Founder of George Mason University's History News Network and bestselling author of Presidential Ambition and One Night Stands with American History, Rick Shenkman is an historian, a rebel, and a myth debunker par excellence. In Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of World History, he explodes some of the most honored and long-held misconceptions about kings and despots, wars and empires, religions, inventions, from the glory days of the Roman Empire...

Libertarian author Woods sets the record straight with a provocative look at the hidden truths about our nation's history--the ones that have been buried because they're too politically incorrect to discuss. Woods draws on real scholarship--as opposed to the myths, platitudes, and slogans so many other "history" books are based on--to ask and answer tough questions about American history. Woods's eye-opening exploration reveals how much has been whitewashed...

In The March of Folly, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman tackles the pervasive presence of folly in governments through the ages. Defining folly as the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives, Tuchman details four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly in government: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See...

Explores the ways in which history has been used to influence people and government, focusing on how reportage of past events has been manipulated to justify religious movements and political campaigns.

Here is an intriguing exploration of the ways in which the history of the Spanish Conquest has been misread and passed down to become popular knowledge of these events. The book offers a fresh account of the activities of the best-known conquistadors and explorers, including Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro. Using a wide array of sources, historian Matthew Restall highlights seven key myths, uncovering the source of the inaccuracies and exploding the...