From the Publisher
If you get a kick out of odd historical trivia like that, you’ll devour “When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain,” the first installment in Giles Milton’s new “History’s Unknown Chapters” series. Packed with 50 stories your social studies teacher probably skipped, the book sports a wandering eye and witty voice that make for diverting winter reading.”—The Washington Post
"A list of insurance claims taken out on pets drowned with the Titanic. A legend detailing the various forms of Chinese castrati. A detailed description—by the oh-so-fittingly named Sir Hamon L’Estrange—of a dodo a mere quarter century before the bird’s extinction. These moments are the winking epigraphs of grinning Death, gleaned from Giles Milton’s history of the bizarre, the obfuscated and the macabre. And what a history it is!"—Paste Magazine
"50 brief but detailed stories, from the hilarious to the absurd."—The Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Fans of history, trivia, and Miilton's previous works will delight in this collection of lesser-known historical stories."—Library Journal (starred review)
"Stranger than fiction? Possibly, but life always seems to create more bizarre people and unforeseen happenings than most writers will ever imagine."—CounterPunch
“[An] easily digestible mix of humor, trivia, and solid research….Dozens of seemingly too-good-to-be-true tales…There are plenty of fabulously dramatic adventures here…Milton’s entertaining collection is sure to leave readers waiting for the next volume in the series."—Publishers Weekly
“Milton has assembled an easily digestible compendium of historical oddities about the famous and infamous.”—Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal
★ 11/15/2015
A man on the RMS Titanic got so drunk that he survived the terrible cold of the North Atlantic water until he was pulled onto a lifeboat. Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days in 1926 and was found in a hotel under the name of her husband's mistress. These are just two of the fascinating accounts Milton (Russian Roulette; White Gold) shares in this wonderfully diverse collection. There are a total of 25 short tales, categorized into headings such as "I Never Knew That About Hitler" and "Ladies in Disguise." Each story is told in a narrative style that makes the reader feel the chill of Mount Everest, the fear in the trenches of two World Wars, and the hideousness of human cannibalism in the face of extreme starvation. Some of the stories will be more familiar but many more have been almost forgotten. For example, there is the odd death of Alfred Loewenstein, who fell out of his plane over the English Channel—or was he thrown out? VERDICT Fans of history, trivia, and Milton's previous works will delight in this collection of lesser-known historical stories.—Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI
Kirkus Reviews
2015-10-04
Hitler's love child and other shocking speculations. In the mode of Ripley's Believe It or Not, Milton (Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution, 2014, etc.) has assembled an easily digestible compendium of historical oddities about the famous and infamous, including Hitler and Lenin, Agatha Christie (who went missing, inexplicably, for 11 days in 1926), Charles Lindbergh, and a 19th-century eccentric who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. As he romps through the past, the author introduces a physician who plied Hitler with "an extraordinary cocktail of drugs, many of which are these days classed as dangerous, addictive, and illegal"; a pair of lovers who had a hard time poisoning the woman's husband; a shipwrecked party who resorted to cannibalism; and a "prolific murderess" of infants. Some vignettes highlight bizarre coincidences: a man who survived the bombing of Hiroshima fled to Nagasaki, only to experience yet another "blinding white flash." In 1945, Pastor Archie Mitchell and his pregnant wife took five schoolchildren on a picnic in southern Oregon. Suddenly, there was an explosion—a new Japanese weapon, a balloon bomb, killed everyone except Mitchell. In 1960, serving as a missionary in Vietnam, he was captured by the Viet Cong, never to be seen again. Some episodes, such as Hitler's last days, the Lindbergh baby's kidnapping, Adolf Eichmann's capture, and a Japanese soldier's insistent fighting of World War II until 1974, may be familiar to history buffs. Less known is the story of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, who smuggled Jewish babies out of Poland; Ota Benga, an African pygmy, who, in 1906, was caged with monkeys at the Bronx Zoo; and South African Sarah Baartman, forced to exhibit herself as the "Hottentot Venus." A few chapters will elicit a response of "so what?" But there's enough adventure, gore, and mystery to make this volume mostly entertaining.
