Hello hello and welcome or welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet. Today I’m sharing my review of The Flip Side of History, one of the most fun non-fiction books I’ve read in a while.
Synopsis
In this collection of true, quirky history, Steve Silverman provides fascinating tales to astonish and entertain. Covering a wide variety of topics, these stories that have been lost to history highlight the quirks, complexities, and curious nature of our species.
Hidden History, Strange Stories, and Hard-to-Believe Headlines
What if there was a flip side to the History Channel? What would you do with all the historical facts and tales left out of history textbooks? From the host of the popular Useless Information podcast, Steve Silverman, comes a collection of fun history facts, strange news, and lost stories.
True stories and random trivia that will entertain or liven up any conversation. In The Flip Side of History, hear about common folk and not-so-common knowledge. In this collection of 30-plus historical events, Steve Silverman provides fascinating stories and easy-to-understand facts. Covering a wide variety of topics, these stories highlight the quirks, complexities, and curiousness of man.
Stranger than Stranger Things. The Flip Side of History gives you tales full of strange news, trivia, and facts. Some made newspaper headlines, others were lost in history:
- A prominent lawyer leaves his entire estate to a town for the establishment of a library that forbids women – setting off riots, arrests, and the near hanging of a judge.
- The amazing story of the only person rescued from slavery by the Underground Railroad four times.
- That time a man in the 1950s stole hundreds of women’s shoes in Coronado and San Diego, California. The shoes, most of them the left shoe, were found dispersed randomly all over town.
If you’re a fan of books like The Book of Unusual Knowledge, Answers to Questions You’ve Never Asked, Bad Days in History, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, and The Greatest Stories Never Told, then The Flip Side of History is your next listen!
Review
This is some of the most fun I’ve had in a while. It was full of the absolutely ridiculous, the hilarious, the shocking, and, of course, the strange.
From a man who walked across the country with a wheelbarrow to a parrot who helped to solve a murder, this book honestly had a bit of everything. I had no idea what I was going into with reading this, yet found myself completely engrossed. My eyebrows have never raised so much over the space of one book.
It was also an incredibly easy listen, one that was easy to relax into. The narration was done with the perfect balance of emotion without over-selling the stories; rather, he just helped them sell themselves. I was particularly sucked in by a story of a woman who refused to wear a dress to court… multiple times. And was then thrown in jail for it. ANGRY FEMNINISTS ASSEMBLE.
Overall, if you loved the History Channel circa 2000 before it was taken over by the aliens, this book is for you.
Thanks for stopping by for this book review! I’ll be back with more regularly across the week. If you’re not following me already, maybe think about dropping a little click so you never miss a post.
And On She Reads 
This sounds fascinating!
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