More Secrets of the Dead

This companion to the television series "Secrets of the Dead" is written in a dry style, but it is nonetheless fascinating. The book explores five historical mysteries, each of which was addressed in a one hour episode of the television series:1. Why did the citizens of Jamestown, England's first permanent American colony, die at such an alarming rate? Were their deaths the result of starvation, disease or mass murder?2. Did the Phoenicians and their Carthaginian descendants really sacrifice their children, or was that claim just a slander spread by the Greeks and Romans?3. The body of a beheaded man is found in a shallow grave at Stonehenge. When and why was he killed?4. Why were some people apparently immune to the Black Plague, while others caught it but didn't die?5. Why did the British army suffer such a staggering defeat at the Battle of Isandlwana?The chapter on the Black Plague is especially fascinating, because it explains how a genetic mutation that favored the survivors of the Black Plague also rendered their descendants immune to the HIV virus that causes AIDs. The chapter on the Battle of Isandlwana provides an interesting explanation of the causes of the British disaster, but it minimizes the significance of the Battle of Rourke's Drift in a way that, in my opinion, is questionable. A more persuasive discussion can be found in Chapter 8 Victor Davis Hanson's "Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (2001)."If you enjoys books about historical mysteries, you might want to have a look at the following recent texts: Miller, "Secrets of the Dead;" Keys, "Catasrophe" (itself the topic of a two-hour "Secrets of the Dead" episode); James & Thorpe, "Ancient Mysteries"; Fagan's "The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient World;" and Paul Aron's "Unsolved Mysteries of American History," "More Unsolved Mysteries of American History," and "Unsolved Mysteries of History." Like "More Secrets of the Dead," all of these books are sober discussions of real mysteries, and they are blissfully free of contrived sillines about ancient astronauts and Atlantis.