Mental Floss magazine has made a name for itself by offering inventive articles on science, history, art, and more in an informative and humorous format. This take on world history, like their previous volumes FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE and GENIUS INSTRUCTION MANUAL, makes trivia compelling, and despite covering 60,000 years in one relatively small volume, this work rolls civilization into a ball of yarn anyone would play with. From ancient Mesopotamia to Biblical times, from the Conquistadores to text messaging, history gets a revitalizing shot of hilarity and turns out to be wildly entertaining even though it is, incredibly, factual.