A Shite History of Nearly Everything

by Antal Parody

"A Shite History of Nearly Everything" is a riotously light-hearted look at world history, from the bestselling author of "Shite's Unoriginal Miscellany" and "Eats, Shites & Crap English and How to Use it." Eccentrically - indeed, irresponsibly - compiled, packed with bizarre ideas, hopeless theories, impossible dreams, preposterous statements, loony prophecies, mad scientists, demented technicians, useless inventions, and much of the often deranged history of our planet, A Shite History of Nearly Everything doesn't just challenge our view of the history of the world; it challenges our very sanity. Of Hungarian extraction, Antal Parody (originally Parodi) fled to Britain from either Buda or Pest -sources differ- in the late 1940s, following the collapse of the so-called "Mashed-Potato Revolution." Described as a genius by the UK trade magazine "Bookseller," he is the author of two previous bestsellers.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Humor

176 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2005

Reviews

[Gautam Kamath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining book loaded with fun facts. A firmly tongue in cheek narrative style keeps it light and funny. But perhaps it should’ve been named Shite history of everything concerning the US/UK. The continents of Africa and S.America might as well not exist. And a few cursory passing references to Asia.

[John Naylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book I would describe as a "toilet book".

It has a lot of bite-sized "facts", jokes and quotes. There are many, many inaccuracies in the facts but there is also a disclaimer about these at the start of the book.

A perfectly fine book to dip into and to read a few pages at a time.

[Tiit Sepp · Rating 4 out of 5]

A easy to read really randomly assembeled summary of Earth and Earthlings history. It probably is a great source for local pub quiz questions. Early on some fact given in book gave me distress and went to Wikipedia-info-mining, but as these turned out to state the same I kept more on the book and less on the Wikipedia. As a side note it would be worth to mentio that this book is very British as relatively many British references are given.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but as the title suggests, quite "shite". A lot of aspects are briefly visited and can be a good launching point to further research; a lot of the rest is badly written, boring, or strewn with pointless quotes.

[David Mundy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprised me by being informative as well as amusing. Excellent layout and a great selection of quotes. "The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity" G. B. Shaw, just one sample.

[F.K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Has a few interesting facts & ok to dip into but overall not as funny as I thought it would be.

[Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

TMI. Lovely. Random infos about science, philosophy, history & invention.

[Tempo de Ler · Rating 1 out of 5]

{Blog} http://tempodler.blogspot.pt/2012/07/...

A única coisa que gostei neste livro foi do título...

Além de ser um livro confuso, as explicações do autor são vagas, desinteressantes e mal construídas. De qualquer das formas, é difícil tornar as justificações interessantes quando a maior parte dos temas não o é!

Apesar de pequeno, achei o livro difícil de ler porque é aborrecido e monótono - nada daquilo que esperamos quando adquirimos um livro deste género...com este título...

Sobressaem diversas tentativas de humor por parte do autor, mas estas tendem a falhar redondamente.

[Jerry Diakiw]

An amazing read about the history of science. Reads like a mystery novel If I was a science teacher I would use this book to excite and inerest students in the subject

[Khalid · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clever way to write about history and provide information on historical events that you didn’t learn in your history classes.

[Avin · Rating 4 out of 5]

u will laugh ur balls off

[Asha Mohan]

Two hours of....... hmmmmnnnn!?

[Mrugesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

What's not to like? You turn any page, there's a nice historical trivia, or a funny anecdote.

[Pedram · Rating 3 out of 5]

It a historical work which forgot more or less some important and existing facts. I used that as my toilet book. The book can amuse you and make you happier many times.

[Nick Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic little book full of bite size snippets of history, politics and science., along with a handful of famous quotes. It’ll make you roll your eyes but you’ll laugh out loud at the same time.

[VC Gan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book somewhat disappointing. Most of the facts are short and lack of details. By and large it contains mostly quotes and throws up a number of names and dates that most of us won't have read before. Overall if you're a trivia reader this book is for you. Otherwise this book could be a good bathroom read.