New book for pre-order: ‘F*** You & Goodbye: The Dark, Moving & Often Hilarious History of the Resignation’

 

 

I’ve been waiting for this day. My new book of non-fiction is finally available on Amazon for pre-order as a print hardback. I’ve just signed off on the cover, and here it is. (Click to enlarge).

 

 

Titled F*** You & Goodbye: The Dark, Moving & Often Hilarious History of the Resignation, it’s out early next year, published in the UK by Constable & Robinson. Using resignations to trace the key stories, social developments and philosophies of the age, it takes in the Reformation, the American Civil War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of celebrity culture, and more. Here’s the publisher’s elevator pitch.

“History is written by the winners. It’s the survivors – the faithful servants, the insiders, the ones who stick around, who can adapt to almost any condition – who get to write the official histories. They publish the memoirs, park in the directors’ spots, erect the statues, form the new governments, wipe out the pockets of resistance, recruit the new starters, set the agendas, talk on the documentaries and retrospectives.

               Yet theirs – the official version – is never the whole story. There’s another side that we only glimpse through the cracks.

               The quitter’s tale offers a far more compelling, and often a more honest version of history. It’s full of self-deception, bloody knives, betrayal, honour, disgrace, disgust, thwarted ambition and shattered hopes, and sometimes a wicked sting in the tail…

              ‘F*** You & Goodbye’ includes famous – and not-so-famous – parting shots from famous resigners such as Richard Nixon, Steve Jobs, Roy Keane, Che Guevara, Wyatt Earp, Geoffrey Howe, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Richard Peppiatt, Tony Blair, General Robert E. Lee, William Faulkner, Mikhail Bulgakov, George Orwell, Roy Edward Disney (Walt’s heir), King Edward VIII, Groucho Marx, John Profumo, Ruud Gullit, the Enron board, Dave Lee Travis, PResident Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Andrew Mitchell, Giles Coren and Charlie Sheen, and countless others.

            It examines the exit wounds they left, and how they changed the world we think we live in, the jobs we do, even who we are – leading the reader on a journey into modern society’s real heart of darkness.”

 

The book is the fruit of a 25-year obsession, and continues the theme of secret history – and the idea that the real story of our time is the one you glimpse between the cracks – from Outlaws Inc. It’s been fun writing it. I hope you enjoy reading it.

 

Order it early, and let me know by email, and send you a personal invite to the swish publisher’s launch party in London early next year.