Product Description

The best kind of knowledge is uncommon knowledge.

Okay, so maybe you know all the stuff you're supposed to know--that there are teenier things than atoms, that Remembrance of Things Past has something to do with a perfumed cookie, that the Monroe Doctrine means we get to take over small South American countries when we feel like it.  But really, is this kind of knowledge going to make you the hit of the cocktail party, or the loser spending forty-five minutes examining the host's bookshelves?

Wouldn't you rather learn things like how the invention of the bicycle affected the evolution of underwear?  Or that the 1949 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to a doctor who performed lobotomies with a household ice pick?  Or how Catherine the Great really died?  Or that heroin was sold over the counter not too long ago?

For the truly well-rounded "intellectual," nothing fascinates so much as the subversive, the contrarian, the suppressed, and the bizarre.  Richard Zacks, auto-didact extraordinaire, has unloosed his admittedly strange mind and astonishing research abilities upon the entire spectrum of human knowledge, ferreting out endlessly fascinating facts, stories, photos, and images guaranteed to make you laugh, gasp in wonder, and occasionally shudder at the depths of human depravity.  The result of his labors is this fantastically illustrated quasi-encyclopedia that provides alternative takes on art, business, crime, science, medicine, sex (lots of that), and many other facets of human experience.

Immensely entertaining, and arguably enlightening, An Underground Education is the only book that explains the birth of motion pictures using photos of naked baseball players.


Richard Zacks is the author of History Laid Bare: Love, Sex and Perversity from the Ancient Etruscans to Warren G. Harding, which was excerpted in classy magazines like Harper's and earned the attention of the even classier New York Times, which noted that "Zacks specializes in the raunchy and perverse."  The Georgia State Legislature voted on whether to ban the book from public libraries.  He has studied Arabic, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and Hebrew, and received the Phillips Classical Greek Award at the University of Michigan.  He has also told his publisher that he made a living in Cairo cheating royalty from a certain Arab country at games of chance, although the claim remains unverified.  His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, The Village Voice, TV Guide, and similarly diverse publications.  Zacks is married and busy warping the minds of his two children, Georgia and Ziegfield.  He resides in New York City, and can be reached via e-mail at rzacks@echonyc.com.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32015 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-20
• Released on: 1999-04-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Amazon.com
Forget the history you were taught in school; Richard Zacks's version is crueler and funnier than anything you might have learned in seventh-grade civics--and much more of a gross-out, too. Described on the book jacket as an "autodidact extraordinaire," Zacks is also the author of History Laid Bare, making him something of an expert guide through history's back alleys and side streets. There's no fact too seamy or perverse for Zacks to drag out into the light of day, from matters scatological and sexual to some of history's most truly bizarre episodes. Curious about ancient nose-blowing etiquette? What about the sexual proclivities of Catherine the Great? Throughout chapters such as "The Evolution of Underwear" and "Dentistry Before Novocaine," Zacks proves a tireless debunker of popular myths as well as a muckraker par excellence.

Review
Astonishing facts!

Bizarre photographs!

Fascinating & sometimes deeply weird true stories!

Just a small taste of the intellectual smorgasbord contained in this volume.

Did you know:

that in the original story of Goldilocks the bears torture and kill their impolite visitor?
that Pope Leo XIII appeared in an advertisement for cocaine-laced wine in the 1880s?
that people didn't eat with forks until the 1700s?
that Sir Isaac Newton's famous humble-pie quote "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" was actually written to a dwarf scientist named Robert Hooke and clearly meant as an insult?
that Thomas Edison secretly helped develop the electric chair in a scheme to have the lethal machine named after his arch-rival, George Westinghouse?
that the first pediatric guide written in the United States recommended that expectant mothers breastfeed puppies?
that for two centuries French scientists obsessively experimented on freshly decapitated heads in an effort to discover whether the bodiless brain still functioned?
that Cleopatra was ugly as sin?


From the Hardcover edition.

Review
Astonishing facts!

Bizarre photographs!

Fascinating & sometimes deeply weird true stories!

Just a small taste of the intellectual smorgasbord contained in this volume.

Did you know:

that in the original story of Goldilocks the bears torture and kill their impolite visitor?
that Pope Leo XIII appeared in an advertisement for cocaine-laced wine in the 1880s?
that people didn't eat with forks until the 1700s?
that Sir Isaac Newton's famous humble-pie quote "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" was actually written to a dwarf scientist named Robert Hooke and clearly meant as an insult?
that Thomas Edison secretly helped develop the electric chair in a scheme to have the lethal machine named after his arch-rival, George Westinghouse?
that the first pediatric guide written in the United States recommended that expectant mothers breastfeed puppies?
that for two centuries French scientists obsessively experimented on freshly decapitated heads in an effort to discover whether the bodiless brain still functioned?
that Cleopatra was ugly as sin?


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Great information, but terrible layout
I am in the 2nd section of this book (Business), and thoroughly enjoyed the first (Arts and Literature). Great 'useless' information and trivia, which will come in handy at a cocktail reception. The problem is that in the 2nd section, for about 20 pages, every other page is shuffled with the one behind it (making it essential that you flip back and forth a couple pages to read each chapter - all around pages 60-70, and beyond). This is incredibly annoying, and I've never seen it in 30+ Years of Reading. From Random House, no less, how did this happen?
I can't tell if I don't enjoy the Business section because of content or layout, so I'll give the book 4 Stars, and deduct 2 for a terrible layout (giving me a headache, it is).

Read with a grain of salt
There are some interesting things in this book. But some might be a stretch of facts, half truths and some just not true. Best example is when he is talking about the origin of the expression "rule of thumb" He says its from old English. That you were permitted to beat your wife but with a stick no bigger then your thumb. This has been a favorite false story of feminsts for many years. Fact is the exression has been around much longer than that and is of unkown origin. Also there is no evidence of this in any English law. This book is for entertainment but not be considerd facts.

An Underground Education
An Underground Education


Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Sigh, just another 98 times and then I have to go home and start my history homework. I guess my teacher didn't like some of my more creative answers to the exam. What does she know? She is totally oblivious to Area 51, Tesla's death ray, or that Hitler's Brain is hooked up to a supercomputer and is the president of Brazil. I love reading, but she makes history soooo boring. She just teaches us what we are supposed to know. Nothing I'm not supposed to know, nothing quirky or surprising, or interesting. I mean, why did Napoleon really lose the battle of Waterloo? * Textbooks can be so plodding, far too logical and way too orderly. History is messy and it can be amusing and not so serious, and even a little bizarre...

I want to know the good stuff and that's why I turned to An Underground Education: The Unauthorized And Outrageous Supplement To Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, And Other Fields Of Human Knowledge by Richard Zacks. Forget what you learned in school, and the teacher's angry red marker. Zacks debunks many popular cultural myths and gives new life to old history. Zacks has divided the book into ten different sections: Arts & Literature, Business, Crime & Punishment, Everyday Life, Medicine, Religion, Science, Sex, World History, and American History.

Zacks covers a wide variety of topics, but he keeps the writing simple and attention grabbing. His emphasis, however, is definitely on the strange and often perverse. So, if you are easily offended, and a bit conservative you should probably skip this book. I mean the title does have business and sex in the title, so that should tell you it's not for the thin-skinned. For example, you might read today's headlines and get the impression that Iraqi War profiteering is something new, but the unfortunate soldiers of the Civil War often wore shoes with no soles, slept in disintegrating tents, and fired weapons that blew up in their hands, all due to the greed of America's great capitalists.

Surely you would have paid more attention in English class if you knew the Bard was so bawdy or that Chaucer made sly jokes about sex. Sure, you knew Edison was credited for inventing the incandescent light bulb, but did you know he secretly helped develop the electric chair in a devious scheme to have the death-dealing device named after his archrival, George Westinghouse? There are lots of interesting facts and tidbits, though it's far from complete. For example, he joyfully explores the evolution of the codpiece, but skips over the symbolism of the long-toed shoes, or poulaines. European folk beliefs equated foot-size with penis-size (think also of noses...) and the tips of the poulaines were thus phallic symbols. The tops of poulaines were also often painted with images of male genitals. You just can't make this stuff up!

Yes, history is way more interesting, and vastly more complicated, than the dried-out sentences in high school history books that leave me feeling deeply unsatisfied. Perhaps great men and women should be pushed off their pedestals. They do not stand on the shoulders of giants (not an admission of humility by Sir Isaac Newton, but rather a bitter insult to a hunchbacked dwarf he was feuding with); they are human, like you and me. Made of flesh and blood and sometimes just a little strange-the famous Mari Hari was no master spy, Cleopatra was ugly as sin, and Pope Innocent III authorized a holy quest for Jesus' foreskin. I guess history can be entertaining, warped and worth remembering. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it...

*Theories abound, but the brilliant strategist had a raging case of hemorrhoids, which prevented him from riding out and surveying the troops. Ahh, but for a nail...

History, condemned repeating it, or seeing if we can escape it? Email me at frommyshelf@epix.net. Miss a column? Our archives are available at www.frommyshelf.blogspot.com read the history of Hobo in "Hobo Finds A Home" A charming story about a barn cat who wants more out of life. Don't miss the in depth documentary about Hobo the cat, soon to be aired on the History Channel