These books have the facts skewed
937013
I read this series of books quite some time ago. At the time I found them to be informative and enjoyable. But recently I was told by several historians that the author skewed the facts on several items in the book to make things more interesting or different then they really were. Which is my reason for rating these books so low. If you are just looking for a book to read for fun then they are a good pick. But take the information with a grain of salt. I recommend doing your own research into the subject.
1665092
The book is fun to read.  Overall the book is OK, but there are some issues.  The most obvious and clearly objective issues relate to the maps:

Page 58 has a map that indicates that there was a place in the middle of Nicaragua called Fort San Juan, which is not discussed in the text so it isn't evident why anyone bothered to place it on the map.  However, there was no such place in the middle of Nicaragua.  There is an interesting place in Nicaragua on the San Juan River at the southern border of Nicaragua called the Fortaleza del Castillo de la Inmaculada Concepcin, which is very interesting in the history of pirates.  The story of the castillo is much more interesting than many of the other things in the book.

The map on page 132 labels Nicaragua as Honduras.

The map on page 156 indicates that Belize is located where Bluefields, Nicaragua is located.  There are arrows on the map to and from this falsely labeled Belize.  One doesn't know whether the arrows are correct and the label is wrong or whether both the arrows and the label are wrong.  There is text that goes with the location in question, which also indicates that the place in question is Belize.  Belize is not even next to Nicaragua.  In fact, it is not next to any country that is next to Nicaragua.  Does this really matter?  Maybe not to most people, but it certainly does matter to anyone who has lived in Nicarauga or Belize and especially to anyone who has lived in Bluefields, which has Dutch piracy in its history and which history would have been a valuable addition to the book.

Because of these errors in the maps, it is evident that the facts in the book were not checked carefully and so the credibility of the book as a whole is called into question in spite of the otherwise good reputation of the author.

Although there are picture credits in the book, there are no references.
934072
This book is full of anecdotes. Some are, of course, more interesting than others. Some chapters discuss the various decades that the Giants have played ball in San Francisco. Other chapters discuss the team's major stars of the past. There is information about ownership, spring training, playoff games won and lost, and infamous brawls. Having followed the Giants only since 2002, I cannot attest to the accuracy of all the events this book describes that occurred before that year. The last 3 extremely short chapters discuss the 21st century Giants and their 3 championships. These chapters must have been tacked on to the original book, which came out in 2003. I can say that I noticed some "facts" in the last two chapters that are wrong. It causes me to be suspicious about other "facts" throughout the book. I also found it odd that the authors, in discussing the Giant's game seven World Series win over Kansas City, never mentioned Jeremy Affeldt, who was the game winning pitcher in that contest. The book goes into detail about every other hitter, pitcher, reliever and opponent who was involved in any of the Giant's playoff games. Perhaps there are better Giants history books out there.
765228
There are incorrect items written about in a number of the topics discussed in this book. When you buy a book you want to know you paid for correct advice and information. Some items were helpful but I wonder how many other issues are wrong that I didn't check into further.
2385737
Book is entertaining; but the factual accuracy is dubious at best.
142257
habits seem to be important for selling books (woman in habit on the cover). There are lots of contradictions in the book.  Religious fiction always sells well.
1864321
I suspect that the vast majority of this books is a work of
"wishful thinking" and the results of reading too many "True Crime" stories while the author was in high school.  Be that as it may, if only one tenth is indeed true, then the author has some major problems, on many different levels, the lack of ability to write leading them. Most of the book consists telling us just what a bright fellow he, the author, is, and just how brutal he was/is.  The chronology of events is often completly
incorrect and the author's thoughts and deeds simply do not jive with those previously recorded.  All in all, the books comes across as being written by a seventeen year old city kid who has watched the God Father movies one too many times.  If only one tenth of the books is true, then I truely feel sorry for this kid and do wish him well.  On the other hand, at least he did make an effort to write, and if the story be truely true, then he probably needs the cash.  I am rather surprised he found a publisher though. NOTE: If the author reads this,and really takes offense,  please blow up my old pick-up, not the newer cars - they are not mine, they belong to my wife. The truck is mine, and I could use the insurance money. Please be kind enough to make sure I or my dog are not in it. Thanks.
4386165
I began reading this book in my free time at the beginning of the semester because it seemed interesting enough, and I wanted to learn something new. I have never studied psychology, but I have studied history, and thought it might be interesting to read about historical figures from a different perspective.

There are more than a few historical inaccuracies and ridiculous assumptions which Dr. Ghaemi presents as fact in order to affirm his thesis (ex: "Lincoln clearly empathized with slaves..."). I managed to overlook those until the chapter about FDR (Ch. 10), where because of my fascination with FDR, and Dr. Ghaemi's ridiculously blatant disregard for fact-checking, I had to stop reading.

The straw that broke the camel's back was the fact that twice (as far as I read), Dr. Ghaemi referred to "Hot Springs, Georgia". The town is called Warm Springs, and it is an actual town in Georgia where FDR owned a home, land, and where he died. This is a basic historical fact that one could confirm with a simple Google search, at yet, Dr. Ghaemi and his editors managed to overlook the existence of an entire town! That's like someone writing a book about the Civil War and deciding to refer to the burning of Hotlanta!

If you can't get simple historical facts straight, then you probably shouldn't be writing a book with any historical claim. Write fiction.
144029
"Lies" is about the outright lies, omissions, and boringness of US history textbooks. The book was filled to the brim with interesting historical facts mixed with a dash of outrage at the system.

Loewen loves history. That's why he's sad that history is the most hated subject in school. He blames this, largely, on history textbooks. These textbooks aren't just biased (though they are biased); rather, they take out everything interesting, including all of the controversy, all of the ideas, and anything that makes anyone seem bad.

In each chapter, he goes over what all of the major history textbooks do cover, he talks about how that is a horrible way to cover the subjects, and he tells some of the interesting stories that they should be telling. He also shows how this is hurting students.

For instance, in the section on European colonization of America, Loewen addresses the myth that the US government bought land from American Indians, and the Indians didn't understand the terms of the contracts because they had a non-western understanding of property rights and land use. In fact, they often did understand the terms of the contracts and western conceptions of land use. As a result, a lot of the contracts that they made were basically leases -- Europeans could farm the land and travel across it, but they couldn't develop it or prevent Indians from doing anything. Thus, of course, the Europeans later violated these sophisticated contracts. In other instances, Europeans paid the wrong tribe. For instance, when buying Manhattan, they Europeans paid an enemy of the tribe that owned Manhattan for Manhattan. In other cases, Indians weren't even involved. For instance, France never really bought the land that they sold to the US in the Louisiana Purchase. They just had a "claim" to it.

The whole book is filled with stuff like that, from presidents, to socioeconomic status, to slavery, to the civil war, to reconstruction, to the civil rights movement, to Vietnam, to more recent history.

I highly recommend "Lies My Teacher Told Me" for anyone who is interested in history. I also highly recommend it to anyone who was turned off of history because the subject was dull. Loewen does the subject justice.
3030882
Keeling's book is riddled with falsehoods and exaggerations. He makes the absurd claim that the bombing of Hamburg killed "hundreds of thousands"(it was 40,000)and the still more absurd claim that nearly the entire population of Dresden was killed. He even says that German soldiers in occupied countries behaved correctly,which is unworthy of a rebuttal.

Keeling says that four million Germans were deported to the Soviet Union,which is thirteen times the actual number. His figure of three million Germans dying in the postwar expulsions is also inflated,at least if we go with the numbers provided by the German government and the German clergy in the 1980s.

 Then there is his charge that the Allied occupiers were starving Germans. Germans were certainly going hungry. But according to official statistics,during 1946 the British and American zones were getting over a quarter of a million tons of imported food per month.  Keeling denies there was a food shortage in Europe,something that goes against nearly all the data from the period. He quotes a number of people who said there was a famine in Germany. The problem is that the available statistics don't support these extravagant claims(Cf. John Farquharson, The Western Allies and the Politics of Food, and Alice Weintraub, Matters of Taste). Keeling cites Dorothy Thompson as saying that infant mortality in Vienna in the summer of 1945 was nearly 100 percent. The League of Nations said Vienna's infant mortality in that period was 32 percent.

While some of Keeling's charges are true, this is not a work that can be taken seriously as a source.
9939
What annoys me most about these kinds of books, is the shallowness of the "authoritative" answers.
It seems to me that these books would be a lot more 'interesting' if they really opened up on some of these questions, and really explained, in complete detail, step by step, how something worked, or why scientists believe some ( contemporaneous ) crazy thing, or how they've determined the age of a dinosaur fossil, or whatever.
I'm sure that most people, and a goodly number of children, are aware that the most learned scientists from any given, past era, were largely mistaken about nearly everything, and that political parties often control or dictate ( even in free democracies ) what their society or culture believes is true. Often these beliefs ( established orthodoxy or dogma ) is absurdly fickle and absurdist.
So that, considering that, it might be refreshing to have a book like this that explains in expanded detail, Why, we as a community, believe such and such.
We'd like to believe that we believe only true things, but I very much suspect that our grandchildren will take delight in gaffawing at our quaint beliefs when we were their age.
1846766
The book makes an interesting read for those who want to know about last few decades of India. But there are many things in the book which are either outrightly wrong or presented out of context.

At many places the way some 'facts' are presented, it rather appears that author had already formed a preconcieved notion about few aspects of India. For example near the end of book, while talking about caste devide, it is mentioned that one high caste women politician from Uttar Pradesh said that "Mayawati deserves to be raped", probably referring to Rita Bahuguna. That was totally not what she said and taken fully out of context. Likewise, author quotes many statements allegedly said by many politicians that gives us totally a wrong picture of them. There is no evidence to back those claims and lot of them sound pretty much like rumors.

I would still recommend this book as it makes an entertaining read and also gives a reasonably good analysis of India. However, I would also caution the reader to take the different 'facts' and 'statements' given in the book with a pinch of salt and verify them before believing them.
2682477
This should be titled "The Useless Book Of Often Inaccurate Information".  If you do a quick Google search of some of the "facts" stated herein you'll find some of them anything but factual.

Squirrels can't get rabies?  Nope.  Any mammal can, according to the CDC.  Squirrels don't often contract it, but they could.

Mozart wrote "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" when he was five?  Nope.  When he was 25 he composed a number of variations on the already existing and very popular tune.

Attila the Hun was a dwarf?  Nope.  He was short, as many steppe horseman of his age werebut not a dwarf.

Kamuela Searle was killed on the set by an elephant during the filming of "Tarzan"?  Nope.  He had an accident, finished the film, went on to make one more film with Cecio B. DeMille, and then retired from acting.  He died of cancer three years later.

A can of Diet Coke will float and a can of regular Coke will sink?  Let me go to the fridge and try that in the sink.  Nope!  They both float!

The origin of the word "news" comes from newspapers stories taking stories from everywhere, North, East, West and Southand using the first letter of each direction to derive "news"?  Nope.  It's a totally false and bogus etymology.  "News" is plural of "new".  It was derived from the Middle English "newes", and parallels the German "neues" and the French "nouvelle".  This is probably the silliest thing I found in this book.

There is no such thing as a blue food, and even blueberries are purple?  Nope.  Arguably there is blue corn.  True or not he stole that line from comedian George Carlin.

There are true facts in the book (and facts can be either true or false), but without taking the time a person can't know what is fact and what is bogus.  I think it's safe to say that a significant percentage of the facts presented are bogus.  I get the impression the author just cruised the net for whatever he could find that was interesting and stuck into this book.  He didn't check for accuracy at all.

The problem I have with books like this is that people often cite such stuffno matter how silly.  I read books like this because I want to be entertained and illumined with truthnot B.S.

 It can't be trusted.  The only reason I finished it was I wanted to blast it apart in a review.  It's terrible.
1624016
I am crazy about this book, but I feel there's something that should come to the author's and publisher's attention. They should take a look at the footnotes regarding the spiritual life changes of Margaret Corey and Cat Stevens. Look at the facts presented as well as the tone. Corey who becomes the Hasidic Jew sounds crazy, an innuendo supported by the very inaccurate presentation of the facts regarding her apparent involvement with the Jewish burial society. To set things straight: burial society volunteers are among the most esteemed memebers of a community AND they do not 'spend their days' washing bodies. They might prepare a body once a week or even a couple of times a week and each ritual washing and dressing usually takes less than an hour. Cat Stevens, on the other hand, sounds like a spiiritual seeker. Why couldn't Corey have been a spiritual seeker too, and not crazy? (I hate to think that it's because she became something so outre to mass culture as a Hasidic Jew.) The fact--as presented--that she was on the burial society would lead an informed researcher to understand that she was stable, spiriutal, and secure.

Risa Miller
3568128
I like books on history, however, this book seems to bypass history in places. The first two chapters were unreadable and I skipped them. I did find some of what Slaughter wrote regarding the re-writes and editing of the journals interesting as well as the stories regarding the Indian woman and the slave York who also made the trip, but all-in-all the book is made up of a lot of the author's own opinions and some ridiculous conclusions he makes. I can only assume it is because Slaughter was a college professor when writing this book that he made so many silly claims in this book. We all know how so maany professors play fast and loose with the truth.
3291016
I know this was a novel, but I was disappointed that the history documented was so very biased.  I lived most of the time covered and I don't believe some of the history was presented in an unbiased manner.  Follett presented events as if conservatives were sinister and the left was the answer to all problems.  Either Mr. Follett does not care for the U.S. or his research consultants were trying to rewrite history.  I now question the research and history presented in his other novels.  I have enjoyed his novels in the past, but I probably will not rush to read further books by Mr. Follett.
3076466
While there are some interesting facts here, it's quite a stretch to say that "everything you know is wrong."  Many of the facts are based on splitting hairs (i.e. largest city, coldest place on earth).

If you want interesting trivia presented in a way that's not snarky (and is hysterically funny) I recommend The Know It All by A.J. Jacobs.