When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain

By: Giles Milton

Narrated by: Giles Milton

Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's Summary

Obscure and addictive true tales from history told by one of our most entertaining historians, Giles Milton.

This program is read by the author, the host of the popular podcast Unknown History with Giles Milton.

The first installment in Giles Milton's outrageously entertaining series, History's Unknown Chapters: colorful and accessible, intelligent and illuminating, Milton shows his customary historical flair as he delves into the little-known stories from the past.

There's the cook aboard the Titanic who pickled himself with whiskey and survived in the icy seas where most everyone else died. There's the man who survived the atomic bombs in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And there are many, many more.

Covering everything from adventure, war, murder, and slavery to espionage, including the stories of the female Robinson Crusoe, Hitler's final hours, Japan's deadly balloon bomb, and the emperor of the United States, these tales deserve to be told.

©2015 Giles Milton (P)2016 Macmillan Audio

Quite entertaining

So many interesting little stories from history. Very easy to listen to, the narration is entertaining. A detractor for me was that some of the short stories seem to end abruptly, providing little information aside from a brief summary. You won't gain anything groundbreaking from this book but for entertainment and sparking a little curiosity it's certainly worth a listen.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

Not very compelling

This book was recommended to me by a friend, so I didn't really research it much before delving in. The historical stories I wanted to hear more about (Hitler, Lenin, etc.) were really briefly covered...a lot of the book was just more or less interesting tidbits of history. Usually less, but maybe that's just me. I guess I didn't realize the format of this book before purchasing.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Sometimes funny, sometimes sad and quite disturbing but definitely interesting.

A few of the stories in this book were familiar to me but most of them I had never heard.
It was a very interesting collection of odd historical events.
As I said in my title some of them were pretty disturbing.
If you are squeamish like me, you may need to take a break at times.
There were several stories that dealt with cannibalism and those are the ones that I found it difficult to listen to.
As someone who loves both history and trivia I enjoyed this book very much and would highly recommend it.
As you can see from my rating I thought that the author did a very good job as narrator as well.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

copyright message cut off audio

the recording was cut off at the end by a copyright message. pretty annoying that I missed the end of the book

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Golden nuggets of history

A book that is both entertaining and will give you a glimpse into modern history you never heard of. These stories will get you thinking and entertainin you. Just listen to it, you won't regret it.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Entertaining, but very light on details

A lot of entertaining and interesting nuggets of history, but a lot of the stories read like summaries. I was hoping for more details, particularly for stories like the 160 people who survived the nukes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This book only tells us a little about one of them.

Still worth reading, just leaves a bit of legwork up to the readers to get the whole stories.

Perfectly unnecessary, i couldn’t keep away

Giles Milton has managed to gather every interesting bit of information floating between the lines of textbooks and rumors and turned it into a feast of fun. He’s sarcastic. He’s interesting, and the narrator was absolutely perfect. Very happy to say I’m a fan!

very interesting

this is an enjoyable and surprising story. well narrated and compelling. glad I bought it

Just not that interesting

History is replete with fascinating characters and stories. The ones documented in this book are essentially average.

Solid entertainment

Not sure how historically accurate some of these stories are (I only knew of a handful beforehand), but it was very entertaining. Only frustrated that the credits started to be read over the final story. A good, quick read nonetheless.