Secret Lives Series

Discover little-known stories from music history—including murder, riots, and heartbreak—in this entertaining tour through the fascinating (and surprising) lives of classical music masters
 
With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Gioachino Rossini (draft-dodging womanizer) to Johann Sebastian Bach (jailbird) to Richard Wagner (alleged cross-dresser), Secret Lives of Great Composers recounts the seamy, steamy, and gritty history behind the great masters of international music.
 
Here, you’ll learn that Edward Elgar dabbled with explosives; that John Cage was obsessed with fungus; that Berlioz plotted murder; and that Giacomo Puccini stole his church’s organ pipes and sold them as scrap metal so he could buy cigarettes. This is one music history lesson you’ll never forget!

Strange-But-True Tales of Cross-Dressers, Drug Addicts, Foot Fetishists, and Other Legendary Filmmakers.
 
With outrageous and uncensored profiles of everyone from D. W. Griffith to Quentin Tarantino, Secret Lives of Great Filmmakers reveals the little-known secrets of all your favorite directors. Why did Charlie Chaplin refuse to bathe for weeks at a time? Was Alfred Hitchcock really missing a belly button?  Is Walt Disney’s corpse preserved in a state of suspended animation? And why on earth did Francis Ford Coppola direct a 3-D pornographic movie? The legends of the silver screen will never be the same!

Take a tour through the wilder side of art history, and discover true tales of murder, forgery, and trickery—featuring jaw-dropping profiles over 30 iconic artists like Leonardo Da Vinci and Salvadori Dalí.
 
With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci to Caravaggio to Edward Hopper, Secret Lives of Great Artists recounts the seamy, steamy and gritty history behind the great masters of international art.
 
Here, you’ll learn that Michelangelo’s body odor was so bad, his assistants couldn’t stand working for him; that Vincent van Gogh sometimes ate paint directly from the tube; and Georgia O’Keeffe loved to paint in the nude. This is one art history lesson you’ll never forget!

The strange-but-true tales of the rumors, idiosyncrasies, and feuds of literary legends—including Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Shakespeare, and more

This fascinating—and shocking!—tour through the lives of classic literature icons is the perfect stocking stuffer for book lovers and fans of little-known history.
 
With outrageous and uncensored profiles of everyone from William Shakespeare to Thomas Pynchon, Secret Lives of Great Authors tackles all the tough questions your high school teachers were afraid to ask: What’s the deal with Lewis Carroll and little girls? Is it true that J. D. Salinger drank his own urine? How many women—and men—did Lord Byron actually sleep with? And why was Ayn Rand such a big fan of Charlie’s Angels? Classic literature was never this much fun in school!

Authors included:
William Shakespeare
Lord Byron
Honoré de Balzac
Edgar Allan Poe
Charles Dickens
The Brontë Sisters
Henry David Thoreau
Walt Whitman
Leo Tolstoy
Emily Dickinson
Lewis Carroll
Louisa May Alcott
Mark Twain
Oscar Wilde
Arthur Conan Doyle
W.B. Yeats
H.G. Wells
Gertrude Stein
Jack London
Virginia Woolf
James Joyce
Franz Kafka
T.S. Eliot
Agatha Christie
J.R.R. Tolkien
F. Scott Fitzgerald
William Faulkner
Ernest Hemingway
Ayn Rand
Jean-Paul Sartre
Richard Wright
William Burroughs
Carson McCullers
J.D. Salinger
Jack Kerouac
Kurt Vonnegut
Toni Morrison
Sylvia Plath
Thomas Pynchon

Legendary Heroes of U.S. History—As You’ve Never Seen Them Before!
 
Secret Lives of the Civil War features irreverent and uncensored profiles of men and women from the Union and the Confederacy—complete with hundreds of little-known and downright bizarre facts. You’ll discover that:
 
     •  Mary Todd Lincoln claimed to receive valuable military strategies from ghosts in the spirit
        world.
     •  Jefferson Davis once imported camels for soldiers stationed in the American southwest.
     •  Ulysses S. Grant spent much of the Vicksburg campaign on a horse named “Kangaroo.”
     •  James Longstreet fought the Battle of Antietam wearing carpet slippers.
     •  William T. Sherman was the victim of two shipwrecks on the same day.
     •  Harriet Tubman experienced frequent and bizarre hallucinations.
     •  Stonewall Jackson was a notorious hypochondriac (he always sat up straight, fearing that
        slouching would compress his vital organs).
 
With chapters on everyone from William Quantrill (a guerilla leader whose skull later ended up in the basement of a fraternity house) to Rose O’Neal Greenhow (perhaps the South’s most glamorous spy), Secret Lives of the Civil War features a mix of famous faces and unsung heroes. American history was never this much fun in school!

These collected biographies on the wacky secrets and scandals of the first ladies of the United States casts American history in a whole new light
 
Whether she’s a leading lady, loyal spouse, or lightning rod for scandal, the First Lady of the United States has always been in the spotlight—and in 2017 that was truer than ever. This revised and expanded edition from Quirk’s best-selling Secret Lives series features outrageous and uncensored profiles of the women of the White House, from Martha Washington to Melania Trump, it comes complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright wacko facts. Did you know that:
 
• Dolley Madison loved to chew tobacco
• Mary Todd Lincoln conducted séances on a regular basis
• Eleanor Roosevelt and Ellen Wilson both carried guns
• Jacqueline Kennedy spent $121,000 on her wardrobe in a single year
• Betty Ford liked to chat on CB radios—her handle was “First Mama”

With chapters on every woman who’s ever made it to the White House, Secret Lives of the First Ladies tackles all the tough questions that other history books are afraid to ask: How many of these women owned slaves? Which ones were cheating on their husbands? And why was Eleanor Roosevelt serving hot dogs to the King and Queen of England? American history was never this much fun in school!

See American presidents in a whole new light with this compendium of hilariously quirky presidential trivia—now with a chapter on Donald J. Trump!

Murder, gambling, adultery, UFOs . . . and The White House?!

This updated and redesigned edition of Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents features outrageous and uncensored profiles of our commanders in chief—complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright wacko facts. You’ll discover that:

• Teddy Roosevelt was blinded in a White House boxing match
• John Quincy Adams loved to skinny-dip in the Potomac River
• Gerald Ford once worked as a Cosmopolitan magazine cover model
• Warren G. Harding gambled with White House china when he ran low on cash
• Jimmy Carter reported a UFO sighting in Georgia

With chapters on everyone from George Washington to Donald Trump, Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents tackles all the tough questions that other history books are afraid to ask: Which president claimed that God struck down Abraham Lincoln on purpose? How many of these folks were cheating on their spouses? And are there really secret tunnels underneath the White House? American history was never this much fun in school!