Joy to the World: A Victorian Christmas by Hart, Grossman and Dunhill

Release Date: January 1990

Joy to the World is what I like to call a coffee-table book, and is more or less a scrapbook filled with Victorian artwork, images, and antique collectibles, and accompanied by text that outlines the history of Christmas.

As seen in the photo snapshot above, the cover of Joy to the World as well as the similar content inside is aesthetically pleasing to the eye for those with an interest in Victorian paraphernalia or scrapbooking. From a reading standpoint however, the text in the book that outlines the history of Christmas is dry and reads too much like a textbook to be remotely engaging.

Morbid Curiosity by Alan W. Petrucelli

Released: September 2009

Morbid Curiosity is a collection of facts about the "Disturbing Demises of the Famous and Infamous", detailing the deaths of movie stars, writers, musicians and various other celebrities and notorious figures from history.

While Morbid Curiosity does touch base on the deaths of recent, contemporary stars such as Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson and Natasha Richardson, the stories even go as far back as the year 453 to shed light on the death of Attila the Hun.

The Good, the Bad, and the Mad: Some Weird People in American History by E. Randall Floyd

Released: April 1999

The Good, the Bad, and the Mad is a collection of thirty-seven brief stories on notable people in American History, well, according to the author at least.

Author E. Randall Floyd writes an introduction explaining his fascination with "weirdos" in American History and how he came to compile and write this short volume.

This book is a very, very short glimpse into the lives and histories of these people and provides biographies of each one. By no means is The Good, the Bad, and the Mad detailed in any way, but is more suited to whetting our appetites and sparking our interest in the array of men and women mentioned. For some readers, the book may motivate you to seek out more explicit volumes on the people that actually do interest you!

Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles

Released: 2003

Library: An Unquiet History is a short, compact volume on the history of libraries throughout the ages. At the time the book was published, author Matthew Battles worked for Houghton Library and the rare-books library at Harvard.

Library begins with an engaging introduction that will appeal to book lovers and provides an insider's look at Harvard University's library. Battles describes his experience with the Widener Library by quoting Thomas Wolfe, "the more he read, the less he seemed to know," on the subject of wanting to read everything in the library.

Battles follows a timeline of library history dating back to Alexandria in A.D. 641 and walking us through the ages up to book burning by the Nazis during World War II. We are also given a background of Dewey-decimal system creator Melville Dewey and why the cataloguing process in libraries came about.

Weird Las Vegas and Nevada: Your Alternative Travel Guide to Sin City and the Silver State by Joe Oesterle and Tim Cridland

Released: 2007

Weird: Las Vegas and Nevada is an extremely fun travel guide for Nevada natives or people looking for things to do on vacation in the Silver State. The book is divided into sections for ghosts and ghost-towns, famous people, mysteries and legends, weird entertainment, and countless other oddities. The stories are short and brief, accompanied by interesting photographs.

My favorite parts of the book deal with the history of Las Vegas specifically, especially concerning celebrities and the city's founding gangsters. For Silver State natives looking for things to do in their spare time or even on weekends away from the Strip and the casinos, Weird: Las Vegas and Nevada will certainly keep you busy!

Joe Oesterle also teamed up with other writers to publish Weird California: You Travel Guide to California's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets.

                                 

Sophie's World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder

Released: 1991

Sophie's World is one of the most unique novels I have ever read in my life, and I am proud to say I own both the hardcover and softcover versions of the book as well as Jostein Gaarder's other works.

Sophie's World will provide readers with not only an intriguing fictional plot, but a history lesson on philosophy as well.

Prior to Sophie Amundsen's fifteenth birthday, she receives a mysterious letter in the mail from one Alberto Knox, a friendly philosopher who begins to educate Sophie on the history of philosophy dating back to Socrates and working its way up to the present time. As Mr. Knox teaches Sophie about philosophers throughout time, Sophie soon begins to receive other strange letters written between another teenager named Hilde Moller Knag and her father Albert. A complicated mystery arises from the exchanges of all these letters between the novel's characters, and creates a fantasy-like, Alice-in-Wonderland-type feel.