Book Review: Cabinet of Curiosities by Aaron Mahnke

October 31, 2024

About:

Cabinet of Curiosities: A Historical Tour of the Unbelievable, the Unsettling, and the Bizarre by Aaron Mahnke is a series of short articles taken from Mr. Mahnke popular podcast. Mr. Mahnke launched his podcasting career in 2015 with Lore podcast, and has been at it ever since.

  • 336 pages
  • Publisher ‏ : St. Martin’s Press
  • Language ‏ : English
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : 1250291208

Book Review: Cabinet of Curiosities by Aaron Mahnke
My rating for Cabinet of Curiosities3
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More Books by Aaron Mahnke*

Thoughts:

I’ve read similar books before, collections of bite size true stories for those of us who love trivia, history, or just general knowledge. These type of literary buffets can be read in any order, even though Mr. Mahnke does put them in general categories such as True Crime, War, Literature, Inventions, and more.

Cabinet of Curiosities by Aaron Mahnke is just a bunch of very short, mostly interesting tidbits. You can read them in any order, skip pages or even sections without missing a beat even if it’s in the same section.

When I checked out the sources which were used to write this book, I found them to be lacking. Most of it relied on Wikipedia other easily searched on-line material. That’s fine for a free podcast, or even a bookish blog with a Fun Facts Friday feature, but if you’re asking someone to pay hard earned money for a product, I think a bit more effort is needed. Other “bizarre” stories are out of context, as they were not seen as bizarre during that time, and many times embellishing an already amazing story was going overboard.

As a dad, however, I appreciated the cheesy jokes at the end of each story.

On a positive note, this book does not pretend to be anything more than what it is. The stories are simply written, often relatable, short and get straight to the point. I do wish that that more context or history would have been provided.

This is a fun book to introduce people to different subjects. However, it plays too loosely with history, presenting it without context or disputed evidence.

Buy Cabinet of Curiosities from Amazon.com*
More Books by Aaron Mahnke*

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I got this book for free
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account, the money is usually spent on books

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Summary
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Cabinet of Curiosities: A Historical Tour of the Unbelievable, the Unsettling, and the Bizarre by Aaron Mahnke
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Wrap Up

Cabinet of Curiosities: A Historical Tour of the Unbelievable, the Unsettling, and the Bizarre by Aaron Mahnke

Book Review: Cabinet of Curiosities by Aaron Mahnke

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