Well That Didn't Work

Why it’s on the list: A short, deliberately irreverent run through communism’s history — Marx to the breadlines in a hundred-odd pages. Kyle saved the title in quotation marks, which is how the note records a reply quoted verbatim.

Two things to flag. The only book matching this exact subtitle is Thaddeus Trenchant’s, published July 4, 2025 — after the April 13, 2025 thread this line is grouped with in Kyle’s note, so either the note’s grouping is loose here or the reply pointed at something else. And the phrase itself is a long-running slogan, not only a book title. Card kept at confidence: low, and source_published is deliberately omitted rather than asserted.

Where I saw it: In the reply thread to @moseskagan’s question, “What historical fiction should I read next? (Bonus points for something involving building or trade, rather than violence)” (April 13, 2025) — a crowd-sourced list Kyle recovered by hand and saved to his Apple Note “Books To Read”; the full set of replies lives on What historical fiction should I… (tweet). It was listed there as “Well That Didn’t Work: an abbreviated history of communism”.

Connections

• Socialism — the subject.
• Ideological Family Tree — where a compressed history of an ideology belongs.
• What historical fiction should I… (tweet) — the thread this recommendation came from.