In addition to the acclaimed Smart Aleck's Guide to US History (random house 2009), we have branched into the realm of ebooks, starting with two off-the-wall guides below, to be followed in Fall 2011 with guides to Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, and a whole lot more!
THE SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO GRAVE ROBBING
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Hey, kids....wanna see a dead body?
In this out-of-left-field follow-up to the acclaimed SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO AMERICAN HISTORY (Random House, 2009), the Smart Aleck Staff delves into the history, theory and practice of robbing graves. It's everything you need to launch YOUR career as a 19th century resurrection man - the Smart Aleck way!
With their trademark humor somehow staying (mostly) in the bounds of good taste, the staff delves the days when anyone who came into possession of a dead body could trade it for cash or valuable prizes at medical schools, no questions asked. They investigate the history of mummy "unwrapping parties" and conduct interviews with horror novelists and archaeologists, and retell stories of murderers who found that simply killing a person to sell the remains to colleges saved them a lot of digging.
THE SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO GRAVE ROBBING is fascinating, disgusting, and entertaining.
As a text book, it comes complete with quizzes, assignments, and experiments to try at home. It even includes a handy set of rhymes to help you remember whether "coffin liquor" is safe to drink based on the color and texture!
Not for the faint of heart, but horror fans, trivia buffs, and the historically inclined will find much to enjoy (albeit not before dinner). This full-length ebook contains an active table of contents and lots of illustrations. The new ibook edition is newly-formatted for iPads.
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THE SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO NAUGHTY PLAYGROUND SONGS and CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE
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| The staff who brought you the acclaimed SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO AMERICAN HISTORY (Random House 2009) is back with a look at the history of the songs and jokes you repeated when the teacher wasn't around, from Miss Suzy and her steam boat to the numerous songs about killing teachers, eating underwear, and coming down with the case of diarrhea, with an additional look at the dirty jokes, ghost stories, pranks and customs that have been passed from kid to kid for generations. Tracing many songs back hundreds of years (while debunking myths about the "origins" of others) using data from their popular PLAYGROUND JUNGLE blog, the guide is fascinating, hilarious, and will bring back memories for everyone. Those jokes are older than you thought!
With their usual "brainy but lighthearted" approach, theSmart Aleck Staff's latest guide includes fascinating looks at the history and mythology surrounding "Miss Mary Mack," "Miss Suzy Had a Steamboat," "Me Chinese," "A Boy's Occupation," "Ring Around the Rosie" (which was not about the plague, but may have been about a prostitute), and dozens more, examining their variations, evolution, and origins in soldier slang, 18th century tavern songs and ancient folk ballads.
In addition to rhymes, songs, and jokes, the staff delves into customs like "Jinx," "Light as a Feather Stiff as a Board," and "Cooties," as well as section on "wicked four square moves," with side trips along the way into the evolution of the word "poop," the various synonyms for "level" used by video game players in the '80s, and the history of fart jokes, plus the staff's trademark hilarious "assignments" and "experiments to try at home." A fascinating history lesson and a great nostalgia trip for children of the 80s, in particular, though it' will surely bring back memories for anyone who ever spent any time at a school or camp.
This full-length (over 50,000 words) ebook contains an active table of contents, active internal links, and a handy active index of first lines, as well as an appendix full of original songs such as "Drink Your Juice (or You'll Get Scurvy)" and "Glumpy, The Elf Who Sawed His Leg Off."
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SHAKESPEARE GUIDES
 | Finally - study guides that don't assume that you're an idiot! The team that brought you the acclaimed SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO AMERICAN HISTORY is back with a fantastic new series of "study guides for the smart kids" about Shakespeare - including all the stuff your school board would probably rather you didn't find out about. There's something here for everyone, from middle schoolers trying to get through English class to grad students who've read every play a million times, all WITHOUT resorting to re-writing the plays to include the word "dude." Each illustrated Shakespeare guide contains:
- Complete text of the play, plus detailed summaries and analysis of every scene, with an active Table of Contents and internal links for easy navigation (ebook version only).
- All the info you need about Shakespeare's life, times and language (100+ pages!), including sections on Elizabethan slang, cheat sheets on how money and nobility worked, the history Shakespeare expected his audience to know, tips on how to survive if you get beamed back to 1593, and a useful essay on the roles of sex, violence, and poop in Elizabethan life and literature - like an Elizabethan version of of What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew.
- Guides to movie versions of the play, the sources Shakespeare used in creating the works, a history of the individual play, guides to controversies about each play that make scholars throw folding chairs at one another, and more! Several unique sections in each guide.
- Numerous illustrations, many of which contain hilarious mustaches and stupid hats.
- Tangents about the Muppets, Star Wars, or whatever else the staff feels like (we don't let the Texas School Board tell US what to do!)
- A general lack of worksheets, vocabulary words, sentence diagrams, and other stuff that would suck all the life out of the plays.
- A section on Shakespeare's "Lost" plays (with several chances to earn $5!).
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