When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain

Picador

When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain
Giles Milton
2016

The Summary
"In this first installment of his outrageously entertaining series, History's Unknown Chapters, Giles Milton delves into the little-known stories from history, like when a cook aboard the Titanic pickled himself with whiskey and survived in the icy seas where most everyone else died; or the man who survived the atomic bomb in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"Covering everything from adventure, war, murder, and slavery to espionage--including the stories of the female Robinson Crusoe, Hitler's final hours, Japan's deadly balloon bomb, and the emperor of the United States--these tales deserve to be told."

The Good
I enjoyed this book much more than I expected.  Actually, I shouldn't say that because I expected quite a lot from a book titled When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain.  This is a book that, as my coworker pointed out, "you pick up just for the title alone."  And, honestly, I have to say I agree.

Giles Milton's book is filled with fascinating tidbits of information, weird history, and incredible stories that seem almost too strange to believe.  It's fun and it's interesting without being too overwhelming or dense.  It's divided into short, quick sections, which makes it easy to plow through a whole chapter in a matter of minutes.

Moreover, I loved that I learned new things about history that I never knew.  Like the man who survived two nuclear explosions, one at Nagasaki and one at Hiroshima.  Or the cook who survived the sinking of the Titanic by, he claimed, drinking enough alcohol.  Or Agatha Christie's eleven missing days, during December 1926--before she was found in a distant hotel under the name of her husband's mistress.  Or how Lenin's corpse was preserved and put on display, his brain being donated to another institution for study (and his heart entirely disappearing).

Sure, it sometimes gets a little gruesome and, admittedly, a little weird.  But it's fun and fascinating, grabbing your attention and holding it by offering new and, if possible, even more incredible stories.  It's worth reading, especially if you love history or even just weird, unexpected facts.

The Bad
Giles Milton's book is not an in-depth study of human history.  Primarily, it focuses on historical events starting in 1912 (i.e. the sinking of Titanic) and ends somewhere in the 1960s, which means if you want to look beyond the twentieth century, you may have to look elsewhere.  It's a great book for an overview of facts, rather than a detailed examination of events.

The Ugly
Some of these stories have a (relatively) happy ending, like the cook who survived the sinking of the Titanic, or the seamstress who lived on an inhospitable island for 2 years before she was rescued, or the heroic dog who saved his fellow soldiers during World War I--or the real life Captain America who was twice turned away by the army, and eventually became a highly decorated veteran of World War II.

Other stories, however, are a little more brutal:  the pair of explorers who died on Mount Everest, the assassination of Rasputin, the Englishwoman who adopted several children and subsequently murdered them, or the poor individuals who were put on display before a jeering mob.  These stories, for me, often provoked disgust or sympathy.

Some of these stories are disheartening, some of them are daunting because they reflect an especially dark chapter in human history that, while intriguing and strange and downright weird, are often cringe worthy.