Towards a History of Failure
1. 
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
by:
John Carreyrou
4.41 avg rating — 276,386 ratings 
3. 
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
by:
Carol Tavris
4.04 avg rating — 28,667 ratings 3. 
The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale 3.75 avg rating — 458 ratings
5. 
How They Choked: Failures, Flops, and Flaws of the Awfully Famous
by:
Georgia Bragg
3.79 avg rating — 1,269 ratings 6. 
The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made
by:
Greg Sestero
4.29 avg rating — 34,390 ratings 
7. 
Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times
by:
Kenneth Whyte
4.35 avg rating — 1,437 ratings 
10. 
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
by:
Roger Lowenstein
4.20 avg rating — 30,805 ratings 10. 
Piedras de Afilar: The Unfulfilled Dream of a 19th Century Scottish Botanist in South America
by:
Oliver Dawe
0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings 
13. 
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
by:
Bethany McLean
4.22 avg rating — 27,094 ratings 13. 
John Lydgate's Fall of Princes: Narrative Tragedy in Its Literary and Political Contexts (Oxford English Monographs)
by:
Nigel Mortimer
it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 2 ratings 13. 
Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism
by:
Kevin Phillips
3.73 avg rating — 1,037 ratings 
17. 
17. 
Charlotte & Leopold: The True Story of The Original People's Princess
by:
James Chambers
3.92 avg rating — 912 ratings 
20. 
Songs of a Man Who Failed; The Poetical Writings of Henry Clinton Parkhurst 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings
24. 
Design and Construction Failures: Lessons From Forensic Investigations
by:
Dov Kaminetzky
it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 7 ratings 24. 
Boo Hoo: A Dot.com Story from Concept to Catastrophe
by:
Ernst Malmsten
3.82 avg rating — 319 ratings 24. 
The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives
by:
Jesse Eisinger
3.79 avg rating — 1,876 ratings 
29. 
Recollections of an Ill-Fated Expedition to the Headwaters of the Madeira River in Brazil
by:
Neville B. Craig
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating 
29. 
The United States and China in the Twentieth Century
by:
Michael Schaller
3.32 avg rating — 37 ratings 32. 
Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street 4.20 avg rating — 16,389 ratings
32. 
Higher Speculations: Grand Theories and Failed Revolutions in Physics and Cosmology
by:
Helge Kragh
4.45 avg rating — 103 ratings 32. 
The Revolution that Failed: Reconstruction in Natchitoches
by:
Adam Fairclough
4.29 avg rating — 7 ratings 35. 
The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan
by:
Michael Hastings
3.93 avg rating — 2,628 ratings 
38. 
Fatal Flight: The True Story of Britain's Last Great Airship
by:
Bill Hammack
3.91 avg rating — 150 ratings 38. 
California Comeback: How A "Failed State" Became a Model for the Nation
by:
Narda Zacchino
3.83 avg rating — 41 ratings 
40. 
Paving Paradise: Florida's Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss
by:
Craig Pittman
4.21 avg rating — 48 ratings 42. 
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
by:
Atul Gawande
4.28 avg rating — 51,630 ratings 42. 
Who Really Feeds the World? The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology
by:
Vandana Shiva
3.93 avg rating — 419 ratings 44. 
Ablaze: The Story of the Heroes and Victims of Chernobyl
by:
Piers Paul Read
3.92 avg rating — 363 ratings 44. 
Your Band Sucks: What I Saw at Indie Rock's Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear)
by:
Jon Fine
3.61 avg rating — 652 ratings 
46. 
48. 
The More We Know: NBC News, Educational Innovation, and Learning from Failure
by:
Eric Klopfer
liked it 3.00 avg rating — 3 ratings 49. 
The Peasants' Revolt: England's Failed Revolution of 1381
by:
Alastair Dunn
3.74 avg rating — 31 ratings 49. 
Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of our Times
by:
George Crile
4.01 avg rating — 9,615 ratings 51. 
The 5 Unanswered Questions About 9/11: What the 9/11 Commission Report Failed to Tell Us
by:
James Ridgeway
3.44 avg rating — 27 ratings 
53. 
SO WRONG FOR SO LONG: How the Press, the Pundits--and the President--Failed on Iraq (2013 Edition)
by:
Greg Mitchell
3.89 avg rating — 70 ratings 
55. 
Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients
by:
Ben Goldacre
4.10 avg rating — 9,121 ratings 57. 
Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters 3.92 avg rating — 260 ratings
57. 
When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World
by:
Leon Festinger
3.81 avg rating — 1,234 ratings 59. 
61. 
Descent into Chaos: The United States & the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan & Central Asia
by:
Ahmed Rashid
3.95 avg rating — 2,624 ratings 61. 
Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing
by:
Peter Robison
4.18 avg rating — 4,016 ratings 63. 
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by:
Jared Diamond
3.93 avg rating — 73,875 ratings 63. 
The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned
by:
John Strausbaugh
4.05 avg rating — 594 ratings 65. 
God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer
by:
Bart D. Ehrman
3.95 avg rating — 5,895 ratings 66. 
Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America's War on Terror
by:
Bob Graham
3.92 avg rating — 115 ratings 
68. 
Thieves, Rascals and Sore Losers: The Unsettling History of the Dirty Deals that Helped Settle Nebraska
by:
Marilyn Coffey
3.68 avg rating — 34 ratings 