A Story of Ambition in 50 Hoaxes – From the Trojan Horse to Fake Tech Support (History in 50) - Softcover

Eaton, Gale; Hoose, Phillip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0884484920 ISBN 13: 9780884484929

Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers, 2019

Synopsis

The con artists in this book pursued a variety of ambitions―making money, winning wars, mocking authority, finding fame, trading an ordinary life for a glamorous one―but they all chose the lowest, fastest road to get there.   Every hoax is a curtain, and behind it is a deceiver operating levers and smoke machines to make us see what is not there and miss what is. As P.T. Barnum knew, you can short-circuit critical thinking in any century by telling people what they want to hear. Most scams operate on a personal scale, but some have shaped the balance of world power, inspired explorers to sail uncharted seas, derailed scientific progress, or caused terrible massacres. A HISTORY OF AMBITION IN 50 HOAXES guides us through a rogue’s gallery of hustlers, liars, swindlers, imposters, scammers, pretenders, and cheats. In Gale Eaton’s wide-ranging synthesis, the history of deception is a colorful tour, with surprising insights behind every curtain.  

Fountas & Pinnell Level Z+

About this title

About the Authors

Gale Eaton has spent a lifetime with books for children and young adults, first as a children’s librarian at the Boston Public Library and the Berkshire Athenaeum, and later as a professor of children’s literature at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She is the author of four other books.

Phillip Hoose is the widely acclaimed author of books, essays, stories, songs, and articles including the National Book Award - and Newbery Honor - winning book Claudette Colvin: Twice toward Justice and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor winner The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club. A graduate of Indiana University and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, Hoose was for 37 years a staff member of The Nature Conservancy, dedicated to preserving the plants, animals, and natural communities of the Earth.

From the Back Cover

The earth shakes and cracks open. Volcanoes erupt. Continents freeze, bake, and flood. Droughts parch the land. Wildfires and hundredyear storms consume anything in their paths. Invisible clouds of disease and pestilence probe for victims. Tidal waves sweep ashore from the vast sea. The natural world is a dangerous place, but one species has evolved a unique defense against the hazards: civilization. Civilization rearranges nature for human convenience. Clothes and houses keep us warm; agriculture feeds us; medicine fights our diseases. It all worksmost of the time. But key resources lie in the most hazardous places, so we choose to live on river flood plains, on the slopes of volcanoes, at the edge of the sea, above seismic faults. We pack ourselves into cities. Petri dishes for germs. Civilization thrives on the edge of disaster. And what happens when natural forces meet molasses holding tanks, insecticides, deep-water oil rigs, nuclear power plants? We learn the hard way how to avoid the last disasterand maybe how to create the next one. What we don't know can, indeed, hurt us. This book's white-knuckled journey from antiquity to the present leads us to wonder at times how humankind has survived. And yet, as author Gale Eaton makes clear, civilization has advanced not just in spite of disasters but in part because of them. Hats off to human resilience, ingenuity, and perseverance! They've carried us this far; may they continue to do so into our ever-hazardous future.

Edition details

• Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0884484920
• ISBN 13: 9780884484929
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288