The 20th Century

Deary's thesis is simple - if not original: history is not what happened - it is what you remember about what happened. He expresses this thesis by trawling the annals of white western human-kind and picking out bits which, by delivering them in ribtickling fashion, he can make memorable. Thus the sort of marginal commentary we all provided for ourselves when plugging through school history texts becomes a text in its own right and the result is a bran-tub of facts and ideas, some crucial, some trivial, delivered in giggle-a-minute rapid fire. Or should that be groan-a-minute - some of the jokes are dreadful. Anyway what this all means is that the facts and ideas selected lose much of their Relative Importance which, if you think of History as being that which Explains the Past and Excuses the Future, is relatively important. That this is no 'real' history book is evident - no references, bibliography or index; but it has the capacity to be great entertainment and its potential as a warm up to the class act is considerable.