The Worst-Case Scenario Almanac: History [Paperback]

David Borgenicht (Author), Piers Marchant (Author), Joshua Piven (Author), Melissa Wagner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 2006

Best-seller history repeats itself with this dynamic new "almanac" format that broadens the scope and content of the Worst-Case Scenario handbooks. The Worst-Case Scenario Almanac: History offers step-by-step illustrated scenarios on how to win a joust, survive in a dungeon, and overcome other plights of yesteryear, but the volume also features hundreds of pages of additionaland hilariousinformation in the form of lists (the worst jobs to have during the Industrial Revolution), offbeat profiles (Attila the Hun, Idi Amin), Worst-Case Wisdom (bad advice), descriptions of disasters narrowly averted, and much more. Packed with charts, graphs, maps, and timelines, The Worst-Case Scenario Almanac: History is an invigorating look at all that's gone wrong in the past and the best way to prepare for the future.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht, authors of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series, live in Philadelphia, a city of great historical importance.

Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht, authors of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series, live in Philadelphia, a city of great historical importance.

Piers Marchant is a Philadelphia-based writer and editor who has published everything from film reviews to How to Be Pope.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (October 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811845400
• ISBN-13: 978-0811845403
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,173,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The REAL Worst-Case Scenario: Running Out of Ideas, March 16, 2007

By 

fredtownward "The Analytical Mind; Have Brain... (Mocksville, North Carolina, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Worst-Case Scenario Almanac: History (Paperback)

I've been a fan of this series since it began, and this marks the very first non-5-star rating I've ever given to one of these books. The reason? Let's start with the numbers.

What has always made these books stand out from the competition were the detailed worst-case scenarios, the expert-provided suggestions on how to deal with perhaps unlikely but all too real possibilities. Lots of imitators came up with various kinds of handbooks in response to their spectacular success, but this was the feature that "separated the men from the boys" if you will. In their first book The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook they included 40 scenarios in 176 pages. All subsequent books had more, and their last book The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: LIFE (Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbooks), the first of the double-sized ones, had 94 scenarios in 301 pages. THIS book manages a paltry 30 scenarios in 316 pages.

What fills up the rest of the book? A fairly pathetic attempt at a historical almanac of the "worst" of all mankind. Given the number of pages available this attempt was doomed from the start because there was insufficient room to even BEGIN to scratch the surface, but the authors made things worse by:

(a) making use of a number of flashy gimmicks that spread less content over more space than a more conventional layout would have done and
(b) adopting an edgy, ironic, even humorous attitude that is intended to entertain but is more likely to annoy the historically knowledgeable while it is misinforming the historically ignorant.

Thus we get cutesy chapter headings like "Dungeons and Dragons" for the Middle Ages and "You Sank My Battleship" for the first half of the 20th Century; oddly chosen events for the chapter timelines; "Who's Who of the Worst" pages with an odd selection of history's villains (Al Capone? In the same category as Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot? And why isn't Mao Zedong included?); various charts, some worthless (Who really CARES what ailments tobacco was once thought able to cure?); and a bunch of one page "History Lessons" that conclude with varyingly inappropriate smart-ass comments.

Looking at the worst-case scenarios themselves, one begins to see the problem the authors were attempting to solve with this format change. With the exception of a few that were "artificially aged" ("How to survive an asp bite" is simply "How to survive a snake bite" illustrated by a drawing of an ancient Egyptian.), these (from "How to fend off a saber-toothed tiger" to "How to defect from the USSR") are perfectly good but now obsolete scenarios. Stumped by how to make use of them without "cheating", Piven and Borgenicht apparently came up with the "almanac" concept. One can only hope that future editions, like the upcoming The Worst Case Scenario Almanac: The Great Outdoors (Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbooks) will benefit from smaller topics allowing for more scenarios and less filler.

Frankly, I guess I just expected more from the handbook grownups.

Note: I wouldn't consider it fair to single out every historical error, but a couple are so completely, 180 degrees wrong that one suspects they might have been deliberate, say in service of a political agenda.

First, the timeline on page 164 contains the following item: "1763 July: British forces distribute smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans." Frankly I question the thinking behind including this in a HISTORY book, especially one with such limited space, but if you are going to do so, honesty requires something like the following:

Now We Know: Any and all such attempts to spread smallpox were completely useless due to the smallpox virus' inability to survive outside of a human host, which is why it alone among the ancient disease scourges of mankind has been completely eliminated. In fact such attempts were arguably counterproductive because (a) exposure to dead smallpox virus material is one way to develop immunity and (b) the sort of people who would deliberately try to infect Native Americans with smallpox would probably have killed quite a lot of them if they had invested their time, effort, and money in a mass murder technique that ACTUALLY WORKED.

History Lesson: Never mind about the blankets; worry about the health of the people handing them out!

Second, the item about the atomic bomb on page 259 contains the following: "When Germany surrendered in May, it became clear that German scientists had made little progress in developing atomic energy, making the United States the sole possessors of the technology. Nonetheless, President Harry Truman authorized the release of two atomic bombs in Japan in August 1945, killing tens of thousands of people and starting the arms race."

Again honesty requires something like the following: "When Japan surrendered in August, it became clear that Japanese scientists had made tremendous progress in developing atomic energy, making the United States NOT the sole possessors of the technology. The Japanese atomic program almost certainly would have succeeded if they hadn't run out of time; in fact some Japanese scientists at the time claimed to have successfully tested an atomic bomb between the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks before fleeing the rapidly advancing Soviets, but since the alleged test site was in what became North Korea, it has never been possible to check out these claims.

History Lesson: Sometimes it is important to get the toothpaste out of the tube FIRST.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun Read, October 16, 2010

By 

D. Morgan "Vashka" (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Worst-Case Scenario Almanac: History (Paperback)

I gave this to my Historian husband as a bathroom reader and he absolutely loved it! He has since given it to various friends to read as well!

5.0 out of 5 stars An Entertaining Read - Much More Than A Guide, February 28, 2007

By 

Michael Dao (Norwalk, CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Worst-Case Scenario Almanac: History (Paperback)

This book was certainly a much more interesting read than the other books in the Worst Case Scenario series. The other books simply have been a number of scenarios and solutions for said scenarios. However this book does something different. Some historical scenarios come with the historical solutions, and then with an modern day solution. Dispersed within the scenarios are short stories about various events and individuals in history, with some little known facts about them. For example, Caligula was once an enlightened ruler before a sickness caused the madness that we know him so well for. And with each historical anecdote was a lesson to be learned. This book is also ideal for bathroom reading as each section is a fairly quick read.