An Underground Education:  The Unauthorized and Outrageous Supplement to Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, and Other Fields of Human Knowledge
Forget the history you were taught in school; Richard Zacks's version is crueler and funnier than  anything you might have learned in seventh-grade civics--and much more of a gross-out, too. Described on  the book jacket as an "autodidact extraordinaire," Zacks is also the author ofHistory Laid Bare, making him something of  an expert guide through history's back alleys and side streets. There's no fact too seamy or perverse for  Zacks to drag out into the light of day, from matters scatological and sexual to some of history's most truly  bizarre episodes. Curious about ancient nose-blowing etiquette? What about the sexual proclivities of  Catherine the Great? Throughout chapters such as "The Evolution of Underwear" and  "Dentistry Before Novocaine," Zacks proves a tireless debunker of popular myths as well as a muckraker par excellence.