Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped

This book contains a wealth of historical gems. In over fifty chapters, the author presents a series of historical snippets most of which have, for obvious reasons, been omitted from standard history texts. Although most of the topics are sex-oriented in some way, not all of them are in that category; some involve gastronomy (in various forms), odd habits, celebrity quirks, etc. The writing style is refreshing to say the least; that is, it is irreverent, tongue-in-cheek, accessible, engaging, witty, down-to-earth and in many cases absolutely hilarious. The references that are indicated at the end of each chapter, the authorities that were consulted, as named in the acknowledgments, as well as the author's own expertise give the reader confidence as to the accuracy of the stories that are presented. This is a book that can be thoroughly enjoyed by absolutely anyone. History has never been so much fun to read.

This book is, shall we say, filled with all kinds a tidbits that hit below the belt. Shockingly funny, often extremely irreverent, Napoleon's Privates certainly won't leave anyone hanging (gasp)! While this book certainly won't find its way into history classes (at least I would hope not), it takes a fresh (and very bare) look at historical figures and practices ranging from urine taxes to whether or not Hitler was dealing with a full set (of gonads, that is). Certainly, Napoleon's Privates is a quick read that would make for great material to take to the beach or to the "reading room."

Not many of us have ever heard of the "Secret Cabinets" let alone visited special places that were designated rooms within the great museums of Europe as the Louvre, the Prado, the British Museum, and the Museo Nazionale in Naples. It is within the walls of these chambers where anything that was deemed shocking and immoral was kept hidden, and if you wished to have access or a viewing you had to fill out an application or bribe the security guard. Historian and author Tony Perrottet in his Napoleon's Privates: 2, 500 Years of History Unzipped has now opened the door to a candy store of delightful and titillating stories that resemble some of the goodies that would have been found in these secret cabinets. As he states in his introduction, "a collection of the choicest morsels culled from the dark recesses of Western History, for the edification of the curious." After reading these tidbits, if you still believe history is boring, then I am afraid nothing will change your mind. How about this little morsel? On May 8th, 1945 Dr. Faust Shkaravaski found, after performing an autopsy on Hitler, that his scrotum sack had survived the botched SS cremation intact-"singed but preserved-but was definitely minus a bollock." Stalin kept this news from the Allies and only in 1968 did the news leak out in the West. As a result, there was a swarm of all kinds of theories and explanations that kept historians quite busy. The three principal theories were Hitler was born that way; it was an old war wound and the Soviets made the whole thing up. Ron Rosenbaum author of Explaining Hitler, who has apparently spent a great deal of time and effort in researching the subject matter, has concluded that it was all one big practical joke contrived by the Soviets in order to mess with Western minds. Just as Aids today has taken on epidemic proportions, so too was syphilis and other venereal diseases in Paris of the 1890s. At the time, Paris was considered to be the sex capital of the world and one authority on sexually transmitted diseases estimated that fifteen percent of the city's adult population was infected. Among the well-known celebrities who contacted syphilis were Gustave Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire, Guy de Maupassant, Edouard Manet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Paul Gaugin. If you are wondering about the title of the book and if there is a story about Napoleon's privates, yes, there is a very interesting one. It seems that Napoleon's penis had drifted around Europe and the United States since the emperor's demise in 1821 and as described, "dried out like beef jerky and kept in a leather presentation box adorned with a gold-embossed crown." I guess what most irks the French is that it presently has found a home in a suitcase under a bed in suburban New Jersey. How can this have occurred? Read the book to find out? Perrottet also reveals some delectable and irreverent tales about Cleopatra, Casanova, Thomas Jefferson, Columbus, Alexander the Great, Geor

Tony Perrottet's latest books is a fun and intriguing read. After a few chapters (on the history of Nepoleon's penis, the theories about Hitler's one testicle, the medieval church's rigid control over how sex should be performed), I realized that if more histories included the juicy details of the past, we'd all have a much better appreciation of history. The book is laugh-out-loud funny and brain-teasingly intriguing at the same time.

... I would have ended up loving history! This is a very funny book, but it's also serious, even very erudite, as if David Sedaris took up historical research. The author has obviously done some hard core homework (there are lots of academic sources cited at the end of each segment if you want to read more about how Columbus discovered the clitoris and other enlightening facts -- that's Renaldo Columbus, not Christopher). The author says in his introduction that the stories were chosen to lure people in, so they're very entertaining. You follow the story of Napoleon's penis, for example (which is the symbolic anecdote which crops up throughout the book) and you get to learn a lot about the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, his outrageous marriage to Josephine (she was a real party animal, playing Britney Speers to his Bill Gates) and his exile on Saint Helena. The penis was stolen by an angry doctor during the autopsy -- and has floated around the world. How it ended up in New Jersey is an epic saga... (there's also a youtube video on the subject, called Napoleon's Privates). Anwyay, a great summer or back-to-school read --