Absurd History

At last—the definitive field guide to doing nothing… brilliantly. Part faux-history, part ridiculous self-help, this delightfully unserious book uncovers the “lost” chronicles of thumb twiddling—from ancient rain rituals and secret knight codes to royal salon scandals and laboratory-grade procrastination. You’ll meet legendary twiddlers (real, imagined, and questionably sourced), tour the great debates of clockwise vs. counter-clockwise, and discover why a tiny circular motion just might be the world’s most soothing coping mechanism. Inside you’ll find: A totally unnecessary...

Unhinged History isn't your grandma's history lesson (unless your grandma is secretly awesome and knows about bat bombs). It's a laugh-out-loud, jaw-dropping collection of the most bizarre true tales that prove the past was a wild, wacky, and wonderfully weird place. Get ready for history, but with all the boring bits surgically removed and replaced with pure WTF-ery!

History is full of wars fought over land, power, religion, money, and empire. And then there are the wars involving buckets, pigs, pastries, stray dogs, football matches, bad maps, lobsters, eggs, oysters, sheep, whisky, and people who probably should have gone home and thought things over. Strange But True: The Weird History of Ridiculous Wars explores some of the strangest, pettiest, shortest, most confusing, and most unbelievable conflicts in history. These are real stories of governments losing their tempers, borders becoming absurdly important, animals wandering into international ...

Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a little person as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly...

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” —Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1850 “How do I hate thee? How much time do you have?” —Joan Rivers, today, about two-ish Joan Rivers is a groundbreaking, award-winning, internationally renowned entertainment goddess. She’s also...

From actor, comedian, writer, and host of the hit history podcast SNAFU, Ed Helms brings you an absurdly entertaining look at history’s biggest blunders. History contains a plethora of insane screwups—otherwise known as SNAFUs. Coined during World War I, SNAFU is an acronym that stands for...

Serge A. Storms is back on the road in the latest zany Florida caper from the “wickedly funny” (Entertainment Weekly) Tim Dorsey. After a long and arduous COVID-19 quarantine, Serge A. Storms is fully vaccinated and ready to hit the road. Along with his condo neighbors, he cooks up a wild...

Boldly going wherever common sense gave up Commander Lyra Starling never meant to lead a reverse-harem of humanoid Meerkats into battle, but fate (and very bad paperwork) had other plans. Now she’s juggling three boyfriends with claws, a divine AI gone rogue, cocaine-addicted hedgehogs, and drag-queen squirrels who can out-glitter the gods. Across three gloriously unhinged adventures — Brave New Harem, Do Androids Dream of Sexy Meerkats?, and Missionary Impossible — Lyra and her furry disaster squad will save the universe, ruin diplomacy, and prove that true love doesn’t need logic,...

Kaleidoscopic culture critic Chuck Klosterman rewrites the history of reality in an “ingenious” (Kirkus Reviews) work of speculative fiction based on a question that has never been considered or (in all likelihood) even asked: What if The Beatles had only developed a cult following while the...

Experience history as a glorious and uproarious comedy of errors. Murderers, schemers, traitors, fools, thieves, oligarchs, and torturers make up the real history of Britain's "nobility" and their misdeeds, this Victorian bestseller was written by one of the founders of Punch narrated with wicked wit by Charles Featherstone.

Need a gift for someone impossible to shop for? Give them 500 facts they’ll immediately want to repeat. True Facts That Sound Like Bull$#t is the trivia book for people who love saying, “There’s no way that’s true.” This mighty book is packed with unbelievable-but-real trivia including...

War is hell....but sometimes it's also funny as hell.

Discover the weirdest true facts from history—so unbelievable, they sound completely made up. Think history is boring? Think again. True Facts That Sound Like Bull$#t: World History is packed with strange, shocking, hilarious, and mind-blowing stories from across the globe. These are the kinds...

In 1929, the Soviet government set aside a sparsely populated area in the Soviet Far East for settlement by Jews. The place was called Birobidzhan. The idea of an autonomous Jewish region was championed by Jewish Communists, Yiddishists, and intellectuals, who envisioned a haven of post-oppression Jewish culture. By the mid-1930s tens of thousands of Soviet Jews, as well as about a thousand Jews from abroad, had moved there.

Almost half a century ago, a young reporter from Germany arrived in still-glamorous Saigon to cover the Vietnam War over a period of five years. In this memoir he now tells the story of how he fell in love with the Vietnamese people. He praises the beauty, elegance and feistiness of their women. He describes blood-curdling Communist atrocities and fierce combat scenes he had witnessed. He introduces a striking array of characters: heroes, villains, statesmen and spooks, hilarious eccentrics, street urchins and orphans herding water buffalos.

Das Ende des nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Reichs scheint klar verortet: Am 7. bzw. 9. Mai wird die bedingungslose Kapitulation der deutschen Wehrmacht unterzeichnet. Damit war zwar der Krieg zu Ende, noch nicht aber waren Wehrmacht und "Drittes Reich" endgültig untergegangen. Nicht jeder bekam sogleich mit oder wollte mitbekommen, dass alles zu Ende war. Manche kämpften weiter, Hinrichtungen von "Deserteuren" gab es noch massenhaft. Manche versuchten sich abzusetzen, begingen Selbstmord oder gerierten sich als Unbeteiligte wie Albert Speer.

From the author of Heaven and Earth, a searing novel of the journey from youth into manhood A heartrending, at times darkly comic but ultimately redemptive novel, Paolo Giordano’s The Human Body is an exploration of brotherhood and family, of modern war and the wars we wage within ourselves...

REVIEWS “Michael Burk recounts bizarre, fascinating, and tragic vignettes from cultural history… with a beguiling voice that is informative, respectful when necessary, and delightfully mischievous.” – Kirkus Reviews “A carnival where the popcorn is stale, the rides are dangerous, and yet somehow, we can’t look away.” – Kirkus Reviews “An absorbing, if often dark, compendium of stories from pop culture history.” – Kirkus Reviews The Allure & The Absurd: Curious Tales from Art, Music, Film, Sports & More invites readers to dive into a world of quirky, often bizarre ...

Our world is chock-full of fascinating facts, unbelievable but true stories, and mind-blowing trivia. This book is your one-stop guide to all the extraordinary, shocking, and enthralling information you didn’t know you needed to learn. Impress your friends and family with a vast knowledge of topics guaranteed to stimulate interesting conversations.

This audiobook includes an exclusive conversation between authors Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell and their composer Keppie Coutts. After sharing their artistic frustrations at the school gate, two women decide to take a risk: to co-write a book about early motherhood. Off-colour, offbeat, off...