Talespin is a colourful assortment of short stories, much like an artistic and gorgeous arrangement of exotic flowers, each with its distinctive hue and unique fragrance. This delightful bouquet comprises anecdotes pertaining to everyday life situations: some funny, some serious and some touching upon the supernatural. It is a book that will hold the reader’s undivided attention, making it difficult to put down. Although meant to be light reading, Talespin will certainly spawn emotions and memories that are bound to remain in the reader’s mind, long after the last page has been read.

Praise and Reviews "Talespin is an excellent book for corporate business executives and students of communications. Gerry McCusker takes us on an international journey through an enormous variety of public relations disasters showing us with clarity and insight how they can happen to big corporations and individuals alike. The 'lessons learnt' at the end of each section should be required reading for all PR consultants." - Alan Capper, Adjunct Professor, Culture and Communications Department, New York University and Former Chairman, Rowland Worldwide Many PR practitioners believe that the obsessive reporting of the concept of 'spin' has unfairly tainted the entire PR discipline. But others believe that PR people themselves make the catastrophic errors of judgement that create PR disasters. From the top celebrities who have publicly slated their sponsor's products to corporate photo-calls that were disasters waiting to happen, Talespin reveals why PR consultants are so often accused of 'sexing-up' information. As each tale unfolds and spins out of control, the perpetrators of shoddy PR practice are exposed. Gerry McCusker gives us an amusing, yet shocking, peek behind the scenes of 79 real-life public relations disasters from around the globe. Documenting both the infamous and the unreported PR disasters from the worlds of branding, business, media, music, politics and sport, he asks the question: "How can these catastrophes continue to happen?" While Talespin makes for a compelling and entertaining read, its message is deadly serious: malpractice, misjudgement and the media's own agenda are the combustibles that combine to cause PR mayhem. Anyone working in the media-related industries will learn unforgettable lessons from these real-life PR horror stories.

Chased by air pirates, Baloo and his crew crash-land on a desert island only to discover a stranded flyer and her experimental aircraft, the Sky-raker.

A rookie social studies teacher overhears a conversation about a World War II tail gunner who survived a four-mile fall from the sky. When the elderly Gene Moran finally shares his saga, John has no idea of the wounds he's reopening.

In this revelatory narrative covering the years 1967 to 2017, Steven Brill gives us a stunningly cogent picture of the broken system at the heart of our society. He shows us how, over the last half century, America’s core values—meritocracy, innovation, due process, free speech, and even democracy itself—have somehow managed to power its decline into dysfunction. They have isolated our best and brightest, whose positions at the top have never been more secure or more remote. The result has been an erosion of responsibility and accountability, an epidemic of shortsightedness, an increasingly hollow economic and political center, and millions of Americans gripped by apathy and hopelessness. By examining the people and forces behind the rise of big-money lobbying, legal and financial engineering, the demise of private-sector unions, and a hamstrung bureaucracy, Brill answers the question on everyone’s mind: How did we end up this way? Finally, he introduces us to those working quietly and effectively to repair the damages. At once a diagnosis of our national ills, a history of their development, and a prescription for a brighter future, Tailspin is a work of riveting journalism—and a welcome antidote to political despair.

From Dow Corning breast implants to the McDonald's "McLibel" case, this book entertainingly exposes some of the world's most infamous (and also some unreported) PR disasters, and shows how crisis management helped or hindered.