Kindle
$14.99
Available instantly
Audible Logo Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial
Hardcover
$22.32
Paperback
$15.84
Buy new:
$22.32
FREE delivery: Friday, April 26 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon
Sold by: BaharDream Store
List Price: $28.00 Details

The List Price is the suggested retail price of a new product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. Except for books, Amazon will display a List Price if the product was purchased by customers on Amazon or offered by other retailers at or above the List Price in at least the past 90 days. List prices may not necessarily reflect the product's prevailing market price.
Learn more
Save: $5.68 (20%)
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Friday, April 26 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Wednesday, April 24. Order within 8 hrs 31 mins
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
$$22.32 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$22.32
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon
Ships from
Amazon
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime
FREE delivery Thursday, April 25 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Wednesday, April 24. Order within 8 hrs 31 mins
Used: Like New | Details
Sold by UBSN
Fulfilled by Amazon
Condition: Used: Like New
Comment: Clean, unused or barely used copy. May have limited shelfwear, external marks/stamps, and minor cosmetic defects.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Learn more about the program.

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the authors

András Tilcsik
Follow
Chris Clearfield
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It Hardcover – January 1, 2018

by Chris Clearfield (Author), András Tilcsik (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 389 ratings
See all formats and editions
Great on Kindle
Great Experience. Great Value.
iphone with kindle app
Putting our best book forward
Each Great on Kindle book offers a great reading experience, at a better value than print to keep your wallet happy.

Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.

View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.

Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.

Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Get the free Kindle app: Link to the kindle app page Link to the kindle app page
Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.
View Kindle Edition
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$22.32","priceAmount":22.32,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"22","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"32","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"WiX2jT0Omy8VTC2RAUUMZsrFYlwLkA0Dgjza%2FkTM0ctXl2Gjij24e9tiI%2B%2BR2e35y%2Beeu%2BcYMFnLRZlnrDMcqpwj71i%2FTuW4oUwhrTN%2BbMNmySoJ56Lez1PIGtu5B4muaE0UELA0NvAMUnjpksvqNJNaymScpRq8hSWAkrlNu8NZ%2BeBHyjtCQ7kWaKtVrveV","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$9.98","priceAmount":9.98,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"9","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"98","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"WiX2jT0Omy8VTC2RAUUMZsrFYlwLkA0DJ2dujSdiK%2F3H4dqOajg2WR17UKJehgVvqVJpFZITpp0jVgYqyUYyOLcaTiG9OZIev9n%2FMIP7zcDDBao9xTmq8KcN9w7yqtWoRXTmJvBjxy3DCTwCu4zllKEyYLdP%2Bbv%2FhqVoNApSeY%2BYa9OX3fAaZg%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2018 BY THE FINANCIAL TIMES

A groundbreaking take on how complexity causes failure in all kinds of modern systems--from social media to air travel--this practical and entertaining book reveals how we can prevent meltdowns in business and life

"Endlessly fascinating, brimming with insight, and more fun than a book about failure has any right to be, Meltdown will transform how you think about the systems that govern our lives. This is a wonderful book."--Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better

A crash on the Washington, D.C. metro system. An accidental overdose in a state-of-the-art hospital. An overcooked holiday meal. At first glance, these disasters seem to have little in common. But surprising new research shows that all these events--and the myriad failures that dominate headlines every day--share similar causes. By understanding what lies behind these failures, we can design better systems, make our teams more productive, and transform how we make decisions at work and at home.

Weaving together cutting-edge social science with riveting stories that take us from the frontlines of the Volkswagen scandal to backstage at the Oscars, and from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico to the top of Mount Everest, Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik explain how the increasing complexity of our systems creates conditions ripe for failure and why our brains and teams can't keep up. They highlight the paradox of progress: Though modern systems have given us new capabilities, they've become vulnerable to surprising meltdowns--and even to corruption and misconduct.

But Meltdown isn't just about failure; it's about solutions--whether you're managing a team or the chaos of your family's morning routine. It reveals why ugly designs make us safer, how a five-minute exercise can prevent billion-dollar catastrophes, why teams with fewer experts are better at managing risk, and why diversity is one of our best safeguards against failure. The result is an eye-opening, empowering, and entirely original book--one that will change the way you see our complex world and your own place in it.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    294 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Pr
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 2018
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 1.02 x 9.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9780735222632
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0735222632
  8. See all details
Next page
Amazon First Reads | Editors' picks at exclusive prices

Frequently bought together

Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It
$22.32
Get it as soon as Friday, Apr 26
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by BaharDream Store and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
+
Corporate Law and the Theory of the Firm: Reconstructing Corporations, Shareholders, Directors, Owners, and Investors (The Ec
$43.99
Get it as soon as Thursday, Apr 25
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Gatekeepers: The Role of the Professions and Corporate Governance (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies)
$85.60
Get it Apr 29 - May 3
Only 10 left in stock - order soon.
Ships from and sold by SuperBookDeals---.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Some of these items ship sooner than the others.
Show details Hide details
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Chris Clearfield is a former derivatives trader who worked in New York, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. He is a licensed commercial pilot and a graduate of Harvard University, where he studied physics and biology. Chris has written about complexity and failure for The Guardian, Forbes, and the Harvard Kennedy School Review. He lives in Seattle.

András Tilcsik holds the Canada Research Chair in Strategy, Organizations, and Society at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. He has been recognized as one of the world's top forty business professors under forty and as one of thirty management thinkers most likely to shape the future of organizations. The United Nations named his course on organizational failure as the best course on disaster risk management in a business school. He lives in Toronto.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0735222630
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Pr (January 1, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 294 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780735222632
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735222632
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.02 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 389 ratings

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Previous page
  1. András Tilcsik

    András Tilcsik

    Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    András Tilcsik holds the Canada Research Chair in Strategy, Organizations, and Society at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. He has been recognized as one of the world's top forty business professors under forty and as one of thirty management thinkers most likely to shape the future of organizations. The United Nations named his course on organizational failure as the best course on disaster risk management in a business school. He lives in Toronto.

    See more on the author's page
  2. Chris Clearfield

    Chris Clearfield

    Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Chris Clearfield is a science geek and a reformed derivatives trader who became more interested in writing about risk than taking it. He's the coauthor of Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It with his friend and longtime collaborator András Tilcsik.

    Chris lives in Seattle, Washington with his family. When he's not writing or working on short author biographies, Chris, a certified flight instructor, can be found at the airport teaching people how to fly.

    See more on the author's page
Next page

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
389 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Tip DS
5.0 out of 5 stars Great information, great style. Compelling.
Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2024
Verified Purchase
Even if this book weren't assigned reading for me, I would probably go ahead and read the whole thing. The book is chock full of great and well documented information. The style is very familiar and easy to read. Sometimes entertaining, sometimes surprising, but always informative. Very good book, highly recommended for anyone interested in learning more about failure.
Helpful
 Report
Curtis
5.0 out of 5 stars Compellingly told, well researched, clear, and practical account of why systems fail and how to deal with them
Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2018
Verified Purchase
Chris Clearfield and Andras Tilcsik have written, in Meltdown, a very powerful and social scientifically grounded account of system failures and how to overcome them.

From the start of the book, I knew I was in for a ride. The authors set the tone with a brief but vivid story, one that concisely conveys a person’s life, only to see that life cut violently short in a system meltdown. A tragic beginning – and a profound start – one that foreshadows the rest of book’s storytelling approach of connecting personal stories to big ideas. With stories like this, carried on throughout the entire book, Meltdown overcomes a crucial roadblock to making social science accessible to a general audience: reader motivation. More simply put, Meltdown keeps us reading through its presentation of vivid imagery and detailed storytelling.

As readers, we can come for the stories, but then stay for the science. That’s the other big component of Meltdown, of course; the storytelling is all in the service of making a set of social scientifically grounded arguments. And those social scientific accounts are, at least as far as I’m concerned, highly credible. Tilcsik and Clearfield draw on a wealth of organizational, sociological, and psychological research to make their case, reaching back to some of the social scientific classics (e.g., Simmel, Perrow) to more recent research. It is all very effectively done.

Moreover, the science is clearly and accessibly communicated. Social scientific theory is brought stunningly to life—most thoroughly so in the chapter about Perrow’s foundational work—through that same storytelling strength that courses through the veins of Clearfield and Tilcsik’s book. In fact, the science is so well communicated and illustrated that, practically speaking, I have found myself not quite being able to shut up about Meltdown in day-to-day conversations. I’ve regaled both academic colleagues and friends from outside the field of organization theory with insights and stories from Meltdown—and suddenly, the conversation gets a lot more interesting. Or more interesting to me, at least, because I'm a nerd. Anyway.

That comes to my final point. You can actually use this book. If you pay enough attention to the book’s insights and implications, both obvious and subtle, you can definitely gain something from it—whether it is in figuring out which part of your system is most prone to disaster through an analysis of its complexity and coupling, increasing the transparency and objectivity of your decision-making processes, trying to build more slack into your Thanksgiving dinners, or intentionally getting out of your comfort zones with diverse and dissenting teams. Or maybe it’s about sharing the book’s stories and ideas with friends and colleagues and starting an interesting dialogue.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
SILance
4.0 out of 5 stars I feel like the book was about 75 pages too long
Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2018
Verified Purchase
This book is a duty of systems and systems thinking. If you are a newcomer to how systems, feedback loops, points of failure, etc, this is the book for you. However, if you are already versed in how systems works, you may find yourself wishing that the authors had gotten to the point(s) a bit sooner than they did. I feel like the book was about 75 pages too long. Other than that, interesting enough stuff.
Helpful
 Report
James Wink
5.0 out of 5 stars Answers the Question Why Disasters Happen --- And How to Prevent Them
Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2018
Verified Purchase
Chris Clearfield and Andras Tilcsik have written a important book looking at why so many of our highly complex systems are prone to failure. It is both a book about engineering and about business , which makes it even more compelling. Their examples run the gamut from Three Mile Island to the Recent Academy Awards where La La Land was mistakenly awarded best movie. They describe systems on two axis - Complexity and how coupled they are. For example: a nuclear plant is both complex and a tightly coupled system. When things go wrong, it is very difficult to diagnose the system in time. The warning of the book is that more and more systems are both with strong examples from social media and even Target's disastrous roll-out in Canada.

The book also present a series of solutions to better manage these risks along with examples of their successes. Some examples include that increasing diversity within a board tends to reduce the amount of group think as they force everyone to relook at basic assumptions. They highlight backcasting as a valuable technique - look at a negative outcome to figure out what would have happened for the system to reach that state.

Meltdown describes the problem of highly complex and highly coupled system and present strategies to overcome them. It doesn't matter if you looking at a nuclear power plant or in charge of expanding your business - this book is invaluable. Highly Recommended!
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
T. Callaghan
5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling illustration of the danger and pervasiveness of complex tightly-coupled systems
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2018
Verified Purchase
"Meltdown"'s thesis is that complex tightly-coupled systems are (a) prone to breaking disastrously, (b) have become pervasive over the last few decades, but (c) that this danger can be alleviated in several ways.

The thesis is illustrated rather than proven- this is journalistic non-fiction, not academics. However, the illustration is both compelling and entertaining. The authors take familiar but seemingly disparate disasters- the Flint water crisis, the space shuttle explosions, the Three Mile Island and Fukushima nuclear crises, and so on, explain how these systems were both complex and tightly-coupled, and show how those features lead to disastrous results. They then go on to show how these issues have been dealt with successfully in certain industries and organizations (e.g., US aviation, the Jet Propulsion Lab) and show how these countermeasures are generally applicable.

I found the "complex tightly-coupled" framework and its application to familiar crises eye-opening and thought the suggested counter-measures made sense. A worthwhile read for anyone who is interested in how disasters happen or who is involved in running any large system.
10 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Alessandro
4.0 out of 5 stars A useful guide to (try and) preventing failures
Reviewed in Italy on March 1, 2022
Verified Purchase
I found this book to be a useful complement to other readings (such as Dan Ariely’s). It contains a few practical suggestions that anyone who operates in a complex system should evaluate in order to reduce the risk of a catastrophe occurring.
Let’s hope that this review of mine be considered trivial enough, as not to be censored by Amazon (as it happened with others I tried to post in the past).
Report
Gaurav
5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book out there
Reviewed in India on May 2, 2021
Verified Purchase
This book is absolutely fantastic. Loved Learned from every part of it. Absolutely stunning. 10/10 recommended. This is a GREAT book
Report
737skying
4.0 out of 5 stars Guter Überblick
Reviewed in Germany on December 29, 2020
Verified Purchase
Ich arbeite als Ingenieur in einer hoch Risiko Branche. Das Buch gibt einen guten Überblick über die wesentlichen Bausteine der heutigen Sicherheitstheorie. Wer näheres erfahren möchte muss dann aber doch woanders weiterlesen, zB Hohlnagel, Decker und andere Werke aus der Industrie.
2 people found this helpful
 Report
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A very useful read.
Reviewed in Canada on August 8, 2019
Verified Purchase
A well-structured content that offers many insightful tips on how to minimize the risk of accidents, even those named as "normal accidents" by famous work of C.Perrow. I was planning to re-sell this book after my reading is complete. But have changed my mind and decided to keep it in my home library, as it is loaded with very useful and detailed analysis along with actual solutions and advices.
Report
Mcdonaldpeacock
5.0 out of 5 stars Some of the examples made me cringe.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 10, 2020
Verified Purchase
An interesting take on the work of Charles Perrow and others on the problems of increasingly complex machines and systems and their interaction with human beings own strengths and weaknesses. Good coverage of the strengths of diversity within the workforce and at boardroom level in promoting an environment that allows the questioning of assumptions.
2 people found this helpful
 Report