Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of World History

“Was there really a valiant little Dutch boy, a protesting Lady Godiva, a fiddling Nero, or a prudish Queen Victoria? No, says Shenkman ….No person, event, or thing is safe from Shenkman’s corrections.”
—Booklist

Founder of George Mason University’s History News Network and bestselling author of Presidential Ambition and One Night Stands with American History, Rick Shenkman is an historian, a rebel, and a myth debunker par excellence. In Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of World History, he explodes some of the most honored and long-held misconceptions about kings and despots, wars and empires, religions, inventions, from the glory days of the Roman Empire to the dark days of World War Two. Fascinating, edifying, and irreverent, here is the real world history you were never taught in school—for history buffs and confirmed trivia fanatics everywhere!

Whistleblowing historian Richard Shenkman skewers the nonsense we were all taught about the world’s revolutions, religions, heroes, and inventors in a whirlwind tour of history.

Queen Victoria may have usually worn black, but she loved to drink and party.

The English were conned during World War II. Winston Churchill’s famous “finest hour” radio broadcast was not delivered by Winston Churchill but by Norman Shelley, an actor hired to be Churchill’s stand-in.

Marie Antoinette did not say, “Let them eat cake,” Churchill didn’t coin the phrase “the Iron Curtain,” and Caesar never said, “Et tu, Brute?”

Scandal in the English monarchy is nothing new: Fifteen kings fathered children out of wedlock. One queen helped depose her husband so her lover could take his place. Three English kings were gay.

Eclectic, eccentric, edifying, and fun, Richard Shenkman’s eye-opening revelations prove that much of history is indeed “but a fable agreed upon.”

“Breezy, entertaining....fun to read.” - Publishers Weekly

“Was there really a valiant little Dutch boy, a protesting Lady Godiva, a fiddling Nero, or a prudish Queen Victoria? No, says Shenkman in his latest debunking effort. The historian roams the globe and the pages of history, calling up popular images and replacing them with more prosaic accounts and the reasons the mythic versions evolved in the first place. No person, event, or thing is safe from Shenkman’s corrections; among his topics are Cleopatra, Scottish kilts, Copernicus, the Middle Ages, World War II, marriage, and Frankenstein.” - Booklist