An entertaining collection of the most audacious and underhanded
deceptions in the history of mankind, from sacred relics to financial
schemes to fake art, music, and identities.
World history is littered with tall tales and those who have fallen for
them. Ian Tattersall, a curator emeritus at the American Museum of
Natural History, has teamed up with Peter NÃ(c)aumont to tell this
anti-history of the world, in which Michelangelo fakes a masterpiece;
Arctic explorers seek an entrance into a hollow Earth; a Shakespeare
tragedy is rediscovered; a financial scheme inspires Charles Ponzi; a
spirit photographer snaps Abraham Lincoln's ghost; people can survive
ingesting only air and sunshine; Edgar Allen Poe is the forefather of
fake news; and the first human was not only British but played cricket.
Told chronologically, HOAX begins with the first documented
announcement of the end of the world in 2800 BC and winds its way
through controversial tales such as the Loch Ness Monster and the Shroud
of Turin, past proven fakes such as the Thomas Jefferson's ancient wine
and the Davenport Tablets built by a lost race, and explores bald-faced
lies in the worlds of art, science, literature, journalism, and finance.