In 1914, a train pulled into a provincial British railway station. The porter, a curious chap, asked the regiment of soldiers where they were from. "Ross-shire," one called down, but the porter heard "Russia." And so began a rumor that led to Germany losing World War I. Often the history we learn at school is only half the story. We hear of heroic deeds and visionary leaders, but we never hear about the people who turned up late for court and thereby changed the law, or who stood in the wrong queue at university and accidentally won a Nobel Prize. The Great Cat Massacre: A History of Britain in 100 Mistakes demonstrates that the nation is as much a product of error as design.

The Great Cat Massacre

In this dazzling series of essays, Robert Darnton exhumes the strange and wonderful world views of the ordinary and extraordinary people inhabiting the cities, towns, and countryside of France in what we like to call “The Age of Enlightenment.”

The Women

The Women is a 2009 novel by T. C. Boyle. It is a biographical novel of Frank Lloyd Wright, told through his relationships with four women: the young Serbian dancer Olgivanna; Miriam, the morphine-addicted and obsessive Southern belle; Mamah, whose life ended tragically in a massacre at Taliesin, the home Wright built for his lovers and wives; and his first wife, Kitty, the mother of six of his children.