SNAFU
The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups
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4.1 • 21 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Bestseller
From actor, comedian, writer, and host of the hit history podcast SNAFU, Ed Helms brings you an absurdly entertaining look at history’s biggest blunders, complete with lively illustrations.
History contains a plethora of insane screwups—otherwise known as SNAFUs. Coined during World War I, SNAFU is an acronym that stands for Situation Normal: All F*cked Up. In other words, “things are pretty screwed up, but aren’t they always?”
Spanning from the 1950’s to the present day, SNAFU features Ed Helms as unofficial history teacher with a loving tribute to humanity's finest face-plants, diving into each decade’s craziest SNAFUs. From planting nukes on the moon to training felines as CIA spies to weaponizing the weather, this book unpacks the incredibly ironic decision-making and hilariously terrifying aftermath of America’s biggest mishaps.
Filled with sharp humor and lively illustrations, SNAFU is a wild ride through time that covers the head-scratching and occasionally inspiring blunders that have shaped our world and made historians spit-take. They're the kinds of stories that not only entertain but offers fresh insights that just might prevent history from repeating itself again and again.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In his hilarious collection of colossal flubs, actor and comedian Ed Helms brings his fascinating SNAFU podcast to the page. Helms delights in digging up some of the most ludicrous large-scale blunders in history and unveiling them in all their glory. Covering foul-ups from the ’50s to the 2000s, Helms gleefully digs into the “What could go wrong?” follies with tales of an “atomic lab” kids’ toy that included actual radioactive material and a simulated Air Force combat mission that accidentally dropped a real bomb on a small South Carolina town. Then there was the time the CIA decided to implant a listening device inside a living cat. In the “you had one job” department, you’ll encounter such incidents as somebody pushing the wrong button and putting Hawaii residents on blast with a real missile alert that was meant to be a test. Helms relates these stories with a historian’s thoroughness and his trademark comic touch. Unless you’re one of the people described in SNAFU, you’ll come away feeling a lot better about your biggest mistakes—and you’ll get in plenty of laughs, too.
