It happened again just the other day. Alton Brown was discussing sushi on his hit Food TV show Good Eats, and while explaining the origins of handheld foods, he made a statement that most all of us assume is the truth. He offered that the Earl of Sandwich, desperate for something to snack on while he played cards, asked his chef to place a slice of roast meat between two pieces of bread. Eureka! The sandwich was born!
Unfortunately, Alton was wrong when he made that remark. If you believe multi-faceted author Joey Green and his new book, Contrary to Popular Belief, said Earl had very little to do with the comestible that carries his name. The regal royal started the trend, but it was Rabbi Hillel who recorded the first recipe for an unleavened bread Seder snack between 70 BCE and 10 CE.
This is just one example of the numerous imperfections in our universal common knowledge that Green hopes to eliminate. So the author, famous for handbooks on old TV series’ and several how-to tomes where everyday household products are put to obtuse but practical uses (one classic title is Clean Your Clothes with Cheez Whiz), did some heavy duty research, spoke with several learned scholars, and retraced the history of many misguided ideas to present approximately 250 “truths” worthy of reconsideration. Many have been held as gospel (some literally) while others have been passed down from folklore into fact without so much as the slightest verification.
These kind of books are always fun, especially when they take on those most misunderstood of communal realities — the urban legend. Hearing these hoary old ghost stories, with their hidden morality masked by the macabre, is the guiltiest of literary pleasures. Yet Contrary to Popular Belief is not out to be Mythbusters in paperback form. Green is aiming for another line of misconception. He wants to undermine our belief in the vitamin value of carrots (which is grossly overrated) or the simple history of America (which was fraught with more politics and misdeeds than most citizens think possible).
With all it has going for it, Contrary to Popular Belief should be a breezy, fun read. And for the most part, it is. Green writes in a non-complicated style, never spending more than a few focused sentences on each topic area. The book is set up to feature only one issue per page, giving a kind of metaphysical definitiveness to each question. But this also works against the book, since it makes the flow scattershot and disorganized.
Most of Contrary to Popular Belief‘s problems come from such procedural flaws. There is no logical rhyme or reason to how the content is ordered. While quickly thumbing through the volume, one experiences the following flummoxing arrangement of topics: a geography tidbit; some music mythology; a take on religion; a correction of errant historical fact; some insight into current events; a piece on popular culture. Without an index, themed sections, or a table of contents this makes Contrary to Popular Belief a tad useless. How does one revisit a certain select item — or better yet, use the book as reference when the archetypal bar bet needs to be settled. In many ways, it reads like a schizophrenic Trivial Pursuit game.
Another oddity is the inclusion of random “bonus sections” One deals with the no longer novel “Paul is Dead” fable surrounding The Beatles. Individuals have actually written entire books about this subject, so to deal with it in seven slight pages is downright foolish. The better bonus addresses well-known quotes and how they came into being. For every obvious fallacy (Cary Grant never said “Judy, Judy, Judy”) there is another, more interesting statement discredited (apparently, Nathan Hale didn’t care about having “just one life to lose for [his] country”).
But Green is not content to simply play fact checker. Indeed, all throughout Contrary to Popular Belief, he comes perilously close to being an overreaching know-it-all. One can call this approach nitpicky, anal or just plain misleading, but some of the sections here derive directly from the Jeopardy school of set up. Green phrases the contentions about to be debunked in such a way as to either allude to the answer to be given, or fully support the author’s own assertion.
For example, Green makes it very clear that Hitler was not a vegetarian (in the caption to his text) and then goes on to “prove” that, while not technically anti-meat, the famed Fuhrer did reduce his dining menu down to “vegetables, cereal, honey, curds and yogurt” in an attempt to cure an ongoing stomach ailment. The truth according to Green is clear — Hitler was not a born broccoli head. But then again, who is?
Another case in point arrives when discussing the advent of sound in cinema. Green sets up the segment by announcing “The First Feature-Length All-Talking Motion Picture was not Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer“. Within said declaration are the following pair of creative caveats. First, the film that meets his criteria must be “feature-length”. Second, it must be “all-talking”. Well, Jolson’s film was of standard duration, but it didn’t contain the consistent soundtrack Green is looking for. That distinction is then awarded to 1928’s Lights of New York.
From The Emancipation Proclamations lack of abolition (it only freed slaves in Confederate areas, which weren’t under Union control anyway) to Istanbul not “first” being called Constantinople (it was Byzantium before) Green carps about concepts that would be moot had the question been poised differently or addressed in a more common sense manner.
Yet these are just minor misgivings in what is often a very insightful volume. Learning how Leap Year is really calculated (hint: it’s not just based on an “every four year” formula) or why Thanksgiving exists as a holiday in the first place makes for fascinating authenticating. And since he keeps the inclusion of downright dumb erroneous beliefs to a minimum (why Mikey and his explosion from Pop Rocks and Coke is even included is a mystery) the more interesting ideas are safe to make their point.
So the next time someone tells you that witches were burned at the stake in Salem (they weren’t) or that the Statue of Liberty is in New York City (it’s actually located on property owned by New Jersey) you can whip out your trusty copy of Contrary to Popular Belief and prove them wrong … that is, if you can locate the information you are after. Setting the record straight should be easy, not occasionally exasperating.