A Short History of the World in 50 Failures
By Ben Gazur

Explore the failures, mistakes and missed opportunities that shaped history in this new entry in the bestselling series.From the botched attempt to create a life-extending elixir that produced gunpowder, to the unsuccessful stint in medical school which led to a career in naturalism for Charles Darwin, to the missile detection system malfunction that almost sparked a nuclear war, the course of human history has so often been shaped by failures of all magnitudes.Inand fifty bite-sized chaptersand spanningand thousands of years,and A Short History of the World in 50 Failuresand details how the world as we know it has been defined by plans gone awry, opportunities not seized upon and schemes that were always fated to end in catastrophe.Whether it's the pharaoh Akhenaten's misplaced attempt to found a new religion or Napoleon's doomed invasion of Russia, discoverand a fascinating collection of outsized tales and historical snafusand that created the world as we know it today.Other books in the series:A Short History of the World in 50 Placesand (9781789291971)A Short History of the World in 50 Animalsand (9781789292954)A Short History of the World in 50 Booksand (9781789294088)A Short History of the World in 50 Liesand (9781789294606)