Gideon Defoe

not entirely my cop of tea-though I'll read anything where Darwin makes an appearance.
Got a lot out of the footnotes, including an enjoyable visit to Oxford's pitt museum

The sometimes far-fetched stories here seem to check out when verified against other sources, so that is good. This is an interesting though never engrossing book about a variety of would-be or once-were nations. The author tries a little too hard to be clever and funny, but the book is short, so before it gets too annoying, it's over!

a very silly small book about pirates and ham and scientists! Very silly, quick read when I finally rescued it from the back of MTBR.

Interesting facts. Moves quickly between topics. However snarky biased views take away from reader enjoyment. Seems to hate the English but doesn’t have a bad word for the greatest murderer of the 20th Century Mao-tse Tung.