Exclusive: Amazonian Tips for Amazon.com
When you think of the word “Amazon,” we’re sure the first thing that comes to mind is the fantastic website where you can buy our book (buy our book!) or half-naked warrior women. But here are three tantalizing tidbits you might not know--and why you need to act now.
1. Find Gold
There’s something about long, tropical rivers that seems to drive people batty. But the Basque conquistador Lope de Aguirre was by all accounts a murderous sociopath long before he got to the Amazon. Take, for instance, the time a judge sentenced Aguirre to be flogged. The brutish Basque hunted the terrified magistrate across 4,000 miles of rough South American terrain, barefoot, to kill him! So, in 1560, it probably wasn’t the best idea to invite Aguirre along on the quest to find El Dorado, the legendary city of gold. After 900 miles of unbroken rain forest, Aguirre was fed up. He led a mutiny that killed more than half of his fellow conquistadors. Then, he declared himself prince of Peru, Tierra Firma, and Chile. Eventually he and his tiny army attacked Panama…where he was killed and dismembered so his body parts could be paraded around the colony.
The bright side: El Dorado is still out there, waiting for you to discover it! Just don’t bring a friend like Lope.
2. Invest a Dollar
When it’s not making people crazy, the Amazon seems to inspire bizarre, larger-than-life schemes. In 1967, American shipping magnate and billionaire Daniel Ludwig bought a larger-than-Connecticut sized chunk of the Amazon to create a gigantic industrial and agricultural complex called the Jari Project. It didn’t work out. All the construction led to massive soil erosion, screwing up the “agricultural” part of his plan. After sinking $1 billion into the project (back when $1 billion really meant something) Ludwig called it quits in 1982. It was eventually put up for sale for $1--a great deal, if you’re willing to assume $354 million in debt.
The bright side: For anyone with a dollar and a dream, it’s your lucky day: the Jari Project is still for sale!
3. Make New Friends
The pictures of spear-wielding tribesmen produced in May 2008 may have been a hoax, but it’s true that there are literally dozens of so-called “uncontacted” native tribes in the Amazon basin--Stone Age peoples who have never had any contact with the outside world! While this seems preposterous, it makes sense when you consider the Basin’s size, over 2.7 million square miles in area, half of which is covered by dense rain forest and divided by 15,000 rivers and tributaries. Altogether, there are believed to be about three dozen uncontacted tribes in Brazil and 15 in Peru.
The bright side: If you’re up for the adventure, you have more than 50 chances to claim fame and fortune. Just make sure you don’t accidentally give everyone smallpox.
… And so much more!
What you’ve just read isn’t available in our book, but don’t worry--roughly 82% of the rest of history is. Our twelve essential chapters tackle everything from civilization’s baby steps in the Fertile Crescent to the Pope’s first text message, the 6,000-pound super-wombats of early Australia to the Goose Crusade of 1096, the golden hemorrhoids of the Philistines to the most important assassinations of the 20th century, and everything else that’s wacky, entertaining, and completely, unbelievably true.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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Not what I was hoping for
Admittedly, I am not a frequent visitor to the Mental Floss website, but I do enjoy books that successfully blend entertainment with education. Unfortunately, I found this book too heavy on the latter and too light on the former.
The Mental Floss History of the World comes across as a sort of abridged textbook, lots of factoids, lots of blurbs that are admittedly pretty informational. Much of it is even interesting. But very little of it is actually funny, and that's what I wanted. ...
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Irreverent? No. Interesting and fun? Yes.
Tired of boring and dull history books? Perhaps this is the book that will help you rethink your views on history. I haven't had a history class since my freshman college Western Civ 101 so this was a nice refresher book for me. It's the kind of book you pick up, read a chapter, put down and come back to a few days, weeks or even a month later and grab another little "snack." It isn't really a page-turner, but it's a fun and lighthearted look at history.
The book gives mostly a general ...
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If Only History Class Were Like This
Confession time: history books generally make my eyes roll back in my head. But I love history, and always want to know more history. It's a conflict. Or it was, until this book appeared.
Staring in 60,000 BCE and romping forward to the present and beyond, History of the World examines wars, famines, conflicts, treaties, marriages... just about everything.
Pieces are done in short accessible bits. You can set the book down, then pick it up later for another installment ...
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Deeper and More Thoughtful than I Expected
I was pleasantly surprised at the level of detail contained in this book. I think I was expecting something along the lines of the Uncle John's Bathroom series of books...but I actually found the book deeper than that. I will be checking out other Mental Floss titles.
Rating:
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interesting reading - in the style of mental floss
For those who are familiar with the publication Mental Floss, this book should not be foreign - in term of the writing style, scope and contents, and the general tone. Like the magazine, "The Mental Floss History of the World" is a collection of entertaining, sarcastic and wise-cracking short articles for readers who are into trivia. Like the namesake, "mental floss", this is not a scholarly compendium on world history, but more a collection of interesting trivia about world history that can be mildly ...
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