History Laid Bare: Love, Sex, and Perversity from the Ancient Etruscans to Warren G. Harding

by Richard Zacks

Book Overview

Looks at the recorded thoughts of famous artists, writers, thinkers, statesmen, scientists, even future saints about sex in everything from brief diary entries to memoirs, essays, love letters, poems and jokes. The author has unearthed scores of previously unknown musings on sex and love.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060169532
• ISBN13: 9780060169534
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 463 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.6" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Keep a spare copy of this one just in case

This is a book likely to be stolen from your coffee table for its delicious romp through the back rooms of history. It's full of bawdy stories and poetry about history's most notorious figures written (mostly) during their lifetimes. You will laugh out loud at the verse about Julius Caesar's promiscuity and the size of King Charles II's "royal sceptre", the humorous epigrams of the great Roman satirists, the wit of Mark Twain, and the sexual superstitions of the past. It more than fills the void left by PLAYBOY when it ended the Classic Ribaldry section years ago because many of the entries are about real people whose names you've heard in history lessons since you were a child. My only complaint about this book is that it isn't longer with even more stories about Napoleon, Thomas Jefferson, and everyone else who seems larger than life. This book adds to their humanity.

History Laid Bare

This book is where you go to learn the things they wouldn't teach in school.

Fascinating Facts That Our History Teacher Never Mentioned

In this book Zacks has compiled an extensive collection of facts about how Sex played a major role in history. The more I read, the more amazed I was at how history is cleansed of these realities before we are taught it in school. This book has made me hungry to dig up other books that fill in the blanks in my knowledge of the past.

History no one knows much about

I found this book to be very humorous and quite amusing. As it said in the prologue, this is the kind of history that adds life and color to the old, cold marble statues that litter antiquity. I've always been very interested in history, but with traditional textbooks, one is often at a loss to explain what many people used to do for fun or even how they propigated themselves. This book holds all the answers to those pressing questions and presents them in a readable format that would hold the attention of even the most burned-out-on-history student

Funny, informative, and deeply researched book

Like his writing, Zacks is in a class by himself. The product of a classical education, he draws his information from primary sources, the more graphic and humorous the better. His lascivious mind frames each citation into its erotic best. His translations are modern but true to their sources. What a fun book! Too bad you can't put it on your coffee table.