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

The Unauthorized and Outrageous Supplement to Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, and Other Fields of Human

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.