Oops: 20 Life Lessons from the Fiascoes That Shaped America

Review By: Nicole Beck, Compare Book QA Department
Review Score:

I was intrigued to read Oops: 20 Life Lessons from the Fiascoes That Shaped America because I had such a good time reading Poplorica, a book written by the same authors. Before the first chapter begins, there is a quote that sums up this book: "Good judgment is usually the result of experience. And experience is frequently the result of bad judgment." This is a quote from an attorney in a lawsuit involving Boston's John Hancock Tower, after the skyscraper's windows fell out.

They refer to each chapter as a "Lesson" because these are things that we as a society have learned (or need to learn) because of major mistakes. Lesson #3 is "Beware solutions that create new problems." Apparently Thomas Midgley Jr. is responsible for a lot of the stuff we've been putting into the air that has made our world worse for the wear. According to this book, he solved the noisy knocking problem that gasoline used to have in automobiles. He figured out that adding lead would solve the problem. Unfortunately, now we know how toxic lead is. He also solved the problem of exploding refrigerators. He introduced chlorofluorocarbons into the market place. We all are familiar with CFC's and the way that they kill off our ozone layer. I suppose we have to give credit to this scientist for his problem solving skills, and there wasn't any way he could have know at the time how toxic and troublesome his solutions could be. Now, there is plenty of research to goes into the environmental impact that such solutions might cause. Without Thomas Midgley Jr. we might never have realized the importance of such research.

Lesson #8 is called "Pandering will get you nowhere." In the 1950's car manufactures noticed a trend wherein the woman of the house was the one doing most of the driving. Instead of consulting women to see what they might like to have in a car, a bunch of men got together and came up with the 1955 Dodge La Femme. Of course women love pink, so the car was painted "heather-rose" and white. The interior had matching rosebud-patterned fabric covering the seats. And, with the purchase of the car, Dodge also threw in matching accessories - clothing and a lipstick case (pink of course). The cars weren't made to fit a woman better, or to help her in anyway run the errands she used the car for. They just thought matching clothes would sell the car. I don't know about you, but I'm not at all surprised that this car was a disaster. Company historians put the number of cars sold between 300 and 1500. I'm impressed they were able to sell so many! The Dodge La Femme created a blueprint of what not to do when designing a car for women.

Lessons #10 and #15 are both about fashion mistakes. One being the paper dress- (gee, that sounds comfortable), and the other being the leisure suit for men. Both of these trends started out with a bang, selling like hot cakes. Unfortunately, both then took a turn for the worse. As women started wearing the paper dress, they noticed that some very embarrassing moments were always only a movement away. Just imagine tearing your dress, or spilling water on it. There would be no way to repair it long enough to get to a restroom to change. It seems that after wearing one once, no one was willing to wear one again. Sales came to a halt as quickly as they had risen. The leisure suit was no better. Besides being totally tacky (think John Travolta on a run way), the material they were made out of had a fatal flaw. The double knit polyester didn't allow heat or moisture to travel away from the body. Imagine a sauna, and that is what it felt like to wear one of these "suits." Not a pretty image at the office. The authors of this book do say that Casual Fridays came about because of the Leisure Suit, and for that I am grateful.

Other lessons come from engineering disasters, entertainments worst moments, and quite a few sports fiascos. I agree with the statement from the inside cover that says, "Oops proves that when it comes to failure, truth is stranger than fiction."