A History of Ambition in 50 Hoaxes (History in 50 Series)

by Gale Eaton, Phillip Hoose (Editor)

Overview

What do the Trojan Horse, Piltdown Man, Keely Motor Company, and Ponzi Scheme have in common? They were all famous hoaxes, carefully designed and bolstered with false evidence.
The con artists in this book pursued a variety of ambitions—making money, winning wars, mocking authority, finding fame, trading an ordinary life for a glamorous one—but they all chose the lowest, fastest road to get there. Every hoax is a curtain, and behind it is a deceiver operating levers and smoke machines to make us see what is not there and miss what is. As P.T. Barnum knew, you can short-circuit critical thinking in any century by telling people what they want to hear. Most scams operate on a personal scale, but some have shaped the balance of world power, inspired explorers to sail uncharted seas, derailed scientific progress, or caused terrible massacres. A HISTORY OF AMBITION IN 50 HOAXES guides us through a rogue’s gallery of hustlers, liars, swindlers, imposters, scammers, pretenders, and cheats. In Gale Eaton’s wide-ranging synthesis, the history of deception is a colorful tour, with surprising insights behind every curtain.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780884484653
Publisher:	Tilbury House Publishers
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Series:	History in 50 Series
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Gale Eaton has spent a lifetime with books for children and young adults, first as a children’s librarian at the Boston Public Library and the Berkshire Athenaeum, and later as a professor of children’s literature at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She is the author of four other books.

Phillip Hoose is the widely acclaimed author of books, essays, stories, songs, and articles including the National Book Award - and Newbery Honor - winning bookClaudette Colvin: Twice toward Justiceand theBoston Globe-Horn BookHonor winnerThe Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club. A graduate of Indiana University and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, Hoose was for 37 years a staff member of The Nature Conservancy, dedicated to preserving the plants, animals, and natural communities of the Earth.

Editorial Reviews

07/11/2016
This addition to the History in 50 series explores hoaxes and the motivations behind them. “There is something artistic about a fine hoax,” Eaton writes. “Like a good novel or a conjurer’s trick, it creates an alternative reality.” Proceeding chronologically, she recounts each ruse in brief entries that also include maps, sidebars, and other supplemental information. In the case of an 18th-century man, William-Henry Ireland, his desire for recognition by his father led him to forge false letters and even a play supposedly written by Shakespeare. In 19th-century New York, the Fox sisters were instrumental in the rise of Spiritualism, even though they revealed that their spiritual communications had been faked. In a broad-ranging and fascinating study of artifice, Eaton raises intriguing questions about human instincts, especially the ones to deceive and believe. Simultaneously available: A History of Travel in 50 Vehicles. Ages 12–up. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

This highly entertaining and unusual book takes a fresh and sophisticated approach to world history. Brief but informative sections detail hoaxes and unsolved mysteries from ancient times to the present, and from the familiar (the Trojan Horse) to the more obscure (the 1971 discovery of alleged Stone Age tribe the Tasaday). A fascinating read for high schoolers and adults. Extensive source notes are appended. Glos., ind. Subjects: General and World History; Swindlers and swindling; Hoaxes; Behavior—Truthfulness and falsehood”

Horn Book

09/01/2016
Gr 6 Up—Successful hoaxers follow two rules: tell the audience something they want to believe, and let the audience feel clever. This is a fascinating compilation of 50 famous and influential hoaxes in European and U.S. history. Entries include well-known stories such as the Trojan horse, the original Ponzi scheme, the Loch Ness Monster, and more, as well as lesser-known bits, like Benjamin Franklin's penchant for writing zany newspaper editorials under pseudonyms. Each subject is covered in about four pages, with numerous photographs and illustrations throughout. The main text explores the motivations of the perpetrators, the effect on the unknowing participants, and the overall influence of the scheme in culture and history. This would make a good read-aloud in a history class to introduce specific people and events from various time periods in a captivating way. VERDICT A solid collection of miscellanea for middle and high school students that is equally useful for browsing and research.—Lisa Crandall, formerly at the Capital Area District Library, Holt, MI

School Library Journal

2016-03-30
Hoaxes are a lot of fun, tell us much about ourselves, and sometimes, just sometimes, change the course of history.As part of the History in 50 Series, which seeks to present history through thematically linked, chronological stories about people and events, Eaton links hoaxes to ambition. To do this so intimately may be stretching the point, but the meat of the stories here lies in revealing what peopled believed and how they tested its truth (or didn't). History is best told through stories, the more chromatic the better. The hoaxes here—and some lie outside that definition, including the Trojan Horse, the travels of Marco Polo, and the nature of the Voynich manuscript—are colorful by far. Eaton doesn't sensationalize them; the melodrama has been mellowed and the stories allowed to speak for themselves, and they display great grip. Some instances should spark further investigation—the Potemkin villages, art forgers by the name of Michelangelo and van Meegeren—and more than a handful of the 50 ought to be new to readers, including scientific high jinks and the Walam Olum (which purported to tell 3,600 years of Leni-Lenape history). There is a hoax for every mood: cheat, propaganda, assault, cruelty, inventions of merit, a more nuanced appreciation of art, and marvel.We have met the hoaxsters, and they are us: family stories, human progress, and often enough the pinball nature of our history. (Nonfiction. 10-16)

Kirkus Reviews