This was an interesting read. I enjoy reading about disasters and the chain of events that occur in order for them to happen. I'd not heard of the New London school disaster before, but I grew up in Australia so that may have something to do with it. I thought the methods of analysis Bob Mayer uses from his Special Forces training and experience were well adapted to discussing the causes of unfortunate events. The book is clearly written, and each event is summarised and then broken down into its causative factors, at least one of which is always human error, or ego (in the case of Custer). A very insightful read. I have also bought the second in the series and am looking forward to reading it next. ( )

Things happen for a reason, the Titanic didn’t just sink. A former Green Beret, Mayer explains what went wrong and what you can do to minimize risk in your own life. Not a bad book, but not great either. ( )

You can't say Bob Mayer shies away from stating his premises and the overall purpose of his book: "This [book] is about catastrophes...and how to avoid them, mitigate their effects and learn from them...we can predict and prevent many catastrophes because almost everyone has a man-made factor, a cascade event, involved. In other words we have control over whether sh!t happens."

He analyzes the following "catastrophes": 1. Titanic; 2. The Kegworth plane crash; 3. Little Big Horn; 4. New London Schoolhouse Explosion; 5. Donner Party; 6. From Tulips to the Housing Bubble; 7. Apollo 13.

My first quibble is the use of the word "catastrophe". From the digital dictionary WordWeb: Catastrophe, 1. An event resulting in great loss and misfortune 2. A state of extreme (usually irremediable) ruin and misfortune. Here is Bob Mayer's definition: 1. The final event of the dire dramatic actions especially of a tragedy 2. An event causing great and often sudden damage or suffering; a disaster 3. Utter failure

In some of my reading about disasters of the world I see that "disaster" and "catastrophe" and "tragedy" are often used interchangeably but in examining the many definitions of these kinds of events it appears that "catastrophe" would have the edge over "disaster" in the degree extent and severity while "tragedy" is more literary and of lesser overall impact and importance than the other two. Therefore, I would downgrade most of his chosen events to disasters or tragedies.

Not to diminish nor make light of the deaths of people I would say that Kegworth, Little Big Horn, Donner Party, and Apollo 13 were not catastrophes in the sense of widespread loss. For instance, Custer's Last Stand was simply a battle loss due to poor judgment. While there were more than 40 deaths in the Kegworth crash there was no widespread loss. Likewise, focusing on the Donner Party to me would make it a tragedy caused by a bad decision to take the wrong route at the wrong time. Certainly Apollo 13 was a disaster for the three aboard and to a lesser extent for NASA but there was a joyful outcome so it is difficult to categorize that event.

To my way of thinking, of the seven events listed by Mayer, I would say there were only two catastrophes: (1) Titanic because of loss of life and number of people affected and (2) Tulips to Housing Bubble because the actions of a few criminals caused worldwide recessions. With the Housing Bubble of 2007-9 some countries such as Greece experienced bankruptcy and social upheaval. In 2015 Greece is still broke, austerity measures having failed.

The greater error of this book is that a "theory of catastrophes" was proposed by Mayer (7 preventable cascade events, one of which is human error, lead to a catastrophe) then backward data collection and analyses were used to eke out seven events. For instance, it looks to me like Mayer had trouble coming up with 7 events for Titanic so he dredged up cascade event #1 the calving of an iceberg and, #2 the use of less-than-state-of-the-art rivets in the construction of the ship. The way I see it, rivets made of super-tough space-age materials couldn't have saved Titanic. Two overwhelming factors led to the catastrophe: (1) The "unsinkable" mindset and (2) an egregiously incompetent captain.

I propose a way to test the seven cascade events theory, a test involving Cascade Event #1 in Little Big Horn: George Custer was last in his class at West Point. From the general tenor of his book then, those graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point who are last in their class should be examined. Each graduate's military record should be scrutinized to see if ALL of those officers were directly involved in activities leading to a catastrophe. If my reckoning is correct there would be 213 last place graduates (2014 minus 1802 plus 1). My guess is while those guys might find themselves in the lower half of the bell curve of "competence" in the US Army one could not find an action by each officer that led to widespread loss of life (a military disaster).

So, a combination of factors in the person of Gen George C Custer, not just being the ‘goat’ of his class, led to his last stand. The point being, there's no way to look at West Point class standings and determine who'll be the next Custer. Disclaimer: I have not done this research nor do I intend to. My contentions here are educated guesses about the results of such research if it is ever done.

While I disagree with a couple of premises of this book I certainly found it intriguing and very interesting. I must commend Mayer for his excellent analyses of these terrible events and judging from his talent for analysis in this book I will look forward to reading his other books especially about the Challenger disaster of which I have some knowledge. His analysis of the 2007-9 housing bubble was brilliant.

Again, my quibble is whether the lessons learned from these events can actually be applied. Remember, many cascade events involve unreasonable political and economic decisions. If we "learned from history" then every time a far-reaching decision has to be made, precedent would have to be examined but politicians never do that. For instance, one of the issues to be taken up by the 2015 Congress will be "tax reform" yet the problem has not been stated.

I recommend this book for its clarity in the study of past disasters. Just don't expect the politicians to read it. ( )

This book might have turned out well -- if someone ran it through a very heavy-handed editor first. And I don't mean the kind of editor who decided you can't start a book with the word "shit," and certainly can't put it in the title. (Yeah, that little change makes the first few lines of this book relatively incoherent. Meanwhile, the word "shit" is censored to sh!t throughout the book -- was this written by a twelve year old?) I mean the kind of editor who will tell you when you haven't supported your argument or need to cut down on the lists. And fix the occasional typo.

The premise of the book -- military trained disaster expert commenting on various historical disasters -- is fairly interesting. I wouldn't think poorly of someone for enjoying it. But unfortunately, it's written and argued like a third grade persuasive essay. He actually ends his introduction by repeating what is clearly his 'thesis statement,' and follows it up with "That is the purpose of this book."

Mayer is heavy on number lists (humans love threes and sevens!). He insists that it's always seven failures that lead to catastrophe -- never less! -- and fluffs most of his catastrophes to round out the number. Rule of 7, seven catastrophes. Three reasons to read this book, three reasons to listen to me, three benefits of catastrophe thinking.

He's also heavy on code words. Every single facet of an idea has its own code word, defined at the end of the chapter (the intro includes, but is not limited to: "No-do-over," "Sh!t Happens," "Cascade Event," "Final Event," "Delusion Event," "The Gift of Failure"). One code word is confusingly similar to a common cognitive bias ("Halo effect") for no reason -- and he was a psychology major!

On top of this, he takes a lot of things on faith simply because they make sense to him. He points out that some experts think that binoculars wouldn't have made a difference in the Titanic's fate -- but dismisses it completely ("I'll go with the guy who was there.") Of course you will! If the binoculars wouldn't have made a difference, it invalidates your Rule of 7, that there are a minimum of seven "cascade events," and that stopping any one cascade event will stop the catastrophe!

There were all sorts of other things that drove me up a wall. Mayer counts Custer's failed extermination of Native Americans at Little Big Horn a "catastrophe." He doesn't understand what a Pyrrhic victory is -- I think he confused it with the word "futile." In places you can feel him bending reality to fit his own understanding of the world, like his tangent into how Custer doesn't really count as a real West Point grad (since that would upset his view of military training).

But ultimately, hey, I read the whole thing. The stories were interesting, kind of like reading a Cracked article. ( )

I enjoyed both this book and its sequel. Interesting and researched, the author talks through the cascade events that can lead to catastrophes. Engaging and interesting