Once again, Uncle John goes back in time to bring fans more compelling, confounding, and fascinating peeks into the world's past. As always, the slant is on revealing what isn't taught in history class. Here are scintillating sagas of rogues and rascals, diplomacy and disaster, popes and peasants, nices and vices, defeats and victories, royalty and rabble, feuds and famine, battles and breakthroughs, crime and punishment, secrets and scandals, cultural milestones and historical millstones.

Sample topics include Dictators and Their Offspring; Lord Minimus (the world's smallest man and his big successes); Horses in History; How Salt Shaped the Fortunes of Nations; Shoes Through the Ages; Who Were the Knights Templar?; John Dee: Court Astrologer to Elizabeth I; Great Gigs Through History (town crier, food taster, minstrel); and much more. The folks at the Bathroom Readers' Hysterical Society again lay bare the legends and bring forward the facts in a witty, entertaining way that makes this book perfect reading during "business hours."