Customer Reviews

Lies, Damned Lies and History: A Catalogue of Historical Errors and Misunderstandings

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This kind of book is always needed. Too many half-truths and down right lies are given common credence and so any effort to liven up history and help people see the more interesting reality behind the myths is welcome. Unfortunately, while this book has plenty of interest and lots of information to help get the reader thinking, all too often the author falls into the same errors the work claims to criticise. Stories are told because they are attractive rather than historically accurate, and in the later part of this book a great deal of conjecture is indulged in. The result is that on balance, lies and history come to an inconclusive draw. Added to this is the occasional unleashing of the author's bitter conservative soul within, as when is let fly unpleasant remarks along of the lines of: `Ha! I knew they'd lose and would have been better off doing nothing like me'. Not a sympathetic way to treat the victims of history.

A popular writer trying to earn a living by producing as many books as possible naturally does not have the time to research and reference, though the tiny bibliography pasted at the end of the book is pathetic. Popular knowledge would have been better served by the draft of this book being handed over to a good editor as well as a number of historians; the first to delete contradictions and the latter to provide a few good references.

A few of many examples of contradictions, presumably resulting from the authors' wish to fly from one extreme to another, include declaring on one page that 90% of people were left homeless by the burning of London and then that four fifths of the city was left untouched. Another is that Dr Guillotine had nothing to do with the guillotine and then that he designed it. Or that the Marseillaise had nothing to do with the French Revolution but that it was written in 1792.

Publishers suffer from an allergy to footnotes, a disease directly related to their belief that all readers are stupid, particularly American ones. Leaving aside the question of whether they are correct or not, the simple solution is to load up a decent list of endnotes and references onto a website and allow the interested reader to lookup what they wish at leisure. Of course, this would involve employing authors willing to keep their notes straight. Perhaps such are too expensive?

Perhaps one of the strangest assertions the author makes is to roundly condemn Tacitus as a credible source on the grounds that he was only fours years old at the time of the events he is describing, in this case Boudica's revolt against the Romans in Britain. Not only is Tacitus' age irrelevant but the fact that contemporaries of Boudica's revolt would have been alive when Tacitus was writing makes him in fact one of the most credible of ancient sources. The fact that footnotes had not been invented gives Tacitus an excuse that the modern author lacks. Having dismissed Tacitus as too young doesn't prevent the author repeating stories of Cleopatra and many others based on authors who were not born long after their subjects had turned to dust.

Yet still more strange is the choice of `pre-history' as a title for anything that happened more than around 2,000 years ago; presumably confusing pre-Christian with pre-history in a line of thought that is difficult to follow. Also difficult to follow is the line of reasoning that considers scythed chariots a myth merely because they proved ineffective. That things change and that it can take quite a number of setbacks before adapting is a lesson many still need to learn.

Much of the author's time is also spent attacking movies. The Trojan War never happened seemingly because the most modern movie version was not up to scratch. Other attacks are made on beliefs that it is hard to say who actually believes, Caesar was never Emperor for example.

But it is in modern history that things go even further wrong as the author lets his imagination go in speculation about how Chiang Kai-Shek never lost China, or that Japan would have surrendered long before the bomb was dropped but somehow was not allowed to. The list of errors and imaginative fancies goes on - so much so that a better title for the work would be: Lies, Damned Lies and some more Lies of my Own.

Historians like to specialise and it would take hundred's of professionals to do justice to a work covering the time span of this one. Nevertheless, readers would be better served by the work of a few specialists than by one fast writing generalist. If you want to check out the history behind popular beliefs - better look up Google.

This book is designed to be light fare - short, fun and interesting articles on a variety of subjects. Well, they are short, but hardly fun. For the most part I found the articles to be surprisingly boring. Worse, the author does write with an irritating smarter-than-thou attitude that really started to grate on my nerves.

And worst of all, I found a lot of his claims to be highly suspect. Don't bother checking his footnotes, there aren't any. His "facts" are presented as if ex cathedra, leaving you to simply accept them as gospel, when in fact one should not do so.

No, I am sorry for the time I spent reading this book, and I definitely do NOT recommend it.