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 enlarge | Author: Richard Zacks
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy Used: $5.74
You Save: $12.21 (68%)
New (27) Used (25) Collectible (1) from $5.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  71 reviews
Sales Rank: 11285
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Anchor Books Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0385483767
Dewey Decimal Number: 031.02
EAN: 9780385483766
ASIN: 0385483767
Publication Date: April 20, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Very Good Condition
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| Customer Reviews:
 Not my cup of tea December 11, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's okay....but the author certainly only see the dark side. If you are looking for a chuckle keep looking.
 Read About the Rest of the Story November 25, 2007
History is often way more interesting, and vastly more complicated, than the few sentences that are mentioned in the history books we read at school. This book has tons of interesting stories, covering all kinds of topics. It is very well written, with just a bit of sarcasm and irony. It is also very illuminating and worth the picking up.
Enjoyed this entertaining book of Trivia June 28, 2007
I enjoyed this entertaining book. This book is not a deep educational study of history, but a book filled with interesting bits of historical information, OR funny facts & trivia!
Some facts will make you laugh, and others will puzzle you. Nothing wrong with that. When I got this book I was looking for a "light reading" book to read on a plane trip. After the trip, I lent the book to a friend and my friend enjoyed it too.... (Therefore, we both give it 5-stars).
 Juvenile, at best June 11, 2007
9 out of 28 found this review helpful
This could have been titled something like "One Man's Attack on the History of the Church", or "One Man's Attempt to Disparage Western Civilization", and that would've been more descriptive. Zacks spends about half the book dredging up odd and unflattering facts about the Catholic church (which doesn't exactly require a great historian) as well as blaming many of the ills of modern civilization on various popes. It is a restful page, not to mention chapter, when Zacks isn't pounding the Catholic church about something. The chapter on religion mostly beats on the Catholic church to the point where Zacks himself starts to feel guilty and points out that they are an easy target. Then without pausing to catch his breath he proceeds to go on and take some more pot shots. He spends quite a bit of the chapter talking about the crusades in such a fashion that you'd think the Muslims were just frolicking in the woods making daisy chains. And speaking of Muslims, in the entire chapter on religion there is one paragraph on Islam, and that a complimentary one from Voltaire. That was one thing I learned, I never knew Voltaire said anything complimentary about any religion.
He then goes after the Puritans and Mormons, and although by his own research the Puritans were far more tolerant than the Anglicans, he feels compelled to disparage his own conclusions. When I say "go after" I am not saying that I am disputing his facts. I am saying that it is something like reading about the Civil War as told by Jeb Stuart. You might technically be getting the facts, but you're not getting much perspective.
Zacks also keeps calling anyone who reads the Bible or talks about morality "Bible thumpers". Hilarious. He's full of little snide and juvenile comments like this that at best are whimsical, and almost always biased. He speaks of the history of political lies from most recent to oldest- and uses Nixon's "I am not a crook" as his most recent sample. I can think of one or two more recent.
A lot of the facts were not all that outrageous, either. Nobel invented dynamite? Does anyone not know that?
This isn't to say that there weren't interesting facts, or even that it was poorly written (it was not), just that it was often insulting and condescending. Imagine if he kept saying "f**got" or something like that over and over instead of "Bible thumper" and you can get the idea. As a Bible thumper I get ridiculed from time to time, and I don't usually whine about it, but I don't usually have to pay for the privilege, either. Finally, I'd say most of the same facts I got from a book I'd read earlier, "The Know it All", written with a lot more panache and without leaving me with the feeling that I had been dragged through a sewer.
 Underground Education May 12, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I already had a copy of this book; i liked it so much I got another copy as
a gift for a friend, who is also an educator. The work could do with a little
more documentation, but it's a great read overall.
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