Historical Humor
Top 10 Historical Humor
: 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, Cartoon History of the Universe I, Vol. 1-7: From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great, Mussolini: His Part In My Downfall, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Cartoon History of the Universe II, Vol. 8-13: From the Springtime of China to the Fall of Rome, Up Front, The Cartoon History of the Universe III: From the Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance, The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution, The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 2: From the Bastille to Baghdad
| Author | W.C. Sellar |
| ISBN | 0413772705 |
One of the most well-loved and best-selling British humor titles of all time
"Canute began by being a Bad King on the advice of his Courtiers, who informed him (owing to a misunderstanding of the Rule Britannia) that the King of England was entitled to sit on the sea without getting wet."
This...
Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall
| Author | Spike Milligan |
| ISBN | 0140035206 |
Adolf Hitler: My Part on His Downfall is volume One of Spike Milligan's outrageous, hilarious, legendary War Memoirs.
'At Victoria station the R.T.O. gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked "This is your enemy". I searched every compartment, but he wasn't on...
Cartoon History of the Universe I, Vol. 1-7: From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great
| Author | Larry Gonick |
| ISBN | 0385265204 |
This is a really fun—and actually quite comprehensive—historical overview. It's very handy as sort of a quick-reference guide and/or as a supplemental companion to the reading of primary source history texts. (I found it to be fabulously helpful along these lines with respect to Herodotus.)
A...
| Author | Spike Milligan |
| ISBN | 0140051961 |
I could read Spike Milligan all day. He is the funniest writer I’ve ever come across. Pure silly, slapstick humour but tinged with sadness. He lost some good friends during the war years. From his war memoirs the general consensus is he had as much interest in the war effort as a truant has at school. While...
The Partly Cloudy Patriot
| Author | Sarah Vowell |
| ISBN | 0743243803 |
Sarah Vowell travels through the American past and, in doing so, investigates the dusty, bumpy roads of her own life. In this insightful and funny collection of personal stories Vowell—widely hailed for her inimitable stories on public radio's This American Life—ponders a number of curious...
Cartoon History of the Universe II, Vol. 8-13: From the Springtime of China to the Fall of Rome
| Author | Larry Gonick |
| ISBN | 0385420935 |
I've read this book before, a long, long time ago, but my brother-in-law, Josh, didn't know that when he bought it for me for my birthday. What he did know is that I own (and love) The Cartoon History of the Universe I (especially for its cartoon depiction of the process of evolution), so this was a good bet,...
| Author | Bill Mauldin |
| ISBN | 0393050319 |
The real war," said Walt Whitman, "will never get in the books." During World War II, the truest glimpse most Americans got of the "real war" came through the flashing black lines of twenty-two-year-old infantry sergeant Bill Mauldin. Week after week, Mauldin defied army censors, German artillery,...
| Author | Larry Gonick |
| ISBN | 0393324036 |
An irreverent survey in comics spanning world history from the birth of Islam to the Byzantine Empire to the Italian Renaissance.
Larry Gonick's celebrated series The Cartoon History of the Universe is a unique fusion of world history and the comics medium, a work of serious scholarship and...
| Author | Larry Gonick |
| ISBN | 0060760044 |
The Cartoon History of the Modern World is a wickedly funny take on modern history. It is essentially a complete and up–to–date course in college level Modern World History, but presented as a graphic novel. In an engaging and humorous graphic style, Larry Gonick covers the history, personalities...
The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 2: From the Bastille to Baghdad
| Author | Larry Gonick |
| ISBN | 0060760087 |
“From the Bastille to Baghdad,” The Cartoon History of the World Part 2 is the conclusion (for the moment) of Larry Gonick’s award-winning and bestselling annals of humankind presented in graphic novel form. Picking up after the American Revolution, where Part 1 left off, Part 2 opens with the...
Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other—a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been...
| Author | Richard Curtis |
| ISBN | 0140296085 |
Then look no further. Blackadder: The Whole Damn Dynasty is the book for you. Here, at last, for the first time, are the full scripts of one of British television's funniest comedies. Follow the hilarious misadventures of the despicable Edmund Blackadder and his dimwitted sidekick Baldrick through...
Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America's Finest News Source
| Author | Scott Dikkers |
| ISBN | 0609804618 |
The Onion has quickly become the world's most popular humor publication, misinforming half a million readers a week with one-of-a-kind social satire both in print (on newsstands nationwide) and online from its remote office in Madison, Wisconsin.
Witness the march of history as Editor-in-Chief...
The Mental Floss History of the United States: The (Almost) Complete and (Entirely) Entertaining Story of America
| Author | Erik Sass |
| ISBN | 0061928224 |
Smarter than your old history teacher, funnier than the founding fathers, and more American than apple pie, The Mental Floss History of the United States is an almost (but not entirely) comprehensive primer on American history (or at least, the good stuff). From the editors of MentalFloss.com and...
Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up
An exhilarating journey through the most creative and catastrophic f*ck ups in human history, from our very first ancestor falling out of that tree, to the most spectacular fails of the present day.
In the seventy thousand years that modern human beings have walked this earth, we've come a long...
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again...
Ask the Past: Pertinent and Impertinent Advice from Yesteryear
| Author | Elizabeth P. Archibald |
| ISBN | 0316298891 |
Want to know how to garden with lobsters? How to sober up? Grow a beard? Or simply how to make a perfect omelet? Look no further. Rather, look backward.
Based on the popular blog, Ask the Past is full of the wisdom of the ages--as well as the fad diets, zany pickup lines, and bacon Band-Aids of the...
| Author | Vicki León |
| ISBN | 0802715567 |
Vicki Le?n, the popular author of the Uppity Women series (more than 335,000 in print), has turned her impressive writing and research skills to the entertaining and unusual array of the peculiar jobs, prized careers and passionate pursuits of ancient Greece and Rome.
From Architect to Vicarius...
| Author | Stuart Berg Flexner |
| ISBN | 0380762366 |
This catalog of historical disasters, both natural and man-made, has a certain snarky, superficial appeal, which doesn't survive a closer reading. Its putative appeal rests in the implicit invitation to the reader to join in ridiculing various follies perpetrated by the powerful and the pompous...
English History Made Brief, Irreverent and Pleasurable
| Author | Lacey Baldwin Smith |
| ISBN | 0897335473 |
Here at last is a history of England that is designed to entertain as well as inform and that will delight the armchair traveler, the tourist or just about anyone interested in history. No people have engendered quite so much acclaim or earned so much censure as the English: extolled as the Athenians of...
The General Danced at Dawn
| Author | George MacDonald Fraser |
After the ponderous tome Blue Mars, I read this hilarious little short story collection in a couple of hours. It centres on fictional Highland battalion in the years after WWII. The attitudes are therefore, shall we say, of their time. There’s bit of racism, antisemitism, and general colonial arrogance,...
| Author | Dave Barry |
| ISBN | 1423340868 |
I think Dave Barry retired at the right time. I grew up loving his humor, but it's become more and more formulaic as time goes on, and there's only so many times that the letters in someone's name rearranged, or a goofy suggested band name, or even, dare I say it, a fart joke, can be funny. This book is mostly...
