A black comic novel about the last remaining survivors of a tontine - a group life-insurance policy in which the last surviving member stands to receive a fortune. It is a farcical, eccentric and brilliantly written piece of work.

A huge inheritance ignites a murderous family feud. The last living beneficiaries, the two Finsbury Brothers, will stop at nothing to outlive each other-- and win the fortune. Helping the irascible, poverty-stricken Masterman Finsbury is his shy grandson Michael. Opposing them are his eccentric younger brother, Joseph Finsbury, and a pair of greedy nephews, Morris and John.

The Wrong Box is a black comedy novel co-written by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, first published in 1889. The story is about two brothers who are the last two surviving members of a tontine. The book was the first of three novels that Stevenson co-wrote with Osbourne, who was his stepson. The others were The Wrecker (1892) and The Ebb-Tide (1894). Osbourne wrote the first draft of the novel late in 1887 (then called The Finsbury Tontine), Stevenson revised it in 1888 (then called A Game of Bluff) and again in 1889 when it was finally called The Wrong Box. A film adaptation, also titled The Wrong Box, was released in 1966, and a musical in 2002. Rudyard Kipling, in a letter to his friend Edmonia Hill (dated September 17, 1889), praised the novel: I have got R.L. Stevenson's In the Wrong Box and laughed over it dementedly when I read it. That man has only one lung but he makes you laugh with all your whole inside. The Wrong Box was filmed in 1966 starring Michael Caine. The novel was also adapted as a stage musical in 2002, and a studio cast recording of the show was released in August 2013. (Wikipedia.org)

A book full of boxes. A box in itself. An unboxing. This book explores boxes in their broadest sense and size. It invites us to step into the field, unravel how and why things are contained and how it might be otherwise. By turning the focus of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to boxing practices, this collation of essays examines boxes as world-making devices. Gathered in the format of a field guide, it offers an introduction to ways of ordering the world, unpacking their boxed-up, largely invisible politics and epistemics. Performatively, pushing against conventional uses of academic books, this volume is about rethinking taken-for-granted formats and infrastructures of scholarly ordering - thinking, writing, reading. It diverges from encyclopedic logics and representative overviews of boxing practices and the architectural organization of monographs and edited volumes through a single, overarching argument. This book asks its users to leave well-trodden paths of linear and comprehensive reading and invites them to read sideways, creating their own orders through associations and relating. Thus, this book is best understood as an intervention, a beginning, an open box, a slim volume that needs expansion and further experiments with ordering by its users.

An irresistibly cute story about finding the confidence to be yourself, starring a turtle in search of the perfect shell. Terrance the turtle was born without a shell, so he uses a cardboard box instead. Terrance loves his box. It keeps him dry on soggy days, safe from snooping strangers, and is big enough to cozy up with a friend. But when another turtle points out that Terrance's shell is, well, weird, he begins to wonder whether there might be a better shell out there... Eventually, and through much trial and error, Terrance learns that there's nothing wrong with being different--especially when it comes to being yourself.

Nobody wants to fail. But in highly complex organizations, success can happen only when we confront our mistakes, learn from our own version of a black box, and create a climate where it’s safe to fail. We all have to endure failure from time to time, whether it’s underperforming at a job interview, flunking an exam, or losing a pickup basketball game. But for people working in safety-critical industries, getting it wrong can have deadly consequences. Consider the shocking fact that preventable medical error is the third-biggest killer in the United States, causing more than 400,000 deaths every year. More people die from mistakes made by doctors and hospitals than from traffic accidents. And most of those mistakes are never made public, because of malpractice settlements with nondisclosure clauses. For a dramatically different approach to failure, look at aviation. Every passenger aircraft in the world is equipped with an almost indestructible black box. Whenever there’s any sort of mishap, major or minor, the box is opened, the data is analyzed, and experts figure out exactly what went wrong. Then the facts are published and procedures are changed, so that the same mistakes won’t happen again. By applying this method in recent decades, the industry has created an astonishingly good safety record. Few of us put lives at risk in our daily work as surgeons and pilots do, but we all have a strong interest in avoiding predictable and preventable errors. So why don’t we all embrace the aviation approach to failure rather than the health-care approach? As Matthew Syed shows in this eye-opening book, the answer is rooted in human psychology and organizational culture. Syed argues that the most important determinant of success in any field is an acknowledgment of failure and a willingness to engage with it. Yet most of us are stuck in a relationship with failure that impedes progress, halts innovation, and damages our careers and personal lives. We rarely acknowledge or learn from failure—even though we often claim the opposite. We think we have 20/20 hindsight, but our vision is usually fuzzy. Syed draws on a wide range of sources—from anthropology and psychology to history and complexity theory—to explore the subtle but predictable patterns of human error and our defensive responses to error. He also shares fascinating stories of individuals and organizations that have successfully embraced a black box approach to improvement, such as David Beckham, the Mercedes F1 team, and Dropbox.

Good evening. I'm Inspector Carter. Take my case. This must be Charles Haversham! I'm sorry, this must've given you all a damn shock. After benefitting from a large and sudden inheritance, the inept and accident-prone Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society embark on producing an ambitious 1920s murder mystery. They are delighted that neither casting issues nor technical hitches currently stand in their way. However, hilarious disaster ensues and the cast start to crack under the pressure, but can they get the production back on track before the final curtain falls? The Play That Goes Wrong is a farcical murder mystery, a play within a play, conceived and performed by award-winning company Theatre Mischief. It was first published as a one-act play and is published in this new edition as a two-act play.