In these gleefully gloomy pages, you’ll find a politically smeared George Washington, a cranky Colonel Sanders, a homicidal Saint Olga of Kiev, a cuckolded Napoleon, a flame-censored Steinbeck, a treacherous Douglas MacArthur, a weeping Einstein, an exasperated Charles Dickens, a humiliated King Henry II, and a faux-contrite Ted Kennedy. And that’s just in July!

From the decadent palaces of ancient Rome to the modern Halls of Congress, this illuminating (sometimes disturbing) narrative features an almost endless array of misbehavior, amusing mishaps, and breathtaking misfortune over the ages and across the historical spectrum. Each less-than-red-letter day of the year is recounted in Farquhar’s wry voice and comes with the enduring lesson The Wall Street Journal found in the first volume of this series: Bad Days in History may offer consolation to the great mass of quotidian belly-achers … whose piddling misfortunes and regrets will snap neatly into perspective when set against [this] record of idiocy and disaster.

This surprising and sometimes heartbreaking collection of mayhem and malady will leave you amused, intrigued, and horrified by day after day of hilarious catastrophe.