The Library
The daily edition is perishable. These are not.
Each special edition takes a single guild, trade, or human weakness and follows it across the centuries — the argument being that the folly is native to the calling rather than incidental to it. 21 of them so far, and the field is endless.
Officers of the Court: Lawyers Behaving Badly Three centuries of the legal profession caught by the one institution it cannot cross-examine — its own disciplinary record. The Muse Loves a Monster: Artists Behaving Badly From Cellini's dagger to Picasso's queue of the heartbroken — five centuries of immortal art made by men whose worst behavior only lengthened the… The Devil's Interval: Composers Behaving Badly From Gesualdo's dagger to Ozzy's dove: four centuries of immortal music, written by men to whom you would not have lent a houseplant. Writers Behaving Badly Thirteen masters of the sentence who could not master themselves: killers, thieves, traitors, con men, and one poet-warlord who annexed a city. It… The Bench: Who Judges the Judges? Four federal judges disciplined or charged in a single season, a workforce of thirty thousand outside the laws their employers interpret, and a… Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Read, Volume II The private conduct of literature's great names, continued — the debtors, deserters, duelists, and one lobster-walker whose genius excused, in their… The Confident Men: A Bipartisan History of Political Folly On the folly of statecraft — the one enterprise in which the cleverest men alive have most reliably contrived to arrive precisely where they began,… Hooray for Hollywood Narcissists Where the self-regard of the famous collides with the press that exists to inflate it — to the lasting embarrassment of everyone involved. A Confederacy of Dunces On political stupidity — the one truly bipartisan institution the republic has ever managed to build. Famous Last Words History's most confident declarations — each one audited, on the spot, by a universe that had not been consulted. Florida Man: A Field Guide to the Genus Notes toward a natural history of the Sunshine State's most resilient predator — himself. It'll Never Catch On The experts, visionaries, and titans of industry explain — with total confidence — why the world you currently live in is impossible. Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Read The abominable private conduct of literature's and art's great names — the murderers, deadbeats, eccentrics, and wits whose genius excused, in their… Prophets and Losses A ledger of the men who discovered that the surest miracle is a credulous congregation and a working card reader. Settled Science The expert consensus of its day — confident, credentialed, peer-approved, and catastrophically wrong. The Annals of the Sure Thing Titans of industry, at the height of their power, confidently declining the future as it walked through the door. The Butcher's Bill of Confidence A field guide to the deadliest military blunders in history — and the certainty that authored every one. The Confidence Men A gallery of history's great swindlers — and the matching vanity in their victims that made every con possible. The Greater Fool Four centuries of speculative mania, all built on one immortal assumption: that a bigger idiot is already on his way to buy this from me. The Self-Inflicted A field guide to the overconfident — the men who, certain the laws of physics were a suggestion, volunteered to test them personally. The Tyranny of the Glowing Rectangle A catalogue of the small voluntary lobotomy now administered nightly, by hand, to the self.21 special editions. A new one every fortnight. The daily catalogue of human folly — free, every morning, from a trial lawyer who has run out of patience.
No algorithms. No engagement bait. Just the view from the abyss.