop from New York to California, but, confused by a heavy fog, ended up in Ireland. Pointing out these and other mistakes will be an exercise in Monday morning quarterbacking and 20-20 hindsight. Thus, The Worst Blunders of All Time shall “backstrapolate”: looking in the rear-view mirror at mistakes made by others.
The Worst Blunders of All Time is neither an advice book nor a series of cautionary tales. It’s an easy and accessible read, especially useful as therapy in these difficult times. However, its nonetheless accurate and informative, giving rise to some potentially useful take-home messages, keyed to its material. Ideally, we should all benefit from our own mistakes, making lemonade out of lemons, while also following Eleanor Roosevelt’s “Learn from the mistakes of others. You cannot live long enough to make them all yourself.”
288 pages, Hardcover
Published August 15, 2023
3 people are currently reading
27 people want to read
About the author
David Philip Barash
45 books65 followersDavid P. Barash is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, and is notable for books on Human aggression, Peace Studies, and the sexual behavior of animals and people. He has written approximately 30 books in total. He received his bachelor's degree in biology from Harpur College, Binghamton University, and a Ph.D. in zoology from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970. He taught at the State University of New York at Oneonta, and then accepted a permanent position at the University of Washington.
His book Natural Selections: selfish altruists, honest liars and other realities of evolution is based on articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and published in 2007 by Bellevue Literary Press. Immediately before that was Madame Bovary's Ovaries: a Darwinian look at literature, a popular but serious presentation of Darwinian literary criticism, jointly written with his daughter, Nanelle Rose Barash. He has also written over 230 scholarly articles and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, along with many other honors.
In 2008, a second edition of the textbook Peace and Conflict Studies co-authored with Charles P. Webel was published by Sage. In 2009, Columbia University Press published How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories, a book on sex differentiation co-authored with Judith Eve Lipton. This was followed in 2010 by Strange Bedfellows: the surprising connection between sex, evolution and monogamy published by Bellevue Literary Press, and, in 2011, Payback: why we retaliate, redirect aggression and seek revenge, coauthored with Judith Eve Lipton and published by Oxford University Press. His book Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary puzzles of human nature appeared in 2012, also published by Oxford University Press, and in 2013, Sage published the 3rd edition of his text, Peace and Conflict Studies.
His book Natural Selections: selfish altruists, honest liars and other realities of evolution is based on articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and published in 2007 by Bellevue Literary Press. Immediately before that was Madame Bovary's Ovaries: a Darwinian look at literature, a popular but serious presentation of Darwinian literary criticism, jointly written with his daughter, Nanelle Rose Barash. He has also written over 230 scholarly articles and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, along with many other honors.
In 2008, a second edition of the textbook Peace and Conflict Studies co-authored with Charles P. Webel was published by Sage. In 2009, Columbia University Press published How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories, a book on sex differentiation co-authored with Judith Eve Lipton. This was followed in 2010 by Strange Bedfellows: the surprising connection between sex, evolution and monogamy published by Bellevue Literary Press, and, in 2011, Payback: why we retaliate, redirect aggression and seek revenge, coauthored with Judith Eve Lipton and published by Oxford University Press. His book Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary puzzles of human nature appeared in 2012, also published by Oxford University Press, and in 2013, Sage published the 3rd edition of his text, Peace and Conflict Studies.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 17, 2024
From its juvenile title to the author's gratuitous use of profanity, to the undisguised left-wing bias, this book just can't be recommended.
The author's animus to President Trump is blatant and undisguised, as for example, on page 192 we see the heading, "The Travesty of Trump."
What's most troubling is the discussion of Covid 19, to which the author gives 17 pages, more than any other "oops" but which never mentions the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration. One of the GBD's authors, as I write this in mid-December 2024, will soon be head of the National Institutes of Health.
The Declaration "claimed harmful COVID-19 lockdowns could be avoided via ... focused protection, by which those most at risk of dying from an infection could ... be kept safe while society otherwise took no steps to prevent infection," allowing herd immunity to protect us and letting schools and businesses remain open. Quote above is from the GBD's Wikipedia page.
Another lengthy section, pages 222 to 238, is on the Ukraine war, and where we find the author acting as if he were privy to the thoughts and emotions of the Russian dictator. How this is possible is not disclosed. In the year 2023, when this book was published, 16 pages were not appropriate for an ongoing war, its outcome as I write this in December 2024 still unknown.
The book is an easy read, too easy in fact, as the subject of mistakes deserves more serious attention. As one who has made more than his share, I ask: why DO we so often commit such egregious errors of judgment? And how can we help our children not follow in our footsteps?
So many of history's tragedies, resulting in the deaths of millions, deserve more respect than calling them "oops."
The author's animus to President Trump is blatant and undisguised, as for example, on page 192 we see the heading, "The Travesty of Trump."
What's most troubling is the discussion of Covid 19, to which the author gives 17 pages, more than any other "oops" but which never mentions the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration. One of the GBD's authors, as I write this in mid-December 2024, will soon be head of the National Institutes of Health.
The Declaration "claimed harmful COVID-19 lockdowns could be avoided via ... focused protection, by which those most at risk of dying from an infection could ... be kept safe while society otherwise took no steps to prevent infection," allowing herd immunity to protect us and letting schools and businesses remain open. Quote above is from the GBD's Wikipedia page.
Another lengthy section, pages 222 to 238, is on the Ukraine war, and where we find the author acting as if he were privy to the thoughts and emotions of the Russian dictator. How this is possible is not disclosed. In the year 2023, when this book was published, 16 pages were not appropriate for an ongoing war, its outcome as I write this in December 2024 still unknown.
The book is an easy read, too easy in fact, as the subject of mistakes deserves more serious attention. As one who has made more than his share, I ask: why DO we so often commit such egregious errors of judgment? And how can we help our children not follow in our footsteps?
So many of history's tragedies, resulting in the deaths of millions, deserve more respect than calling them "oops."
April 18, 2024
finally finished this book bc i lowkey forgot ab it. seems like something i would read for an apush assignment. sometimes interesting and sometimes stupid.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews