It’s often been said that you should never judge another person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. However, there are times when you not only don’t want to walk in their shoes, you don’t even want to be within a hundred miles of the shoes or their owners.

The Unluckiest People Who Ever Lived tells the stories of thirteen such people, the unluckiest of the unluckiest who have suffered from repeated, implausible, dangerous situations that can’t possibly be true, except that they are. From the man who was hit by lightning seven times, to the couple whose vacations kept getting ruined by terrorist attacks, to the man who was present when both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, these are the people who, if they didn’t have bad luck, truly wouldn’t have any luck at all.