The Mental Floss History of the World

An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits

By: Steve Wiegand, Erik Sass

Narrated by: Johny Heller

About 60,000 years ago, the first Homo sapiens were just beginning their move across the grasslands and up the ladder of civilization. Everything since then, as they say, is history. Just in case you were sleeping in class that day, the geniuses at mental_floss magazine have put together a hilarious (and historically accurate) primer on everything you need to know---and that means the good stuff.

Twelve core chapters of world history tackle everything from civilization's baby steps in the Fertile Crescent to the Not-Really-That-Dark-Unless-You-Lived-in-Europe Ages to A World United by Terror and TV. From the Golden Haemorhoids of the Philistines (punishment from above) to the likely namesake of the cartoon elephant Babar (a Mongol prince) to the most pressing language translation issues facing the menus of today ("carp" vs. "crap"), all of history's most interesting bits have finally been handpicked and roasted to perfection.

©2008 Mental Floss LLC (P)2008 Tantor

Some lessons, some laughter, fun book

This isn't a heavy-duty history-class survey but a refreshing zip tying together many of the events and actions we learned in history classes. It focuses on East as well as West, on Africa, China, Japan and South America as well as Europe and what would become the U.S. The approach covers blocks of centuries. It's neither as silly as the cover suggests, nor as dry as "world history" implies.

I didn't know anything about "Mental Floss" works (still don't) but the sections are leavened with humor and insight, brisk detail and factoids. When I studied history decades ago, classes focused on subsections of history: Western Europe, U.S., English social history, Ancient Mesopotamia, etc. I never got a good sense of how these sections were linked in time. I could not have told you what was going on in much of the rest of the world when Jesus walked, or where the Visigoths, Vandals and Saxons came from.

I recommend this with a smile. Now I'm going to go back to re-reading heavier history with a new perspective....!

Fun jaunt through history

This is a well written and fantastically performed humorous recap of world history. I listen to it at least once a year for some time now.

Brilliant and Funny. What more could you want?

After listening to "The Book of General Ignorance" I became addicted to this genre. I drive all night and am a lifelong learner. I soaked up so much of this book that I can send almost anyone into information overload. If you want to exercise your brain, increase your intelligence, end world hunger, or just make your co-workers look like the idiots you know them to be, BUY THIS BOOK!!!

Holy CRAP, Historianman!

Gees, humans are MEAN to each other. I'm amazed we've snowballed into almost 7 billion people. We're locust on this planet, a disease of our own making. Considering that most of the meanest people have conquered and formed this human race it's amazing that we have some sort of civility ... wherever it may be. It's also amazing that we're not dragging our knuckles anymore. What an eyeopener.

"Romp" is probably an overstatement

I suspect this book would have been much better in a regular book format, rather than on audio. The boring and repetitive lists of events at each chapter (?) start are probably laid out visually in such a way as to allow you to refer back during the meat of each section. Aside from that, it was still a light and entertaining overview of historical events, presented in a way that I wish my dusty old history teachers could have taught it. I was even mightily impressed with the narrator's ability to make coherent sounding sentences using the tongue-twisting names of ancient civilizations and foreign languages. Until the book hit the 1940's and I had to endure hearing "nucular" spoken over and over again. I subtracted a star for that alone, and I'm afraid I had to abandon the audiobook while it was in the home stretch.

Quick Romp Review

This book was lively and moved along with a lot of humor and information. It was free of a "right" or "wrong" theme and moved through the phases of various cultures and religions with no biasis.

Just the Thing!

Very entertaining combination of dates and memorable details. I really enjoyed the travel-in-time experiences and listened to some "times" over and over. The authors did a great job of presenting world events sequentially over time and geography.

Historical overdrive

This is an extremely interesting book, but it would be better to read it, rather than listen to it rush by. There are hundreds of facts and episodes, condensed and only slightly analyzed. If you were reading it, it would be possible to pause and let some description sink in; there's no time for that in the audio version.
Two minor irritants. One is the interjection of cutesy statements, in an effort to live up to the title of the book, and to (mistakenly) make it lighter and more interesting. They don't, and are only annoying.

The other is the pronunciation of the word nuclear. The reader persists in saying "nicular", instead - a dreadful mis-pronunciation.

Better viewed than heard - fascinating but ...

Listening to this book instead of reading doesn't allow you to refer back to previous pages. The order, scope, and sequence of the narrative clearly invites you to correlate each section with the ones before it. If I had read this instead, the margins and flyleaves would have been full of notes. Hopefully, the written edition would also come with some sort of visible timeline chart that would help keep you on track.

History as a snack!

What a great and fun way to keep learning. I love trivia and bites of learning. I will get the next one as soon as it hits the lists. Very entertaining and a bit of tongue and cheek to keep it light.