I Wish Hadn't Said That: The 'Experts' Speak and Get It Wrong!

Did you ever have the uneasy feeling that the experts are not … well, experts? Did you ever have the feeling that the experts are not …well, experts? Whether it's Stalin announcing in 1935 that 'Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union', or an MGM executive's judgement of Fred Astaire in 1928 ('Can't act. Can't sing. Can dance a little'), or the editor of the San Francisco Examiner informing Rudyard Kipling in 1889, 'You just don't know how to use the English language', 'I Wish I Hadn't Said That' sets straight thousands of examples of expert misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious prognostication, boo-boos and plain lies. The experts have been wrong about everything under, including and beyond the sun: time, space, the sexes, the races, the environment, economies, politics, crime, education, the media, history and science. In 'I Wish I Hadn't Said That' – classic reference work of the history of distortions, errors, half-truths and outright lies – we see just how much the experts don't know. 'No woman in my lifetime will be prime minister'MARGARET THATCHER Did you ever have the uneasy feeling that the experts are not … well, experts? ‘We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out.’ Decca Recording Company executive, turning down the Beatles, 1962 I Wish I Hadn’t Said That sets straight thousands of examples of expert misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious prognostication, boo-boos, and just plain lies. The experts have been wrong about everything under, including and beyond the sun: time, space, the sexes, the races, the environment, economics, politics, crime, education, the media, history and science. In I Wish I Hadn’t Said That we see just how much the experts don’t know. ‘No woman in my lifetime will be Prime Minister’ Margaret Thatcher