What Were They Thinking?, New and Revised: Really Bad Ideas Throughout History (Humor)

Bad ideas are everywhere--they're the tile grout of history, the crabgrass of civilization, poking up through every crack in our thinking. According to government statistics, they outnumber good ideas 600 to 1.

Fully revised and expanded, What Were They Thinking is a compendium of some 400 harebrained schemes, fool notions, and misguided obsessions both grandiose and mundane. Readers will learn about the mutant cheese that attacked the White House . . . the Atlanta Braves pitcher who ironed his shirt--while he was wearing it . . .the man who put lobsters in his underwear . . . and the Elvis Vegiform, a plastic mold that makes any vegetable resemble the King. Within these pages, the aim has not been to probe the motives behind bad ideas, but simply to recount and, above all, revel in them.

The stories in What Were They Thinking? range from the horrific to the hilarious; many are both. But they are all true.