Coate, Bill. History's shocking secrets.

COATE, Bill. History's shocking secrets. (A Twist in Time Book.) History Publishing Group (5588N Palm Ave. #112, Fresno CA 93705). 267p. illus. bibliog. index. c2006.0-9768252-1 x. $16.95. JS

This is the kind of book that historians peruse with a lifted eyebrow, teachers sift for tidbits to entice their torpid students, and everyone else reads for fun. When you get right down to it, history is nothing more than the study of people in action--that is to say, people busily acting just like people--and it would be odd if this didn't frequently lead to interesting and unusual situations. Author Bill Coate (who also wrote History's Mysteries Revealed) has merely collected a large number of bite-sized vignettes and assembled them into a single title. The result is numerous two-or-three-page "chapters," each of which deals with some blunder, faux pas, assignation, or outright scandal that happened in American history. Many different historical characters are probed, some of them almost unknown and others quite prominent. Each story has an illustration, and all are handily arranged under such headings as the American Revolution, the Civil War, the White House, and so on. As for the quality of the anecdotes: it is hard to shock this generation, and most of the historical revelations here are not nearly so "shocking" as oddball and interesting. Nearly all of them are historically solid, if sometimes a little irrelevant. Only one or two are outright myths, like the saccharin tale of the bugle call "Taps."

Quibbles aside, this is a fine collection of historical factoids that will do much to humanize an otherwise abused subject. It should appeal to any YA with a spark of interest in anything outside of teenage culture.

J--Recommended for junior high school students. The contents are of particular interest to young adolescents and their teachers.

S--Recommended for senior high school students.

Raymond Puffer, Ph.D., Historian, Edwards AFB, Lancaster, CA