It Seemed Like a Good Idea... : A Compendium Of Great Historical Fiascoes

Rating:
Summary: well, not a bad idea...
Review: A pot pourri of fiascoes and mistakes, mostly political and military, from Ancient Greece to the Gulf War, written up in short chapters mostly by the two editors, but with a couple of other contributors. Not bad, although the short treatments inevitably simplify history. The well-known examples (eg. Pearl Harbour) are uninteresting, but most people will learn something new from the others. Quite good historical light-entertainment, although marred by some typos. Overall: glad i bought it, it whiled away a couple of evenings on vacation.

Rating:
Summary: In Limbo, but still fun
Review: Historian/author William Forstchen brings us "It Seemed Like a Good Idea" as a quasi-humorous look at mistaken judgements throughout history. Each chapter is fairly short, and the chunks of history make for great "alternate history speculation" by scholars. However, this book is not fiction. It is also not serious history, as there is a lot more behind each story than Forstchen presents (for instance, "Big Guns" doesn't really point out that the Byzantine Empire was already doomed by a shrinking tax base, the sweeping tide of Islam, and the harm done to the Eastern Empire by the Latinate Dictatorship, the Crusades, etc.).

For serious history, with a readable, well-researched look at REALLY big blunders, the reader might want to move on to Barbara Tuchmann's "The March of Folly," a true classic. Foir alternate history, Forstchen's own novels are as good an entry point to the genre as any.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea is a hybrid and is sort of in limbo, but is well-written and engageing nonetheless. It's main failing is that it uses 20-20 hindsight and information not available to decision-makers at the time tocast them as idiots. Otherwise, it's a fine read, informative, and well worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but a Tad Repetetive
Review: I love and have read a number of books of this sort, and while not being a bad example of the short article fact book format, it did tend to get a little repetetive. The three to four page segments are written by different people so some of the pieces tend to overlap with the same information from one segment to the next. Also, I had read most of the "good idea turned bad" information in other books of this type (usually with more conciseness) so there weren't many surprises.
The reading is quick and light and fun, so if you aren't familiar with the "this is what REALLY happened" branch of literature, you may enjoy this quite a bit. Otherwise, I would suggest one stick with broader and more interesting works like "An Underground Education" by Richard Zacks which covers a number of the same points found in this work as well as branching out into many other arenas of human stupidity.

Rating:
Summary: Fun and Accurate
Review: This book was not only great to read and certainly isn't like history as taught as a dry list of dates and platitudes in too many schools. Nothing in great depth, but hundreds of historical events and facts I didn't know were given me in a way that made them enjoyable. Obviously the book historians create to when they want to have fun. I'd always wondered why the vikings never came back.

Rating:
Summary: Good read, but . . .
Review: This is a good book to sit by your bedside to read a short chapter before going to sleep. I like this kind of book format; however, some stories will leave you wondering about the sanity of the very authors themselves. For example, there was a reference that the famous "John Wayne" was an active participant at the Alamo. I read the paragraph in which this occurred several times and decided that the author was just making an intellectual joke . . . but I speculate that the reader 100 or so years from now may think that the author was a complete idiot that only learned history from made-for-tv movies. Another author belittled the human cost of the plague in 1300s Europe by stating that it ONLY affected 3 out of 4 people. You may have purchased the book to discover some history, but you are also discovering something about how people interpret history as well. Although this book is easy reading in a short-story format, maybe the bedside table isn't the right place for it?

Rating:
Summary: Good Easy Read
Review: This is a very good easy read. History has been simplified, but this is a wonderful "bathroom book" or "travel book" because most sections aren't more than four or five pages. Don't read this if you want deep historical knowledge, but instead if you want educational easy reading or to know some interesting facts.