SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups

by Ed Helms

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Filled with all the humor you'd expect from Ed Helms, this exploration of hilariously colossal mishaps is perfect for history buffs or anyone who enjoys a reminder that this world is a pretty wacky place.

A New York Times Bestseller 

From actor, comedian, writer, and host of the hit history podcast SNAFU, Ed Helms brings you an absurdly entertaining look at history’s biggest blunders, complete with lively illustrations.      

History contains a plethora of insane screwups—otherwise known as SNAFUs. Coined during World War I, SNAFU is an acronym that stands for Situation Normal: All F*cked Up. In other words, “things are pretty screwed up, but aren’t they always?”  

Spanning from the 1950’s to the present day, SNAFU features Ed Helms as unofficial history teacher with a loving tribute to humanity's finest face-plants, diving into each decade’s craziest SNAFUs. From planting nukes on the moon to training felines as CIA spies to weaponizing the weather, this book unpacks the incredibly ironic decision-making and hilariously terrifying aftermath of America’s biggest mishaps.

Filled with sharp humor and lively illustrations, SNAFU is a wild ride through time that covers the head-scratching and occasionally inspiring blunders that have shaped our world and made historians spit-take. They're the kinds of stories that not only entertain but offers fresh insights that just might prevent history from repeating itself again and again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538769478
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	04/29/2025
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Ed Helms is an actor, comedian, and writer who first gained national attention as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Helms is perhaps best known for his iconic roles as Andy Bernard on NBC’s hit sitcom The Office and Stu in The Hangover film trilogy alongside Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis. His extensive filmography includes more titles such as Vacation, Cedar Rapids, and the hit Netflix comedy Family Switch alongside Jennifer Garner. Ed also co-created and starred in Rutherford Falls, an acclaimed sitcom on Peacock that cleverly tackled identity and history. When he’s not acting or producing projects through his company Pacific Electric Picture Co., Ed is busy hosting SNAFU, the hilarious and illuminating podcast that inspired this book. A proud banjo enthusiast, he co-founded The Bluegrass Situation, a platform for roots music fans. Ed hails from Atlanta, GA, and currently lives in Los Angeles with his family, who remain the greatest audience—and toughest critics—of his many dad jokes.

Editorial Reviews

04/28/2025

Comedian Helms debuts with an informative and amusing survey of the American government’s wildest mistakes. Adapted from Helms’s podcast of the same name, the book sorts errors into eras, beginning with the 1950s and ending in 2021. Some of the SNAFUs are well-known, like the CIA’s MKUltra program (“the Greatest Generation’s own twisted version of ‘fuck around and find out’ ”). Others are relatively unknown and startlingly weird, like scientists’ ill-fated attempt to nuke a portion of the moon in a show of dominance over Soviet Union space pioneers (the plan was abandoned when it was pointed out that the moon would just become a dust cloud—“So anticlimactic”). And some SNAFUs are just unsettling, like multiple attempts made at surveillance by attaching cameras or listening devices to common animals, such as cats and pigeons. With his wry intelligence, Helms makes an ideal guide through these historical blunders; one can picture him in his former role as a Daily Show correspondent, with his eyebrow always raised in conspiratorial disbelief. Bracingly, the book constitutes a call for optimism in the face of the world’s apparent unraveling: “We’ve been here before,” Helms reassures, “and we’ll get through this, too”—after all, America’s “situation normal” is “all fucked up.” It’s a charming and irreverent alternative history. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

With his wry intelligence, Helms makes an ideal guide through these historical blunders… It’s a charming and irreverent alternative history.”—Publishers Weekly

"I loved Snafu. Wonderfully told history interwoven with hilariously painful blunders of each decade from the fifties on. I actually gripped my head a few times and clutched my chest, laughing throughout, entertained and educated, unable to stop reading." 
 —Anne Lamott

From the Publisher

2025-04-04
Failure is funny—and heartening.

Helms’ compendium of high-profile miscalculations—from the Beanie Baby bubble to a sunken Soviet submarine—is dotted with wry observations and outright groaners. An offshoot of the comedian-author's popular podcast, this book reflects his hunt for "retroactive comedy," which left him "optimistic" in unstable times: “We’ve been here before, and we’ll get through this, too.” The same can’t be said of Acoustic Kitty. Under a secret 1960s project by that name, the CIA implanted a microphone in a cat’s ear, vainly hoping to eavesdrop on adversaries. According to one agency staffer, the multimillion-dollar project was scrapped when a car hit the first A.K. Cold War technological folly provides Helms with tons more material. A toymaker put uranium in a children’s science kit. The U.S. military inadvertently dropped a bomb on South Carolina, fortunately killing no one. “Rich weirdo” Howard Hughes helped the CIA build a huge mechanical claw in a failed effort to scoop a disabled Russian sub off the ocean floor. Expensive mishaps are firmly within Helms’ wheelhouse. His look at the “crash” of the Beanie Baby market—relative scarcity ballooned prices for the 1990s toy—features a soap-opera actor who spent $100,000 on “an ill-planned attempt to pay for” college tuition. Another recent mess-up—a failure to convert English measurement units to metric—caused NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter to blow up. “That is so dumb,” observed one space expert. Helms’ observations are gentler. He quips that a scientist lost the Mars satellite because he’d “forgotten to upgrade his PC to Windows 98.” For its part, the Army, he kids, was probably jealous of the Air Force’s missiles: “Come onnnnnn. They get all the cool toys.” Fortunately, his factual narratives are better than his jokes.

A gently humorous survey of bad ideas and unforced errors.

Kirkus Reviews