100 Mistakes That Changed the World

The Blunders, Miscalculations, and Accidents That Shaped the Course of Human History

What if the course of history turned not on greatness — but on error?

Not the grand sweep of empires and discoveries, but the wrong turn, the ignored warning, the decision that seemed reasonable at the time and proved catastrophic in retrospect. This book tells the stories of one hundred such moments.

From Julius Caesar reading the wrong note at the wrong time, to the Federal Reserve contracting the money supply during the Great Depression. From Kodak locking the first digital camera in a drawer, to the engineers who tried to stop the Challenger launch and were overruled. From the O-ring that failed in the cold, to the antibiotic resistance crisis that Alexander Fleming warned about in 1945 — and that no one has stopped.

Inside, you'll discover:

• The two-hour delay that may have cost Germany World War Two
• The $1 million offer for Google that Excite turned down — and laughed at
• The sparrow campaign that starved millions in Mao's China
• The penicillin mold Fleming discovered, then forgot for a decade
• The cartridge grease that ended the British East India Company
• The O-ring engineers who were right, and the managers who won
• The vote that built organized crime in America for a century
• The mistake that is still being made — right now — in real time

Each of the hundred chapters opens with the moment of error, traces its logic, and follows its consequences to the present day. This is not a book about foolish people. Most of the mistakes here were made by intelligent, well-informed individuals doing their best. It is a book about the patterns of error that recur across every era and every domain — and what those patterns reveal about how decisions actually get made under pressure, under uncertainty, and under the weight of what everyone else believes to be true.

Perfect for readers of Yuval Noah Harari, Bill Bryson, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand not just what happened — but why it went wrong.

History's greatest lessons are written in its greatest mistakes.