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Title details for Hoax by Ian Tattersall - Available

Hoax

A History of Deception: 5,000 Years of Fakes, Forgeries, and Fallacies

by Ian Tattersall
Peter Névraumont
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An entertaining collection of the most audacious and underhanded deceptions in the history of mankind, from sacred relics to financial schemes to fake art, music, and identities.
World history is littered with tall tales and those who have fallen for them. Ian Tattersall, a curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, has teamed up with Peter Néaumont to tell this anti-history of the world, in which Michelangelo fakes a masterpiece; Arctic explorers seek an entrance into a hollow Earth; a Shakespeare tragedy is "rediscovered"; a financial scheme inspires Charles Ponzi; a spirit photographer snaps Abraham Lincoln's ghost; people can survive ingesting only air and sunshine; Edgar Allen Poe is the forefather of fake news; and the first human was not only British but played cricket.
Told chronologically, HOAX begins with the first documented announcement of the end of the world in 2800 BC and winds its way through controversial tales such as the Loch Ness Monster and the Shroud of Turin, past proven fakes such as the Thomas Jefferson's ancient wine and the Davenport Tablets built by a lost race, and explores bald-faced lies in the worlds of art, science, literature, journalism, and finance.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 20, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780316503709
      • File size: 199184 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780316503709
      • File size: 199203 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      July 1, 2018

      The crack team of Tattersall (curator emeritus, American Museum of Natural History) and natural history book publisher Névraumont dissect 50 well-known and obscure hoaxes in three- to five-page articles. Ample photos will hold readers' interest for entries on faked photographs (living fairies? Lincoln's ghost?) and Jan Hendrik Schön, who (with the help of coauthors) published "an avalanche" of fraudulent scientific papers between 2000 and 2002. VERDICT Readers will learn more about the sixth-century sighting of a creature in Loch Ness and the fossils of the Piltdown Man. Consider for all public libraries.

      Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      May 15, 2018
      Hoax contains 50 entries on charlatans and frauds from all of human history, plus one about nonhuman, evolutionary fakery. Natural-historians Tattersall and N�vraumont cover apocalyptic predictions, several cases of pseudoarchaeology and cryptozoology, fake spiritualists and spirit photographers, and fake medicine, and the (debunked) link between vaccines and autism. The writing style is casual and will appeal to a broad age range, and images document the hoaxes. It ends with suggestions for further reading for each chapter and an index.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

    • Library Journal

      July 1, 2018

      The crack team of Tattersall (curator emeritus, American Museum of Natural History) and natural history book publisher N�vraumont dissect 50 well-known and obscure hoaxes in three- to five-page articles. Ample photos will hold readers' interest for entries on faked photographs (living fairies? Lincoln's ghost?) and Jan Hendrik Sch�n, who (with the help of coauthors) published "an avalanche" of fraudulent scientific papers between 2000 and 2002. VERDICT Readers will learn more about the sixth-century sighting of a creature in Loch Ness and the fossils of the Piltdown Man. Consider for all public libraries.

      Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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