A graduate of Cambridge University, Stephen Weir is a writer and publisher who has worked on three continents. He has worked with authors as diverse as the Australian novelist Patrick White, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the noted British military historian John Keegan, and the billionaire George Soros.

Contents: Introduction 1. In the Beginning: Adam and Eve, the Original Idiots 2. Menelaus and His Lost Wife 3. Hannibal and the Avalanche 4. Cleopatra's Men 5. Nero and the Burning of Rome 6. Erik the Red's Dream Island: The First Real Estate Scam 7. Pope Sylvester and the End of the World 8. Pope Alexander and the Search for Prester John 9. George Podiebrad, the Last Bohemian, and World Peace 10. Moctezuma and the Returning God 11. Johan de Witt, New Amsterdam and Pulau Run: The Worst Deal Ever Made 12. Lord North and King George III's Tea Party 13. Napoleon, the March to Russia - and Frankenstein 14. The War Office Versus the Lady with the Lamp: Disease in the Crimea 15. The War Office Versus the Indian Army: Mutiny and Beef Fat 16. Thomas Austin's Rabbits 17. General Custer and Little Big Horn 18. King Leopold and the Scramble for Africa 19. Nicholas, Alexandra and the Mad Monk 20. Ismay's Lifeboats 21. Gavrilo Princip's Deli Sandwich: The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand 22. Winston Churchill and the Disaster at Gallipoli 23. Trench Warfare, General Haig, and the Battle of the Somme 24. Maginot's Line 25. Winston Churchill Strikes Again: The Map of Iraq 26. Stalin and the Great Purge 27. Shenton Thomas's Little Men and the Fall of Singapore 28. Suhrawardy, Partition, and the Bengal Rice Famine 29. Wakefield's Nuts 30. Mohammed Mossadegh, Time's Man of the Year, and Democracy in Iran 31. The British Nuclear Legacy: The Black Mist of Maralinga 32. Sir Anthony Eden, Suez, and Speed 33. Grunenthal's Outstandingly Safe Drug: Thalidomide 34. Vaccines, aids, and the Chimps of the Congo 35. Mao and the Great Leap Forward 36. Robert McNamara's Terrible Wrong: Agent Orange 37. Murphy's Law and the Missing Hyphen 38. Bernard Dowiyogo's Bird Droppings 39. Drinking Jim Jones's Kool-Aid: The Jonestown Suicides 40. Union Carbide's Cost Cutting: Bhopal 41. Robert Maxwell and The Mirror Pensioners 42. The Soviet Nuclear Legacy: Chernobyl 43. Ahmed Bahdib, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, and the CIA 44. Gerald Ratner's 'Crap' 45. The Bangladesh Floods and the Destruction of the Himalayan Rainforest: The Brits Again 46. Lockheed Martin, Columbine, and the Metric System 47. The Y2K That Never Came 48. Robert Mugabe's Great Zimbabwe Land Grab 49. Wall Street, Enron, and Those Who Believed 50. Why a Ten-Year-Old British Girl Knew More Than the Thai Government: The Boxing Day Tsunami