If you ever thought history is boring, this funny and astonishing book is the perfect solution! DID YOU KNOW THAT... One of India's greatest emperors was erased from all history books for nearly 1,500 years? Beetles and beetle wings were a much sought-after fashion accessory once upon a time? The iron pillar in Delhi's Qutub complex does not rust? A French astronomer discovered the remains of a Roman port in South India? A caravan of elephants and camels from India once paraded the frozen streets of St Petersburg, Russia? Dive into these and many more odd and wonderful facts from the pages of Indian history. You will find here the megacity of ancient India whose existence we know of today from the accounts of Chinese and Greek travellers; the architects who created whispering galleries; the cluster of houses in Rajasthan covered with vibrant frescoes; and the strange story of how tea came to India. Lovelorn princes who lost their kingdoms; intrepid botanists who studied and recorded every plant in the Malabar region; the poem written in praise of garlic--these are some of the nuggets that capture the peculiar, the fascinating and the eccentric bits of history the way no textbook ever will!

The Vanished Emperor by Percy Andreae is about the disappearance of the young Arminian Emperor Willibald. Excerpt: "Those whose memories carry them back a few years will not have forgotten the sensation produced throughout Europe when, despite the most stupendous efforts to keep the facts from becoming public, the news suddenly leaked out that the young Arminian Emperor, Willibald II., had mysteriously disappeared."

Reproduction of the original.

Rome threatens the Viking King Shef's navy with a new invention of unparalleled destruction. Shef heads East in search of wisdom and finds the hiding place of the Holy Grail.

An evocative account of fourteen European kingdoms-their rise, maturity, and eventual disappearance. There is something profoundly romantic about lost civilizations. Europe's past is littered with states and kingdoms, large and small, that are scarcely remembered today, and while their names may be unfamiliar-Aragon, Etruria, the Kingdom of the Two Burgundies-their stories should change our mental map of the past. We come across forgotten characters and famous ones-King Arthur and Macbeth, Napoleon and Queen Victoria, right up to Stalin and Gorbachev-and discover how faulty memory can be, and how much we can glean from these lost empires. Davies peers through the cracks in the mainstream accounts of modern-day states to dazzle us with extraordinary stories of barely remembered pasts, and of the traces they left behind. This is Norman Davies at his best: sweeping narrative history packed with unexpected insights. Vanished Kingdoms will appeal to all fans of unconventional and thought-provoking history, from readers of Niall Ferguson to Jared Diamond.