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How were the pyramids
and Easter Island’s moai constructed? Did Pope Joan
and Tokyo Rose really exist? Who really “discovered”
Australia and America? Forget what you think you know and
find the real answers to these and other historical mysteries
in here…
If history is written by the victors, myths and legends often
seem to arise to fit our own wishes and desires. Reading this
highly engaging and readable book I could see how our perception
of the stories behind these mysteries certainly alters from
age to age. Often the “true” story is more interesting
than the legend, or at least it seems that way to modern people.
In here you can discover who (apart from the Aborigines) arrived
in Australia before Cook, the real culprit behind the Great
Fire of Chicago, the astonishing story of Dr Crippen and the
cursed-seeming history of the Marie Celeste. These accounts
are grouped under broad categories such as religion, murder,
conflict, discovery etc and each gives a succinct account
of what we think we know and the truth. Some of these truths
are points of view, as we can never truly know the fate of
the Marie Celeste’s crew, discover if there was ever
one real person behind the Robin Hood legend or even what
Stonehenge was used for but some mysteries now have explanations.
New things like DNA testing and advances in archaeology can
tell us more than our ancesters knew but other interpretations
are down to differing perspectives and values. Modern people
are unlikely to view the Charge of the Light Brigade in the
same way as Victorians, but the true stories of Dr Crippen
and Iva Toguri’s “mistrials” appeal to our
sense of outrage at an underdog getting set up for a fall
by corrupt authorities. This is social history at its most
enthralling and I would love to see a second volume.
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