I guess I was expecting something closer to the Mental Floss YouTube videos. This was much less entertaining than I expected and it did not feel like an “Irreverent romp through civilizations best bits.” One of my biggest complaints with the book was the way the authors mixed mythology and history, not differentiating between the two. The book was mildly interesting and some of the segues were humorous. Overall, not a bad book, just not what I was expecting from Mental Floss. I listened to a few chapters of the audiobook version. The narrator was annoyingly hyper. But mostly I was annoyed by the content. I doubt the historicity of plenty of the facts in this book, but I particularly object to the Bible being used uncritically as a historical source. Of course the Bible has extreme value for historians; this value does NOT extend to reciting the story of "that time God smote the Hittites with hemorrhoids" as a historical certainty. Frankly bizarre.
Good, easy to digest, overview of world events.
—astrolabe11
This book is awesome!! I love history.
—thekid
Magnificent tidbits of our history!
—alexreeves
Compact, informative, fun to read.
—mlpratt
irreverent for sure
—nikki
