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History's Great Untold Stories: The Larger Than Life Characters and Dramatic Events That Changed the World
 
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History's Great Untold Stories: The Larger Than Life Characters and Dramatic Events That Changed the World [Hardcover]

Joseph Cummins (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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Book Description

March 20, 2007
This eye-catching volume combines vivid first-hand accounts of pivotal events in history with authoritative commentary. Revealing startling links among events and people separated by centuries and continents, the epic struggles and bombastic personalities have been carefully chosen for their power to challenge some of the fiercest debates of our present day.

Readers encounter William the Silent, a Dutch monarch whose assassination may have triggered the 1588 launch of the Spanish Armada and led Queen Elizabeth I to create the first known attempt at gun control. Another chapter introduces Rabban Sauma, a thirteenth-century Christian monk sent by Kublai Khan to seek a Christian-Mongol alliance against Muslims. There is also the remarkable story of twelve anti-slavery activists who fought the prevailing business and political establishment of their day to outlaw slavery in England, using tactics that have become tools of the trade for every grassroots movement that has followed.

Filled with fascinating sidebars, narratives, maps, illustrations, and concise biographies, this new volume gathers up the rich details that Western history left on the cutting room floor and turns them into stories that shed light on both vanquished and victor over the ages. With its fresh, design and accessible format, History's Great Untold Stories will be welcomed by the legions of readers who are eager to uncover "history's mysteries" and explore lesser known, non-Western views of world events.

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Customers buy this book with The Greatest Stories Never Told: 100 Tales from History to Astonish, Bewilder, and Stupefy $12.78

History's Great Untold Stories: The Larger Than Life Characters and Dramatic Events That Changed the World + The Greatest Stories Never Told: 100 Tales from History to Astonish, Bewilder, and Stupefy


Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joseph Cummins is the author of Cannibals: Shocking True Stories of the Last Taboo on Land and at Sea and The Greatest Search and Rescue Stories Ever Told. His book Anything for a Vote: A History of Dirty Tricks and October Surprises in America's Presidential Elections will be published in Spring 2007.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 368 pages
  • Publisher: National Geographic (March 20, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1426200315
  • ISBN-13: 978-1426200311
  • Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 1.4 x 9.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #751,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

After working for ten years at the Book of the Month Club, where he was Creative Director of several clubs, including Book of the Month Club, Quality Paperback Book Club, and One Spirit Book Club, Joseph Cummins went freelance in 2001. Since then he has published twelve books, mainly works of popular history. His publications include a novel, The Snow Train (Akashic Books, 2001); History's Great Untold Stories (National Geographic, 2007); Turn Around and Run Like Hell (Murdoch Books, 2006); Great Rivals in History (Murdoch Books, 2007); Anything For A Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns (Quirk Books, 2008); Cast Away: Shipwrecked, Marooned or Cast Adrift on the High Seas (Murdoch Books, 2008); The War Chronicles, Volumes I & 2 (Fair Winds Press, 2008-9); First Encounters with Unknown People (Murdoch Books, 2009); and The World's Bloodiest History (Fair Winds Press, 2010).His forthcoming books include Eaten by A Giant Clam: Great Adventures in Natural Science (Murdoch Books, September 2010); and Why Some Wars Never End: The Longest Conflicts in History (Fair Winds Press, November 2010).
Joe's YA credits include President Obama and a New Birth of Freedom (Collins, 2009) and the History's Greatest Hits: Famous Events We Should Know More About (Murdoch Books, 2010). All told, his titles have sold over 150,000 copies in America, Australia, Canada and the UK.
Joe lives with his wife and daughter in Maplewood, New Jersey.

 

Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting historical events made accessible for the general reader, October 17, 2008
By 
Philip S. Griffey (Bainbridge I. WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: History's Great Untold Stories: The Larger Than Life Characters and Dramatic Events That Changed the World (Hardcover)
I usually avoid books on history published by The National Geographic Society. I have found them to be written in too simple a style and without a great deal of either new or deep intellectual content. I happened to pick up this book at the local library and turn randomly to page 194. It began:
"The Taiping Rebellion, a peasant uprising that occurred in mid 19th century China, involved more combatants than any other war in the 19th century, killed more people that any other conflict apart from World War II (estimates range from 20 million to 40 million)...and changed the future of an entire country. Yet very few people outside of China have ever heard of it. Nor do many know of its messianic leader, Hong Xiuquan, who claimed to have had an apocalyptic vision that revealed he was Jesus Christ's younger brother."

I had heard of it, but knew little about it - or about many of the other events described in the book. They are all (to those of us who enjoy history) interesting - and most are fascinating. The author has the unexpected and intellectually mature view that not everything done by western Europeans and Americans has been totally angelic.

The reviewer who gave the book only 2 stars says "Any reasonably serious student of history will be familiar with all the stories Cummins chooses to tell." All right, let's see if you are a reasonably serious student of history. What do you know about the following:
1. The Cadaver Synod, 2. The Leper King of Jerusalem, 3. Subotai, 4. Rabban Sauma, 5. The Chinese Treasure Fleet of Xuan He, 6. William the 1st of Orange, 7.The Shimabara Uprising, 8.Roger Williams (of Providence Plantation, not the singer), 9. The Battle of Poltava, 10. Vitus Bering, 11. Francisco Dagohoy and the Rebels of Bohol, 12. The British Abolition Movement, 13. David Thompson, North America's Greatest Geographer, 14. George Augustus Robinson, The Great Conciliator of Van Dieman's Land.

Those are the first fourteen (of twenty-eight) chapters. How did you do?
How do you think the two-star reviewer who made the statement did? The book is well written, in a very accessible style; I would recommend it not only to get a teenager interested in history, but as interesting and unusual fare for the experienced history buff.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Contains some amazing and little-known pieces of important history, September 29, 2007
This review is from: History's Great Untold Stories: The Larger Than Life Characters and Dramatic Events That Changed the World (Hardcover)
Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, this book contains some amazing and little-known pieces of important history that ANY young man or woman should read.

One excellent example is the story of the Shimabara Rebellion in southern Japan in the 17th century. As a born-again Christian, I had no idea, even with a degree in history, that this event had ever taken place, or that it in fact was the cause of Japan's extreme isolationism prior to the late 19th century.

Another example is the story of Vitus Bering, the Danish naval hero who led Peter the Great of Russia's expedition across the northern Pacific to find a route to America via Alaska.

Yet another is the quest by Nazi's in Tibet to discover the origins of the so-called "Aryan" race.

As a paleo conservative, one who is anti-Communist and anti-left-wing, I would not recommend the "revisionist-history" elements of this book such as those mentioned by the reviewer who gave this book 2-stars. That being said, there are many valuable historical puzzle pieces in this book that otherwise might go unnoticed by a public already dummed-down by federal educational systems that have been run for years by both so-called "conservative" and "liberal" presidents and administrations.
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5.0 out of 5 stars History, May 17, 2010
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This review is from: History's Great Untold Stories: The Larger Than Life Characters and Dramatic Events That Changed the World (Hardcover)
Great book of history stories I have not heard about before and was not introduced to in schools. If you enjoy finding out about new individuals in history and other culture's stories this is an enlightening read.
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