Book Review: "An Underground Education: The Unauthorized and Outrageous Supplement to Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, and Other Fields" by Richard Zacks

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You must think you are the cat's patoot, so sure you know everything. You paid attention in class, got good grades, and everything Mr. or Mrs. Insert-Teacher's-Name-Here said was true because they had a college degree and the bravery to stand in front of a bunch of slack-jawed kids and try to teach them something. Well, have I got the book for you. Richard Zacks explodes our often mythic look at the world. This is not just another "your teacher lied to you in school" book. Zacks backs up his own history with actual primary source documentation. As he writes, "I started muttering, 'You can't make this stuff up!'."

Zacks has divided the book into ten different sections: Arts & Literature, Business, Crime & Punishment, Everyday Life, Medicine, Religion, Science, Sex, World History, and American History. While each section can be read separately, it may be hard to put down the book after just one helping. Zacks covers a wide range of topics, but always keeps his writing simple but un-pedestrian. You quickly realize that all of these icons in history were actually people just like us. Mata Hari was no genius spy, her mug shot taken before her execution shows a plain woman in her early forties. William Shakespeare used to write down to his common audiences, letting loose with filthy puns lost on today's students. Mark Twain and Benjamin Franklin, two of America's greatest humorists, both worked blue, writing saucy material that you will not see in copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or "Poor Richard's Almanack." You think today's war profiteering is something new? Pity the poor soldiers of the Civil War, eating rancid meat and trying to fight with ancient weaponry all sold to the United States government by greedy business tycoons. Speaking of the Civil War, did you know that almost a million slaves held in the Union states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were not freed until after their enslaved brethren to the south? Thank the Thirteenth Amendment, since the Emancipation Proclamation only dealt with slaves in the Confederacy.

The material covered is immense- from the race to build the first electric chair to the world's first indoor toilet. Hermaphrodites, bestiality, and a pope pushing cocaine laced wine- oh my! Zacks litters his text with photos that add to the prose. He lets his opinions be known often, from his outrage over the lynchings in the early twentieth century to defending Amerigo Vespucci in light of criticism by others- Christopher Columbus does not get off as easily. He highlights the common as well as royal historical figures.

An Underground Education is a very good read. Once in a while, Zacks makes his point early, and a couple of vignettes run a little long, especially privateers in the Revolutionary War and some of the business anecdotes, but the things you discover will outweigh any boredom you feel. If education is the key to success, then Zacks takes that key and breaks it off in the lock.