Customer Reviews

The Museum of Hoaxes

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have to admit to being simultaneously disappointed and entertained by Alex Boese's The Museum of Hoaxes. While Boese certainly has researched many pranks, stunts and deceptions and writes in a breezy style, I kept wishing for more information about the hoaxes he reports (not more hoaxes, of which there are plenty). Had I come across this book in a brick-and-mortar store, I probably would not have bought it; and I have to admit that the Amazon reviewer does comment about the lack of detail. For example, the section on The Great Chess Automaton is only two rather small pages long, with no pictures. Look on James Randi's (the Amazing Randi) website for the James Randi Educational Fountation, dedicated to debunking hoaxes, physics, and the like, and you'll find two commentaries dedicated to the same topic, with several drawings which make the hoax perfectly clear. Randi's account is much more engaging, as its detail brings the story to life. Boese discusses the Loch Ness Monster and the "surgeon's photo"--but doesn't include the photo itself. The book makes good light reading, and perhaps it's greatest good is as a testiment to the fact that the media is less in the news and education business than in the entertainment business, a case which Randi also makes repeatedly. You'll probably encounter a few stories you've heard before and not realised were hoaxes or outright frauds, such as the sightings of sea monsters by the passenger ship Mauretania--a report first published in the New York Times and repeated ad infinitum in books on Cryptozoology and Fortean Phenomena, but which has entirely no basis in fact. You'll surely discover things of which you've not heard--my favorite is "The Great Monkey Hoax" hailing from my home state of Georgia, wherein a dead Capuchin monkey was doused in depiliatory cream and left in the road by two boys who claimed they'd struck it while two other "aliens" escaped in a glowing UFO. Boese has a gullibilty test in his book, which I, a confirmed skeptic, didn't do well on. And a number of famous or otherwise interesting hoaxes didn't make it into his book--including Mother Shipton, the psychic more accurate than Nostradamus but who unfortunately didn't exist, or the mermaid story which took place here in Hong Kong less than 10 years ago--a report was widely circulated in the media that a fisherman had caught a mermaid and his boat was bringing her into port. People flocked to the docks, but the boat was delayed and wouldn't be in until the next day. Still people came, but of course, no mermaid ever showed up--I don't remember what the excuse was--I think perhaps he freed the mermaid because she'd threatened him with a curse. Or the monkey man that was running around rooftops in India, supposedly assulting people, also within the last decade. Boese maintains a website where at least some of these hoaxes are written up; but like the book that site lacks detail and seems somewhat flat.

I've been waiting for this book, and now I'm delighted to have "The Museum of Hoaxes" to take with me everywhere. This is a wonderful collection of hoax stories from the Middle Ages to the Internet era, each an illustration of clever prankstering -- or astonishing gullibility. Well-written and easy to read at a page or two each, these hoaxes sometimes crack me up, sometimes make me feel smugly superior, and sometimes leave me afraid that I will soon get hoaxed myself. When I'm reading, I often find myself wanting to tell somebody about one of the incredible stories I've just found. Because the Museum is so comprehensive and thorough, there's almost a feeling of something useful about the knowledge I've acquired, all this trivia about centuries of hoaxes. It's just enough to make the pleasure entirely guiltless. This book is fabulous -- and that's no hoax!

Curator and author Alex Boese has the wide-eyed passion for discovering the curiosities in life and the scientific skepticism for finding the truth.

Amazing, unusual tales from supermarket tabloids, television, and comic books thrilled you, as a naïve kid. You lacked experience in life and failed to recognize the motives of others. As you grew wiser, you learned to hunt for the misinformation that separates what is real and what is not real, especially when you became a fraud examiner. The thrill and the hunt are well preserved and on exhibit in The Museum of Hoaxes.

Have you ever been fooled on April 1st? Do you know the name of the first female Pope? Did you ever hear a jackalope sing or a carrot whistle? Do you believe everything you read? Take the clever Gullibility Test before you start the museum tour.

Mankind has been deceived for centuries. The museum displays sensational hoaxes chronologically to offer an entertaining history of lies even your kids will like. Curator Boese explains how outrageous hoaxes attract attention and shape public opinions about democracy, religion, science, and business.

What you already know about many topics may not be the truth. Imaginative hoaxes involved Marco Polo, Benjamin Franklin, men on the moon, and Microsoft. Even Cassie Chadwick and Charles Ponzi, two "Frankensteins of Fraud," are immortalized in the museum. Find out how penny papers and Web sites caused financial disasters.

After you devour the book, explore the museum's Web site at ... . New exhibits are added daily. Enjoy the BBC broadcast of Swiss workers harvesting the pasta crop from spaghetti trees.

Established in 1997, The Museum of Hoaxes in San Diego attracts a million visitors a month. You'll want to visit more than once, and tell your friends.

Admission prices: $$$ for paperback, 288 pages, November 2003, Plume Books, New York, ISBN 0452284651; and $$$ for hardcover, 304 pages, illustrated, November 2002, Dutton Books, New York, ISBN 0525946780. Available at local bookstores and online booksellers.

Reviewed by Larry C. Adams, CFE, CPA, CIA, CISA, author of "Fraud In Other Words: Professional Jargon and Uncensored Street Slang."

So are you one of those many people, like I was, who believed the old rumor about subliminal advertising? You know, the one where a group of researchers added a few clever lines like "Hungry? Candy and Popcorn at the Concession" to be flashed during a movie so quickly the conscious mind missed it but the subconscious caught it and the concession stand sold 50% more candy and popcorn. I believed it quite completely for many years, until Alex Boese, our esteemed curator for this Museum of Hoaxes, informed me it was complete hooey. Turns out a researcher did indeed claim to do this and it caused quite a stir 40 years ago, but when scientific colleagues pressed him to reproduce this effect in a more controlled setting, he could not. And, to this day, the receipt of subliminal messages remains unproven.

Interesting stuff, isn't it? You'll be surprised at all the things you thought you knew. Its well written and a page turner, in fact, I tore through this book in less than a day, I simply could not put it down, much to the annoyance of my pretty wife.

This book is an interesting read. I tells enough about each hoax so that you enjoy readin about the story, but it does not get "clinical" and boring. I like the fact you read just a few pages at a time if you like, and come back to it later. If you are interested in practical jokes and hoaxes, check this out, it is a fun read.

This book was one I just couldn't put down. Boese takes the span of cons, scams and hoaxes across the centuries, giving you tasty tidbits of each century since 1600. It is humorous to see what some people are willing to swallow, such as the plan to saw Manhattan Island in half to prevent it from sinking into the ocean.

Over the centuries as modernization creeps (or steamrolls) in, the hoaxes have gotten more sophisticated. Hence once past 1865, Boese divides his chapters in half centuries instead of centuries, and a whole chapter is dedicated to just the hoaxing done since the turn of the century. (Think of all the photographic hoaxes after 9-11)

Some of the cherished mystical monsters of the last century are exposed here too. Such as the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. Each hoax is presented with a little background as to how the perpetrators convinced people to accept them as fact. It ends with a few principles as to how to avoid being scammed by hoaxers yourself. Altogether thge most enjoyable book I have read so far this year.

Like many physical museums, Alex Boese's "The Museum of Hoaxes" is comprehensive, well-ordered, but a bit dull. It was a book easy to put down, but offered enough material that it eventually as taken up again. Boese orders the book roughly chronologically, starting with early forgeries such as the Donation of Constantine and the possibly spurious tales of Marco Polo. He moves through the ages, lightly covering well known hoaxes such as the Cardiff Giant, filling in the centuries with hoaxes I had never heard of such as the various newspaper circulation-building hoaxes of the 19th century. One, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, insisted that a new telescope had the ability to see man-bats and beavers on the moon.

The book moves into the 20th century, discussing the Hitler Diaries hoax, Clifford Irving's hoax biography of Howard Hughes, the Tawana Brawley case and Rosie Ruiz's fake completion of the 1980 Boston marathon. The book also covers the pranks of Alan Abel, Disk Tuck and Jerry Skaggs, whose feats were more about making social statements than in hoaxing for gain or attention. In 1962, in one hilarious episode, Tuck hired pregnant women to hold signs at Nixon rallies reading "Nixon's the One!" Nixon returned the favor on the American public in a less humorous vein when Donald Segretti set up his dirty tricks operation.

TMOH does have failings. It often chops its stories short, giving little follow-up, leaving the reader suspended in mid-air. And while the book does cover crop circles and UFOs, it remains agnostic about the truth of these and other controversial items, perhaps in fear of alienating readers. And for a book on the cleverness and slyness of human beings, it is woefully short of both values; a book on hoaxes should be fun!

TMOH is a straightforward, light introduction to many instances where the average human intellect is deluded by tricksters and wits.

This book is basically a well-organized laundry list of hoaxes. The author arranges hoaxes in logical categories based on the type of deception involved. Some, especially those from further in the past, sound preposterous, but one must always account for the differences in knowledge and thought processes between times past and now. What was most disturbing to me is the fact that some of the hoaxes sounded plausible; it makes you wonder how many pieces of knowledge we take for granted might be well-contrived hoaxes. Conspiracy theorists take THAT attitude to the extreme, seeing hoaxes everywhere. But hoaxes are most prevalent when it is hard to get independent supporting data about a topic, which this book points out. For instance, if a white fellow turned up in Europe and claimed to be a Taiwanese native, we would laugh at him. But a white fellow did turn up in Europe several centuries ago, claiming to be a native of Formosa (Taiwan's former name). Without additional information (that Taiwanese are Asians), the people of Europe were unable to quickly discount the story.

"Museum of Hoaxes" is a relatively short book collecting some of the most infamous hoaxes of the past 2,000 years. Everything within is given a similar, cursory treatment. That would be acceptable if there were more illustrations; I was surprised to see just how few plates exist in a book dedicated to hoaxes. Without illustrations, many of the hoaxes (such as the Chess Machine) are difficult to fully comprehend. The result is as superficial as a Saturday morning noncredit course at a community college.

Still, I'm glad I bought the book. It *is* a fun read, and a good introduction to the world of hoaxing. I plan to lend it out to my students in order to encourage them to develop skeptical thinking. I expected more coming from the creator of the Museum of Hoaxes website, but the book succeeds within its own modest limits.

For an equally poppy but far more comprehensive look at a related area, check out "Too Good to be True" by Brunvand.

No this is not a hoax by Amazon, this book actually does exist and inside you'll find various hoaxes that have fooled governments, populations at large, journalists, internet users and well anyone who can be fooled. The more recent ones such as the photo of the guy on top of the World Trade Centre with an American Airlines plane in the background you will no doubt have seen before but it is great to see how those hoaxes started and how many people they fooled. Some of the older hoaxes you may also have heard of as they have become legendary but there are heaps of them in here so it is doubtful you will have known them all. This book also contains photographs (not colour) of hoax photographs and other illustrations. It is a good interesting read and covers the entire globe not just the USA like other similar books.