The decision to gamble and hope : The Trojans and the Trojan Horse (ca. 1250 BC) ; George Armstrong Custer and the Little Bighorn (1876) ; André Maginot and his line (1930-40) ; Unsinkability and the Titanic (1912) ; Isoroku Yamamoto and Pearl Harbor (1941) ; NASA and the space shuttles (1986, 2003)
The decision to manipulate : William McKinley, the USS Maine, and the Spanish-American War (1898) ; Captain Alfred Dreyfus and the honor of France (1894-1906) ; Edward Bernays and the campaign to recruit women smokers (1929) ; Richard M. Nixon and Watergate (1973) ; Metropolitan Edison and Three Mile Island (1979) ; Ken Lay and Enron (2001) ; Dick Cheney and the Iraq War (2003)
The decision to leap (without looking) : King George III and the American Revolution (1775-83) ; The "war hawks" and the War of 1812 (1812) ; John C. Calhoun and nullification (1832) ; Russell, Majors, and Waddell and the Pony Express (1860) ; Count Leopold von Berchtold and his ultimatum (1914)
The decision to retreat : Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and Dred Scott (1857) ; Thomas Edison and the fight against alternating current (1893) ; The Wright brothers and the wing warping lawsuits (1910-14) ; ALfred P. Sloan and planned obsolescence (1920) ; Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler (1938) ; The British Empire and Gandhi (1942)
The decision to destroy : Governor William Kieft and the "slaughter of the innocents" (1643) ; Antonio López Santa Anna and the Alamo (1836) ; Patriotism and poison gas (1914-18) ; Roberto Goizueta and the "new Coke" (1985)
The decision to drift : James Buchanan and secession (1860) ; George Gordon Meade and Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of the Crater (1864) ; Rasputin and the Russian royals (1916) ; Ford Motor Company and the Edsel (1957) ; John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs (1961) ; Tonkin Gulf, Persian Gulf (1964, 2003) ; George W. Bush and Hurricane Katrina (2005).
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