Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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

It seemed to me that history classes took all the life out out of the past leaving a shell of battle dates and wars. I never really cared about that. This book puts back what history teachers (and time) took out: The Smut!

This book is an easy read as it has a lot of humor served in doses of one to two paragraphs. The subject is not wartime strategies...well, not on the battlefield. Cleopatra's seduction of Marc Anthony was better planned than most military skirmishes, and was far more successful with only one moonstruck casualty.

I would recommend this book for anyone who loves history, and even for those that found it tedious in school. It is essentually a fun and frisky romp through the bedrooms of yesteryear.

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.

I bought this as a present for my brother, and because I found Richard Zack's other books -- The Pirate Hunter and Pirate Coast -- absolutely excellent in content and writing. This book is a bit different, but a fun gift item if you can still get your hands on a copy.

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

How well it is said : "If love is not madness, It isnot love" Love is eternal.