An exhilarating journey through the most creative and catastrophic f**k ups in human history
In the seventy thousand years that modern human beings have walked this earth, we've come a long way. Art, science, culture, trade - on the evolutionary food chain, we're real winners. But, frankly, it's not exactly been plain sailing, and sometimes - just occasionally - we've managed to really, truly, quite unbelievably f**k things up.
From Chairman Mao's Four Pests Campaign, to the sinking of the Titanic; from the American Dustbowl, to the world's leading superpower electing a reality TV mogul as President... it's pretty safe to say that, as a species, we haven't exactly grown wiser with age.
So, next time you think you've really f**ked up, this book will remind you: it could be so much worse...

Tom Phillips is the former editor of Full Fact, Britain's leading independent fact-checking organisation. Previously he was the editorial director of BuzzFeed UK. Tom's first book, HUMANS: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up, was published in 2018, and has since been translated into more than 30 languages. Tom's second book, TRUTH: A Brief History of Total Bullsh*t was published in 2019 and has been translated into more than 20 languages.