Review: Tremendously entertaining
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 4, 2012
Albert Jack is a trained historian, but he clearly has focused much deep research on conversation in the world's most popular pubs, savoring tall tales and the brilliant clichés of the English speaking people.  Dr. Johnson would admire his talent as a dictionary maker, but Oscar Wilde (if not Ambrose Bierce) would find more to celebrate in Jack's focus on strange and inexplicable fairy tales and sensational media stories.  This book is tremendously entertaining, witty, and filed with a sagacious insight into the roots of our modern culture.  Jack explicates every odd phrase--"go berserk," "bell the cat," break a leg"--even "money for old rope."  He traces the sightings of "Nessie" and finds that the old girl probably does not exist at all.  But the visions at Fatima are another story, and may well have substance.  Mr. Jack advises that you need not fear a cruise through the Bermuda Triangle, and you can stop worrying about Mafia involvement in the death of Marilyn Monroe.  Did you ever wonder how nursery rhymes became so fractured and downright weird?  This book tells the how and why.  Read this book with a pint in hand, if not a stein of lager.