The true stories behind historical events give readers a fascinating new look at our past. The revelations shock and amaze by exposing veiled motivations and convenient inaccuracies in well-documented actions by established leaders that often have a continuing effect on the world.
Each of the fifteen chapters points out a myth that is held as a common truth in history and summarizes what we think we know. Then the author shreds the tale to academic ribbons using the latest findings on each subject. Each true story sets the record straight, reveals timeless ulterior motives, introduces important personalities who successfully (and suspiciously) avoided responsibility in common history texts, and notes underlining issues that have continued relevance in the modern age. For instance, did Nero really fiddle as Rome burned? Did Paul Revere actually alert the militia that the British were coming? Did the Catholic Church imprison Galileo because his teachings conflicted with the Bible? Weir takes on all these myths and tells the reader what really happened.
I'd first like to state that I am no history buff. I studied American and European history in college, and studied music history for one and one-half years but I would be hard-pressed to accurately recall much any of it now. I am basically a typically college-educated, non-history major person. However, I have always been the type to suspect just about everything told to me by "authority figures" and I encourage everyone...
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Who ever said "you can't judge a book by it's cover" did not read this book. It's funny, fact filled, and well, the title says it all.
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There is no shortage of books now in print that correct what their authors perceive to be distortions of historical facts such as Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong in which James Loewen offers what he believes to be the "truth" about various subjects that include Christopher Columbus, the first Thanksgiving, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, Abraham Lincoln and John Brown, and...
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With History's Greatest Lies Fair Winds Press has released yet another terrific popular level history book. The book consits of a series of articles that can be read in any order and take about fifteen or twenty minutes to read. They are written well and are enjoyable to pass the time and find out about things that we thought we knew but didn't. Anyone familiar with the subject is likely to already know the "lie" of that...
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I have grown accustomed to various types of what are commonly referred to as `Bathroom Readers,' books made up of very brief pieces on a variety of provocative subjects. Short attention span consumption for the reader with minutes to explore, superficially, some subject of interest. I must confess that when I saw the title of this book, "History's Greatest Lies," this is what I expected. Some kind of broad compendium of...
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