All About - History - Nero - Rome's Deadliest tyrant

Reviews
FORGOTTEN HISTORY:
UNBELIEVABLE MOMENTS
FROM THE PAST
A thrilling and quirky book full of fascinating
unknown stories
Author Jem Duducu Publisher Amberley Price £20 Released Out now
Not all history is available at your fingertips,
and many of the best stories from the past
require some digging. Forgotten History:
Unbelievable Moments From The Past is a
collection of these hidden gems that you
didn’t learn in school. A release that will provide
even the most ardent history enthusiast with an
opportunity to learn something new, the weird and
wonderful stories are split into four chronological
sections. After getting briefly sidetracked on the
question of carbon dating at the start of the text, it
soon finds its way and becomes the perfect book to
dip in and out of. You’ll be reeling off little known
facts to all your friends in no time.
Ultimately, some of the stories are better than
others, but Forgotten History is definitely more
hit than it is miss. There is a light-hearted yet
informative tone throughout – and learning about
Nazi super-cows will always be a favourite, as
well as the fact that all homosapiens were initially
lactose intolerant.
The tales range from the silly (Ancient Greeks
putting a statue on trial) to the sinister (Ala ad-Din,
the man who dared defy Genghis Khan) and the
occasional myth buster (croissants aren’t French).
You’ll have to find out for yourself why the year
865 is considered one of the most important dates
in British history, though.
The book’s author Jem Duducu is the man
behind the popular Facebook and Twitter page
@HistoryGems and like the success of his social
media channels, Forgotten History will become your
first port of call for rare and fun historical stories
for a long time to come.
MAX
Sarah Cohen-Scali wants you to love this posterchild of
the Nazi regime and the Aryan race – but could you ever
sympathise with a brainwashed baby?
Author Sarah Cohen-Scali Publisher Walker Books UK Price £7.99 Released Out now
The baby at the centre of this darkly original
novel isn’t named Max, as the title would
suggest. His name is actually Konrad von
Kebnersol, as christened by the Führer
himself when he was born into the
Lebensborn programme, a eugenics project that
(though the book is fiction) really existed. But his
mother took to naming him Max, the mother from
whose womb we first hear Max’s voice. And what
a voice it is.
As a reader, you are guided through the atrocities
of World War II and the Nazi regime from a rather
unconventional perspective: the perfect Aryan
baby, whose Nazi ideals are broadcast loud and
clear before he is even born. Konrad boasts his
superiority before he can walk or talk, and the
reader follows his career as an infant Nazi going
from strength to strength, from deciding upon his
first words (“Heil Hitler”) to his devotion to luring
Polish children to be kidnapped and ‘Germanised’.
Nothing can go wrong for Konrad, until he
befriends a boy with equally exquisite Aryan
attributes – who happens to be a Jew.
In this strange mix between The Handmaid’s Tale
and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, it’s interesting
to witness a child with an unquestionable faith in
the Nazi ideology have his beliefs shaken by the
realities of war, but don’t expect a big moment of
enlightenment. It’s never really explained how a
child can witness the brutality of rape and murder
before the age of six, and have the rational mind
to understand and explain it in a clinical manner,
yet lack the empathy to connect with the horrors
because of his juvenile brain, which is a little
unsatisfying to say the least.
Nevertheless, Max is an ambitious undertaking,
based on a long list of real life people and events,
making the storyline even more chilling. Despite
its still-controversial topic, there’s plenty of food for
thought available in Cohen-Scali’s release.
89