About this item
An entertaining collection of the most audacious and underhanded deceptions in the history of mankind, from sacred relics to financial schemes to fake art, music, and identities. World history is littered with tall tales and those who have fallen for them. Ian Tattersall, a curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, has teamed up with Peter Nvraumont to tell this anti-history of the world, in which Michelangelo fakes a masterpiece; Arctic explorers seek an entrance into a hollow Earth; a Shakespeare tragedy is "rediscovered"; a financial scheme inspires Charles Ponzi; a spirit photographer snaps Abraham Lincoln's ghost; people can survive ingesting only air and sunshine; Edgar Allen Poe is the forefather of fake news; and the first human was not only British but played cricket.
About the Author
Ian Tattersall, a Curator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, is a paleoanthropologist and primate biologist of long experience. He has conducted fieldwork in places as diverse as Yemen, Vietnam, and Madagascar, and besides being a prolific contributor to the technical literature in these areas, he has written widely for the public on topics ranging from the biology of the lemurs of Madagascar, and the natural history of wine, to the evolution of humankind. His current laboratory research involves trying to understand how human beings acquired their highly unusual cognitive system, and his current fieldwork involves practical research for a forthcoming book on the Natural History of Beer. His most recently published book (with Peter Nevraumont) is "Hoax. A History of Deception: 5000 Years of Fakes, Forgeries, and Fallacies."
