History Compacted

This book offers a collection of short chapters that each focus on specific events, battles or interesting figures during the world wars. In that way it presents a history of the wars in a fairly accesible manner (short chapters, accessible writing). On the other hand, the book is light on commentary and it offers little in terms of overarching narrative and structure tying the individual "vignettes" together. There are also two large sections of trivia questions, one about each world show more war.

But where's the weirdness? Where's the insane-but-true? The title is very misleading. Plenty of events took place during the wars that would fit this definition, but they're nowhere to be found in this book, so I expect it'll be disappointing for most readers.

In fact I find it difficult to envisage a target audience for this book.
- The accesible writing and format make it easy to pick up for younger audiences or readers with little knowledge about the wars, but would they be likely to dive into a full-length book?
- Wouldn't a reader interested in a book-length history of the wars, be left disappointed by the lack of depth?
- Would a history buff looking for some cool stories find anything of value here?
I'm afraid all three are unlikely, therefore this book is ultimately disappointing. show less

Spoiler alert! This book is an amazing source of information on American history. It shows an in-depth look on their struggles to live in a world where Native Americans and their way of life weren't welcome. It discusses the separation of tribes, their fight to keep their land and traditions, their roles in wars on American soil, and the eventual loss of everything they stood for. I learned so much about the acceptance of runaway slaves and how some conformed to the ways of the white world. show more There is so much here that I was never taught in school. I recommend this book for anyone who is a history buff, or for anyone who wants to learn more about the hardships faced over the years of this country forming into the US. I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to read this book. show less

I won a PDF of this book from a LibraryThing contest. I was disappointed in the amount of depth in the stories. I would have liked fewer but more detailed stories. In the past, I have bought several History Compacted books but I felt much more satisfied. I read this book from my laptop, mostly in a couple of hours while the other books took several days. I am not fond of the title of the book, as I do not take my laptop into my bathroom.

The stories were ones from history although, a few of show more them were simplified too much for my comfort. I did enjoy finding out who was the person the Catholic Church that made black cats be evil. Not true, they are not evil, I had a pure black cat and she never gave me bad luck.

An even more interesting event was the marketing of HERION as a pain killer by the German company Bayer pharmaceutical company marketed it and under that name. They said that the product gained by boiling morphine was non-addicting. However when it became known that it was addicting, they quickly took it off the market.

There was an attraction at Epcot 2005 that I missed, it supposed to be a trip through the human brain via the eyes of a twelve year old. I found a video of it on the Internet. A rather lackluster animated film! I am glad that I missed it. It was withdrawn by the company due to a lack of interest in the film.

I have always enjoyed preparing for history tests that featured essays. I would looked for something that I was curious about connected to the assigned material and load up my essay thereby winning extra credit.

Please check out History Compacted for more meaty subjects than this like a mini biography or compacted history of an important event. They will be more satisfying. show less

Not the enthralling read that I'd hoped it would be, "The Weirdest Read While You Poo on the Loo" is pretty bland and left me with a lot of historical references and stories that I really didn't care about. In addition, this book has a couple of really annoying qualities that were hard for this reader to get beyond. One, it's in desperate need of an editor's touch. There are so many grammatical, capitalization, and punctuation mistakes that reading it was like nails on a chalkboard for me. show more Secondly, it appears to have been written at about a fifth-grade level with numerous repetitive sentences and references. On the plus side, the book is a quick read with a number of diverse topics. I received this book as part of the Early Reviewers program at LibraryThing. show less