The Pessimist's Guide to History

by Doris Flexner, Stuart Berg Flexner

The classic irreverent look at the past--now updated with even more appalling facts! Fourteen billion or so years ago, the Big Bang exploded--and it's been downhill from there. For every spectacular discovery throughout history, there have been hundreds of devastating epidemics; for every benevolent despot, a thousand like Vlad the Impaler; for every cup half-full, a larger cup half-empty. This enthralling, enlightening, and devilishly entertaining chronicle of disasters and dastardly deeds brings to light the darkest events in history and the most abysmal calamities to strike the planet . . . so far. 88 Bu Mithridates VI Eupator provides an early example of genocide by massacring 100,000 Romans. 1347: Saint Vitus' Dance Epidemic shimmies across Europe like a deadly disco fever, leaving its victims twitching, uncontrollably leaping, and foaming at the mouth. 1888: Jack the Ripper stalks through the dark alleys of Whitechapel, England, turning the world's oldest profession into the world's most dangerous one. 1939: A Swiss chemist wins a Nobel Prize for developing DDT--and the environment gets another nail in the coffin. 2005: Hurricane Katrina devastates the Gulf Coast. In a classic double whammy, the government response also devastates the Gulf Coast. And much, much more!

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Humor, Reference, Historical, World History, Trivia

512 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 1992

Reviews

[Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is about as much fun as a non-fiction book can be: a chronologically-ordered series of snarky summaries of bizarre, tragic, frightening, grimly-hilarious catastrophes and disasters from history. I think of it as a companion to Wikipedia (which itself is a handy companion to more serious research): I read this book, get the basic outline of interesting stories from the past, then go to Wikipedia and get a slightly-less-basic version of events. Fun! (God, I'm a dork.)

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Easy to put down yet oddly captivating, this book is more a list of catastrophes from the past 4,000 years than it is a pessimists' guidebook. For this reason, it has anecdotal value, but can bore the reader after countless accounts of burning theaters and erupting volcanoes.

[Mela · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very unconventional book. Interesting, terrible but also funny. Fast reading.

[Ben Sweezy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun times abound. Unless you're Constantinople.

However, I don't really like the snarky comment at the end of each entry.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

This catalog of historical disasters, both natural and man-made, has a certain snarky, superficial appeal, which doesn't survive a closer reading. Its putative appeal rests in the implicit invitation to the reader to join in ridiculing various follies perpetrated by the powerful and the pompous throughout the ages. The problem is that all but the most jaded of readers must eventually recognize the ultimate emptiness of this kind of schadenfreude. Furthermore, the great majority of catastrophes documented throughout the book are not manmade at all - earthquakes, tidal waves, floods, plagues and epidemics far outweigh the tally of human foolishness. So that one comes away with a healthy respect for the power of Nature to complicate the course of human history, but beyond that, it's hard to buy into the authors' snarky superior tone. In fact, I suspect most readers are likely to find the authors' snarkiness tiresomely irritating long before reaching the end of the book.

An odd, cranky, unpersuasive view of history that is likely to be unappealing to most readers. I consider myself a skeptic by nature, but this book just seemed juvenile and ultimately uninteresting.

[Aimee Massey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very interesting book, but I would have liked more in-depth information on more of the disasters catalogued in it, especially the more modern ones. I realize that kind of defeats the purpose of a book whose selling point is its short, tantalizing bites of info, but there it is.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Belated birthday present from my best friend, who knows me all too well.

[David Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pessimist's Guide to History: An Irresistible Compendium of Catastrophes, Barbarities, Massacres, and Mayhem – From 14 Billion Years Ago to 2007 by Stuart and Doris Flexner (Collins 2008) (902.02). The authors have done an excellent job of creating and cataloguing a record of bad luck and unfortunate turns-of-event which have plagued humans since the dawn of recorded history. This compilation includes events wrought by God's inhumanity as well as those tragedies resulting from man's inhumanity to man. This book lists natural disasters that have caused large and often massive numbers of deaths as well as massacres and exterminations wrought by man during war or conquest. This book paints a bleak picture of human existence on a more macro scale than I for one am used to considering. The disasters catalogued in this volume should be viewed on a scale measured in human lifetimes. It is enough to be aware that measured on such a global scale, the next massive volcanic eruption is just around the corner. The good news is that the massive fires which the volcano will cause will in time be extinguished by the next hurricane, tsunami, or asteroid impact which strikes the earth. One simply has to hope that the havoc unleashed by natural forces will strike some remote part of the earth rather than one's own global neighborhood. Moreover, if one manages to survive whatever inevitable “acts of god” are unleashed during the span of a human lifetime, then one need only worry about surviving the wrongs inflicted by fellow man: wars, genocide, criminal acts, and the like. With that said, I really enjoyed this volume. Knowing that I am still above ground feels like I've beaten the odds another day. My rating: 7.25/10, finished 5/27/18. I have a paperback copy in very good condition purchased from McKay's 12/5/17. PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

[Evan Micheals · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me over a year to complete. It was a chewing gum book for me (a book to read in in-between moments), and the format of short anecdotes worked well for this. The most salient point I took away from reading this book is how remarkably regularly Nature and Human qualities (malevolence, negligence, greed, or hate) have caused millions, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands to die at a time. The book also reflects who we are at our finest (e.g. the men who in spite knowing they would die sacrificed themselves to ensure the rocket fuel would not explode in the 1965 Titan Missile fire, saving many others) and our worst (e.g. the multitude of people who did not respond to stop the murder of Kitty Genovese, or even simply calling the police). We are a mixed lot as a species, capable of both heroism and cowardice. The other is the Universe does not care, nor is fair. Sometimes our greatest catastrophise in life are just being at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Dumb luck. At other times we could do better and take active steps to avoid suffering. Work hard to minimise dumb luck.

It repeats legends, myths, and lies that have been debunked by other historians. I could spot this as an amateur historian – I wonder how many un-truths and inaccuracies I missed for a lack of knowledge. Probably most of the time it is well researched. It served the chewing gum purpose well, and is a book fit for purpose.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm no stranger to compendiums of horrible things happening to people. Heck, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things is a lot of fun (and, you know, horror). But this one is... not as good.

It's not bad, either. The Pessimist's Guide to History is a chronologically ordered list of, well, horrible things that happened. It covers natural disasters-- volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods-- and manmade occurrences-- wars, executions, DDT-- as well as some things in between-- famines, epidemics, fires. The writeups are generally funny, if not comprehensive (and occasionally flat-out wrong). Still, it gets painfully repetitive after a while. This is not a book to be read straight through.

The choices of what to include and what to leave out are also kind of odd. Socrates' execution is included, for example, but the entire English Civil War (and the execution of Charles II) is left out. The bloody partition of India and Pakistan is left out, but the big bang is included (??). Not to mention the fact that most of the book is the twentieth century. There were a number of horrible things prior to that that got flat-out ignored. So I don't know if I'd recommend this book unless you're particularly interested in awful things, and even then, don't read it in one go. Pick it up and put it down according to interest.

[Tami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun, digestible bits of history, rarely more than a page long each, arranged in chronological order. Nothing deep or heavy (except that the content usually involves massive death and destruction) and I was left wondering how much larger the population of the earth might be if we didn't have these massive, depopulating events periodically. I really enjoyed it as a traveling book for two overseas flights because you could pick it up and put it down freely at any time.

[J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is what it says it is. There's plenty of interesting stuff in here, with interesting and bizarre details. However, there's also plenty of very sparse entries with date and location and not much else. The book definitely prioritized thoroughness over interestingness.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't even finish the book. It's an extremely long list of things that have happened with (most of the time) very little information or explanation. I love historical reads but this just felt lacking of any real information.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book. I recommend it for the history lovers.

[Zane Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nuns using babies as flotation device. What more do you need.

[Ryan Hubbard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eh

[Ming Terk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Informative, but poorly written and organized. Just a list of disasters and some cursory comments about them. Some of the disasters are followed by a comment which is corny beyond belief. It is not funny. And who cares about a very long list of disasters. I try to finish the books that I read, but this one, I really cannot.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a downside to reading a book like this one, and that is the fact that although the various stories are told with wit and sarcastic humor, and though the book has a suitably gloomy but adorable cartoon on the cover, the fact is that reading about the various disasters, which are thrown together with no sense of proportion, get rather monotonous after awhile. One reads the book, thinking of all the disasters that were not included, like the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War, or the full extent of the Armenian genocide during World War I, while wondering why the author spent a great deal of time talking about fires in theaters and earthquakes and train wrecks and the like, considering each disaster to be equal to any other, spending as much time on Bhopal as the Holocaust. It may be a bad thing to be gloomy and pessimistic [1], or so used to reading about horrors, that the brief description by the author leaves one without feeling, moving quickly on to the next disaster without skipping a beat.

In terms of its contents, the book is about 400 pages, divided somewhat unequally into a few sections. The main part of the book consists of a mostly chronologically organized set of various types of disasters and blunders that would tend to demonstrate the writer as a pessimist about humanity and its behaviors, whether that is fighting over religion, or creating technology, or in being arrogant enough to assume that a building is fireproof, that nice guys are what they claim to be, or that a ship is unsinkable. The various chronicle entries are shown with a year, a title, and a summary extending from a couple of lines to a couple of pages before the author moves on to the next one. After the 360 pages of such disasters or so, the author gives a very short bibliography and then a topically organized list of the various disasters spoken of in the book, divided into such categories as air crashes, fires and explosions, and storms, among others. Although the book is somewhat lengthy by the standards of most books of its kind in popular history, the book could have been far greater in size given the amount of human error and natural disaster to choose from over the lengthy course of human history.

Although the book clearly meets its goal of being a compendium of catastrophes, barbarities, massacres, and mayhem, there are still some things to be critical about besides the fact that so much bad news is rather numbing after a while to some readers. For one, the author has a clear presentist bias. Although the back cover talks about three historical examples, about 3/4 of the book contains material written about the period after 1800, and about 2/3 of the material looks at the twentieth century, only going up to 1991 or so. Having a more equitable spread of discussions would have made the book a little bit less tedious when getting to the modern period after having blown through thousands of years of human history, and also the creation of the universe and the destruction of the dinosaurs (but not any of the other mass extinction events of history). In addition, the book occasionally gets matters wrong, whether that is one case where the author discusses the destruction of the Alexandria library out of place, and another case where the author misplaces the Hussite wars by two centuries in history, saying they lasted from 1619 to 1635 (which was the Bohemian aspect of the Thirty Years' War), rather than in the 1400's. It is likely this very incomplete mastery of history that leads the author to focus on contemporary history in the vast majority of the book, although it makes this book far less exhaustive and complete than it would have been otherwise.

[1] No one has ever accused me of being anything less than gloomy in my own historical research:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

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[Bradley Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book isn’t anything special but it is great “toilet reading” 😂

It’s cause I only read this in the bathroom over a period of a two years.

[Alex Telander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Optimists have ruled the world in popularity since the first one made a comment about the beautiful weather, leaving the pessimists behind, ignored, and looked down upon; but now that's all going to change with the freshly updated Pessimist's Guide to History. For every happy comment, witty repartee, and overly-positive statement, pessimists will now have the fodder to fight back, with this handy reference manual.

The book begins with the most catastrophic event in the history of the universe: the big bang which started all life and everything as we know it. Then a few entries are dedicated to mass extinctions, destructive meteors, volcanic eruptions, and massive climactic changes. With the advent of humanity beginning its slow but thorough conquest of the planet, authors Doris and Stuart Berg Flexner don't hold back in presenting every horrible, destructive, plague-ridden event throughout history. The entries vary in length from short quick events: '217 B.C.: One Hundred Cities Destroyed by Killer Quake. A deadly quake rocked much of North Africa in 217 B.C., demolishing one hundred cities and killing more than fifty thousand people'; to longer entries spanning a couple of pages as more setting, detail, and information is needed about specific horrific events like: '1812: Moscow Burns,' and '1888-1891: Jack the Ripper Terrorizes Whitechapel,' and '1902: Mount Pelée's Deadly Eruption.'

The first third of the book covers the beginning of the universe up to the end of the nineteenth century. The rest is dedicated to the last hundred and seven years, bringing the book up to the present with the many terrible events of the last century. Whether you want to read cover to cover, or simply flip through and pick out particular dates and times or specific events, The Pessimist's Guide to History has all the horrible and detailed answers you crave. At the end of the book is an extensive index of events, categorized by type. With The Pessimist's Guide to History at hand, the adamant pessimist will never again be without a horrific comeback.

For more book reviews and exclusive author interviews, go to BookBanter.

[Nanc Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

because it could always be worse. And has been worse. Gave me perspective. Humanity has had a lot of bad days.

[Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely book about death, pain & suffering...if there is a way to make these subjects sound less appalling I believe the author found a way to do manage it. Thankfully, the way the book is written offers some detachment from the situations so you don't truly feel the Human drama playing but I found it to be more like reading a technical paper.

One thing I found appalling is the lack of mention of the Mexican Revolution period (1910-1920). One would assume that a civil war that lasted a decade and in which 50% of a country's population "disappeared" (by death or emigration, according to some texts I've read and before the war Mexico had a population of around 20 million) would merit at least a mention...but no. This would be my main gripe.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty good read, and well-suited for reading in small chunks.

I didn't particularly care for the snide remarks that were tagged onto the end of many entries, attempting to add a bit of levity to the stories. They were distracting, if nothing else, and a bit repetitive at times. I also noticed more and more egregious typos and proofreading issues as the book went on, which is always a BIG mood-killer for me.

Overall, a quick and decently interesting book, and good for finding events you might want to research further. You become a bit desensitized to all the tragedy by the end of the book, however.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fun. I suspect it was written to be one of those "pick up here and there" books, but I read it straight through. It really brings home how unfriendly our earth is; it seems it's nothing for half a million people to die from hurricanes and earthquakes every few years. The only bad thing about reading it front to back is that I got a bit desensitized. "Volcano wipes out blah blah blah ... *yawn*." My only complaint about the book in general is that it tended to repeat some folkloric tales as history, but I guess I'm nitpicking. It still made for an awesome read.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I love a good list, going through about a 100 million years of natural and man-made disasters can get you down. The book covers everything from prehistoric extinctions to deadly volcanoes to presidential assassinations, most entries ending with a suitably gloomy statement about humanity's choices and actions. Like your favorite pessimistic friend, you alternately agree with the dark outlook and grow weary of the consistently bleak outlook. It's like Earth's history being recited by Marvin the Paranoid Android on the day he happened to miss his dose of Paxil.

[Sharon Zimmerman · Rating 2 out of 5]

The very segmented style of the book, with every disastrous event separated out, made it easy to stop when the history became tedious. Because the author chose such a broad unifying topic for her book, there were no characters to empathize with and cheer for in this book.
Several of her "disasters" were tongue in cheek which broke the monotony a bit.
All in all, if you're looking for history you can read straight through, pick something else. If you're looking for something that can easily be put down and returned to after a few weeks, this might be a good choice.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book gives brief samplings of events through history. While it's interesting and educational, and does have humor, I was hoping for a bit more humor, as the title seems to imply. It just concentrates on all the bad things (as it says it does) but that doesn't really make for a pessimist.

For a while I had this book on hold, but I can't actually see myself going back to it, so it will be left unfinished.

[Russell Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, but i was distracted by some unnecessary comedic commentary added to the end of nearly every tragic entry. I understand that the intent of the whole product is to be a tongue-in-cheek treatment of these horrible events, but the problem is that the comments simply aren't funny. Nonetheless, this is an extraordinary catalog of terrible moments in the Earth's past, many of which are under-historized or forgotten.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

My only complaint is that, pre-1700, the entries don’t exactly compare to the latter half of the book. Now, I can’t blame recorded history for being more detailed after a certain point, but at times it does feel as if the ancient world is slightly neglected. Still, as a cross between the ultimate bathroom book AND an alternate research tool, it’s certainly worth a look over…if, for nothing else, than officially declaring an event involving Paris Hilton a historical disaster!

[Nicole Yovanoff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the book was very interesting, but after a while it became very repetitive. Too much coverage of natural disasters. Very little content to it. Why did you choose that disaster? Were there consequences.

I would have preferred the content to discuss the social, political, economic or cultural ramifications of the event. After a while, you become too desensitized to respect the deaths and tragedies and just skim the page until you find something of substance.