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Fake Heroes: Ten False Icons and How they Altered the Course of History

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Secondly, I get the main message of his book. Fake History and the promotion of it is dangerous and serves certain agendas. I also agree that statues are political statements. Frankly, Edward Colston and his tasteless statues can go to hell. They should be constantly debated and challenged. History isn’t concrete. We find out more pieces of it’s puzzle and it evolves. I did find this book entertaining and informative. But I had two main problems with it. Firstly, I think the author is just a little too open in using the book to display his political opinions. Would I be saying this if I didn’t agree with all of them? Well, that is a speculative question. But I would say that I was more annoyed with it interrupting the flow of historical discussion. Thoroughy enjoyable way to find out how so much of life's preconceptions are mistaken and how cognitive dissonance and the Dunning-Kruger affect lead us astray. This book dismantles the lazy and pernicious tropes of the past as Otto English sets out to redress the balance and reclaim truth from those who seek to pervert it.

Having exposed some of the greatest lies ever told in Fake History, journalist Otto English turns his attention to some of history's biggest (and most beloved) figures.The problem is that there is no easy way to fight this battle and, with the internet (especially via Facebook) the challenge is growing. Trump could never have become President nor Johnson PM without all the factors that Otto so rightly shows. Their lies are bought into by millions and continue to be as so many have been transfixed in the past. Some of the individuals covered in this book became icons by accident or by dint of their good looks. Che Guevara was one of these. Had his face not been made famous by the promulgation of his image across the world, he might have been just another guerilla allied with Castro whose name was only known by far-left devotees. Instead, he happened to have a face that had icon written all over it and ended up incessantly emblazoned on middle-class bedsit walls and t-shirts across the world, as much of a capitalist consumerist brand as Coca Cola. Whether it's virtuous leaders in just wars, martyrs sacrificing all for a cause, or innovators changing the world for the better, down the centuries supposedly great men and women have risen to become household names, saints and heroes. But just how deserving are they of their reputations? The premise of this book is to explore and debunk ten great history myths which are frequently passed off as truth. The author sets his case straight away. Fake History is based on lies which are used to push agendas today. This often comes with idealising a past which bares little resemblance to the reality (as much as we can tell it) those gone before have lived. Having exposed some of the greatest lies ever told in Fake History , journalist Otto English turns his attention to some of history's biggest (and most beloved) figures.

Otto English obviously put a lot of research into writing Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World, and it shows. At first it seems like a lot of the information might be tangential, but English manages to bring all the threads together to paint a very clear picture. While not everything is quite as revelatory as the title might suggest, there were certain lies that I believed that it was fascinating to learn were not exactly as I had been told. Much is made of Scott's sentimentality around the killing and eating of dogs, as if it's a failing or a weakness. This seems incredibly odd to me, would you want to kill and eat your pets? Don't think so buddy. If anything the failing here was becoming too attached to the dogs, unlike the Norwegian team who saw them as more of a means to an end. It ends up sounding like "Scott liked animals, god what a loser!" for history geeks like myself this book makes for a very interesting read as i learned a lot of interesting facts reading this book. for anyone who isn’t head over heals in love with history however this book doesn’t fully do what it says on the tin and you’d be forgiven for getting bored of the endless tangents. BOOK REVIEW: Tearing down myths white men tell other white men". BusinessLIVE . Retrieved 27 December 2021. From an audiobook perspective, I didn't find Otto English's narration particularly engaging. And, as a bilingual German speaker I found his butchering of German pronunciation particularly hard to stomach. Hearing him struggle to pronounce German, French, Nahuatl, and other languages was hard on the ears and I do wish a bit more time and effort had been put into learning the correct pronunciations out of respect to the cultural heritages that those languages represent.It is a great book to read but be assured it is certainly not a strict factual account of history with balanced views on what might have happened. Instead the sources are carefully edited to bear out the opinions of the author and meet his agenda. Whilst stating how our history is based on the version we read or were taught when younger, he clearly chooses the versions he wants to make his point. Ráadásul ezzel dédelgetjük azoknak a lelkét is, akik velünk értenek egyet - hisz valójában mi is azt szeretjük a legjobban, ha ki van mondva nyíltan, hogy az "ők" és a "hülyék" tulajdonképpen szinonimák. Ettől valahogy jobban érezzük magunkat. A fun, authoritative and alternative history of the world that exposes some of the biggest lies ever told and how they've been used over time.

There is absolutely no reliable evidence that Scott's wife Kathleen had an affair with Nansen, I wasn't sure why this was included at all. In 2023, English published a follow-up book, Fake Heroes, in which he profiles ten historical figures and analyses myths connected to them. [9] I'm unsure why the food taken on the expedition is mentioned at all - they needed enough supplies to last 65 men YEARS - of course they took a lot of food?!I do however have issues with the structure of the book. I found the chapters somewhat misleading in their titles. Each seem set up to discuss a certain historical myth, and yet only a small fraction of those chapters actually discuss what is stated that they are there for. I am aware that the author doesn’t owe me anything and my annoyance with this may be down to my Autism. But my experience in debating taught me the value of getting to the point. But in fairness some of the stories and arguments laid down by the author in those chapters were entertaining and informative. His discussion about food and language was absolutely fascinating and taught me a lot. Then there was the image of President Kennedy as a man bursting with good health when in fact it was estimated he ‘was on roughly 12 medications a day including codeine, Demerol, methadone, Ritalin, meprobamate and steroids’. For a better overview of Scott and of what went wrong on the Terra Nova expedition, I'd suggest A First Rate Tragedy by Diana Preston and The Coldest March by Susan Solomon (whose research on the Ozone layer is mentioned in a later chapter of this very book!). English admits that he has always been fascinated by the writing of history and it is with obvious enjoyment, and the occasional welcome touch of humour, that he delves into and unravels the writings, the media, the propaganda, the movies and the folklore that have all served to construct the falsehoods that we have come to believe. He is not shy about giving his personal opinion, brilliantly exposing the fake heroes for who they really were and chronicling some of the damage they have done. That on this journey we meet some genuine heroes and some unsung heroes is a bonus.

The reason the Norwegians were (and still are) so good at polar travel is because it's where they live, they do it all the time, they learn to ski before they can walk. Nansen is a towering figure in Norway, and rightfully so (just don't Google his nudes). Amundsen will always be a polar hero, but he is not so highly regarded due to falling in with the likes of Mussolini and his big interest in The Fash during his later years. Sandbrook, Dominic (27 May 2021). "How the culture wars came for history". UnHerd . Retrieved 27 December 2021. Of course, these fake heroes are not always all bad; Bader risked his life to defend England, Kennedy averted a nuclear crisis with Russia (though that crisis may well have arisen because of his earlier miscalculations). Even Adolf Hitler loved his dog. Let's get the problems out of the way first: this is a really inadequately edited book. There are numerous typos and other errors scattered throughout it, which no publishing house worth its salt should have let through. The writing is uneven at times and seems almost as if it was rushed, while the narrative is also fascinating in places. The overall premise of the book, however, is difficult to argue with, that "History, much like modern life, is in short full of bullies, self-promoting charlatans, bigots, bastards, and liars." Another way of putting it is that "the person who shouts the loudest gets all the acclaim," which is mentioned by way of explaining why Thomas Edison is widely regarded as the inventor of the light bulb, when it's not really that simple.

Fake Heroesis not only awash with fascinating anecdotes, but is also rife with details that effectively give the flavour of the times being recounted. This further brings home the point that so much worth remembering is often forgotten, misrepresented or deliberately falsified. For while Thomas Edison may well have said, ‘I have not failed, not once. I have discovered ten thousand ways that don’t work’, there’s little evidence he uttered any of the other pithy quotes attributed to him. The subtitle of the book is ‘Ten False Icons and How They Altered the Course of History’. Among those false icons is Group Captain Sir Douglas Bader – a legless flying fighter ace I personally held in high regard for the help he gave to a friend of mine who had also lost both his legs in an aircraft crash. Now, to the dogs: Scott took dogs on the Discovery having taken Nansen's advice, and their diet of fish was also recommended by Nansen (not Scott). According to the late great Wally Herbert, it takes a person around two years to become competent at running dogs, Scott had no chance of managing this, whereas the Norwegians would have been running dog teams for years, due to, y'know, living in the Arctic. The best bit about this book is watching the author descend into exactly the things he outlines about others.

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