Evangelists of human progress meet their opposite in Matthew White's
epic examination of history's one hundred most violent events, or, in
White's piquant phrasing, the numbers that people want to argue about.
Reaching back to 480 BCE's second Persian War, White moves
chronologically through history to this century's war in the Congo and
devotes chapters to each event, where he surrounds hard facts (time and
place) and succinct takeaways (who usually gets the blame?) with lively
military, social, and political histories. With the eye of a seasoned
statistician, White assigns each entry a ranking based on body count,
and in doing so he gives voice to the suffering of ordinary people that,
inexorably, has defined every historical epoch. By turns droll,
insightful, matter-of-fact, and ultimately sympathetic to those who
died, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things gives readers a chance to
reach their own conclusions while offering a stark reminder of the
darkness of the human heart.