 By Martin J. Smith & Patrick J. Kiger
Harper Collins Books, 2006
ISBN 13 978 0 06 078083 8
285 pages
The Big Idea
Oops may be the only American cultural history to ever include
flaming elephants, government-funded psychics, and a cutting-edge
cinematic technology known as “Smell-O-Vision.” This chronicle of often overlooked snafus will delight fans of popular culture who appreciate that Americans’ failures are as spectacular as their successes: bridges that collapse; flying cars that crash; sports promotions run amok; deodorant that nearly destroyed the earth; even failures that failed to happen!
Veteran journalists Smith and Kiger select twenty miscues, goofs, complications, and failures that shaped modern America and reveal the life lessons these gaffes teach, including:
- Accentuate the Positive: How Thomas Edison Invented Trash Talk
- Understand the Market: The 1967 Monkees-Jimi Hendrix Concert Tour
- Desperation is the cradle of Bad Ideas: Cleveland Indians’ Ten-Cent Beer Night
- Sweat the Details: The Sixty-Story John Hancock Guillotine
Enriched by handy clip-‘n’-save “Recipes for Disaster”, Oops proves that when it comes to failure, truth is a stranger than fiction. |
Why You Need This Book
This book offers twenty complementary lessons about the general
conduct of life – lessons that can be used for everything from a personal mantra to a philosophy of business.
ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE: HOW THOMAS EDISON INVENTED TRASH TALK
Recipe for Disaster – Edison’s Elephant Flambé
Ingredients:
1 fresh rogue elephant
1 lost cause
1 sore loser (conscience removed)
Marinate loser in lost cause for 15 years. When done, char elephant for 10 seconds at 6,000 volts using alternating current. Serve immediately as cheap entertainment, or on film as an appetizer for your next big venture.
The legacy of Edison and the Topsy debacle extends far beyond the actual event, of course. America still runs on AC electricity, as it pretty much has for the past century. Edison’s endorsement of electrocution as a humane way to execute condemned criminals led to more than 4,300 legal executions by electricity in the US during the 20 th century.
Despite those cautionary words more than a decade ago, consumers today are being manipulated by a virulent new strain of trash talkers who employ ever more sophisticated techniques and media such as television, talk radio, and the Internet. But, the truth be told, they’re all just following the lead of the American icon who made “negative” so much more than an electric term.
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