 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | History is . . .
(a) more or less bunk.
(b) a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.
(c) as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis. Match your answers:
(1) Stephen Daedalus of James Joyce's Ulysses
(2) Henry Ford
(3) Arthur Schopenhauer It turns out that answer need not be bunk, nightmarish, or diseased. In the hands of mental_floss, history's most interesting bits have been handpicked and roasted to perfection. Packed with little-known stories and outrageous—but accurate—facts, you'll laugh yourself smarter on this joyride through 60,000 years of human civilization. Remember: just because it's true, doesn't mean it's boring! Exclusive: Amazonian Tips for Amazon.com  When you think of the word “Amazon,” we’re sure the first thing that comes to mind is the fantastic website where you can buy our book (buy our book!) or half-naked warrior women. But here are three tantalizing tidbits you might not know--and why you need to act now. 1. Find Gold
There’s something about long, tropical rivers that seems to drive people batty. But the Basque conquistador Lope de Aguirre was by all accounts a murderous sociopath long before he got to the Amazon. Take, for instance, the time a judge sentenced Aguirre to be flogged. The brutish Basque hunted the terrified magistrate across 4,000 miles of rough South American terrain, barefoot, to kill him! So, in 1560, it probably wasn’t the best idea to invite Aguirre along on the quest to find El Dorado, the legendary city of gold. After 900 miles of unbroken rain forest, Aguirre was fed up. He led a mutiny that killed more than half of his fellow conquistadors. Then, he declared himself prince of Peru, Tierra Firma, and Chile. Eventually he and his tiny army attacked Panama…where he was killed and dismembered so his body parts could be paraded around the colony.
The bright side: El Dorado is still out there, waiting for you to discover it! Just don’t bring a friend like Lope. 2. Invest a Dollar
When it’s not making people crazy, the Amazon seems to inspire bizarre, larger-than-life schemes. In 1967, American shipping magnate and billionaire Daniel Ludwig bought a larger-than-Connecticut sized chunk of the Amazon to create a gigantic industrial and agricultural complex called the Jari Project. It didn’t work out. All the construction led to massive soil erosion, screwing up the “agricultural” part of his plan. After sinking $1 billion into the project (back when $1 billion really meant something) Ludwig called it quits in 1982. It was eventually put up for sale for $1--a great deal, if you’re willing to assume $354 million in debt.
The bright side: For anyone with a dollar and a dream, it’s your lucky day: the Jari Project is still for sale! 3. Make New Friends
The pictures of spear-wielding tribesmen produced in May 2008 may have been a hoax, but it’s true that there are literally dozens of so-called “uncontacted” native tribes in the Amazon basin--Stone Age peoples who have never had any contact with the outside world! While this seems preposterous, it makes sense when you consider the Basin’s size, over 2.7 million square miles in area, half of which is covered by dense rain forest and divided by 15,000 rivers and tributaries. Altogether, there are believed to be about three dozen uncontacted tribes in Brazil and 15 in Peru.
The bright side: If you’re up for the adventure, you have more than 50 chances to claim fame and fortune. Just make sure you don’t accidentally give everyone smallpox. … And so much more!
What you’ve just read isn’t available in our book, but don’t worry--roughly 82% of the rest of history is. Our twelve essential chapters tackle everything from civilization’s baby steps in the Fertile Crescent to the Pope’s first text message, the 6,000-pound super-wombats of early Australia to the Goose Crusade of 1096, the golden hemorrhoids of the Philistines to the most important assassinations of the 20th century, and everything else that’s wacky, entertaining, and completely, unbelievably true. |
Average Customer Rating:   fun way to look at the history of the world This is a fun way to look at the history of the world (in 400 pages) as the mental Floss crowd provides their irreverent glimpse back in time and for a few pages the Great Bush Recession. With twelve chapters divided by eras, an appendix on Oh Canada and of course that Great Bush Recession, readers get a taste of chicken beer historical trivia. The reference tome includes chronological and locality asides, but mostly focuses on the who's who of the past and who they are doing it to; and not just Europe and North America; as Chapter 4 aptly represents the book with its "There's No Place Like Rome (Except China, Persia India, Mexico and Peru). Amusing and hip even when discussing pestilence, disease and war like how the great plague limited the great Justinian or that six battles on the western front in WW I resulted in at least 250,000 dead or there is a bit of land beyond the Hudson. Whether it is invoking divine approval by Sumerians, Persians, or Americans, this is an engaging look at the world's historical foibles even during critical pivotal points missed by that much by the Third Estate (some things remain the same whether the coverage is the French Revolution, Imperialism in Africa or The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars). The Mental Floss History of the World provides as Paul Harvey would say "the rest of the story". Did Abraham really give up that beach front property to his nephew?
Harriet Klausner
great book This was a very good book. Just enough information for each era. Written in a fun enjoyable manner. Worst of the Best I absolutely love Mental Floss, but this book is my least favorite of all the things they have done. Their habit of listing tons of quirky facts and jumping from one topic to the next has been replaced here with a more even flow, which doesn't suit them as well and leaves my ADD-addled brain craving more and less somehow, simultaneously. Their attempt to give a general overview of all of history in 400 pages causes them to constantly summarize and not include so many of those fun, minute trivia tidbits I was looking for. That said, it's still a pretty good read. The Past As You Think You Know It Is History Having grown up with a public school education, as an adult I was quite surprised to discover there is quite a lot more to history than I remember happening. This book at least fills in some of those gaps.
While quite hilarious, it is still historically accurate. Overall, everyone knows what occurred -- bacteria, cavemen, dinosaurs, pyramids, Puritans. But there are a lot of little-known stories and interesting facts about the world and the civilizations that came before us. Things we never got the opportunity to hear about in school. It's funny, amazing, shocking and silly... but always quite interesting.
History is a hard sell to most people. But as an individual with an average education and an above-average curiosity, I found it thoroughly enjoying. (I would also highly recommend "An Underground Education: The Unauthorized and Outrageous Supplement to Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, and Other Fields of Human Knowledge" by Richard Zacks) It's not exactly the history of the world as the title suggests; just some of the amusing and strange going-ons we never learned in school because we were too busy memorizing names and dates. Typical fun and witty book from Mental Floss but a bit dull at times I have to admit to being a Mental Floss junkie. I subscribe to the magazine and think it is the most entertaining publication out there. This book certainly follows the MF format of giving you a lot of information in a format that is both lively and educational. I think it does a great job of giving the over view of world history and going into details when necessary. Special kudos for focusing outside of Europe and not going crazy over the usual blank spots one often finds in other histories.
Still, the book does skimp a bit on details and I would like to see it offer more detail on some human achievements and also some down spots. We don't see much cultural mentions nor do we see much by way of technological context provided. That would make this a much better work in my opinion. Next time don't skimp so much guys! |  |
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