History – the interesting bits..

The Rest is History is a very popular podcast and now a book by the authors Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. I haven’t listened to the podcast but thought that I would pick up the book as I enjoy reading about history.

This is a book of many, short pieces – some narrative, some lists, some letters, etc. as the authors change format and style regularly. It also uses quite a lot of images so I think it might be difficult on audio. Each piece is one or two pages long so the book moves from one topic to another very frequently and it is a bit jarring to read a lot at one time because you are bouncing around from one subject and one time period to another which may be very different – it’s a book to be read in short bursts but also one where you will want to share nuggets with others as you come upon them.

This is popular history but the authors are historians so it is accurate history. The topics covered come from all time periods and many countries and are about quirky or lesser known historical events, people or ideas. There were some that I knew about, some that I knew something about and some that I didn’t know about at all – I may also have to read more deeply into some of the topics raised as they interested me. I did think that a lot of the material was from Roman and Greek times but I suppose that makes sense as it is Tom Holland’s historical speciality but it is not the period of history that I find most interesting.

The topics covered include the historicity of the Trojan War, disastrous parties in history, famous eunuchs, some way out beliefs of the Nazis, the history of Costa Rico and similarities between Roman emperors and American presidents – and there are lots more.

Once you realise that this book is meant to be a bit of fun I really enjoyed it. I found lots of it fascinating and I did feel the urge to share the quirky facts with others. It’s a book I shall dip in and out of again in the future.