Roll up, roll up! Get your tickets for a whirlwind tour through history's weirdest and wackiest jobs!
Ever wondered what it would be like to be an Incan runner, carrying messages across the ancient Andes at lightning speed? Or perhaps a jester, keeping the royal courts in stitches with your hilarious antics? What about a stage farter? A poo collector? A body double? All these jobs are yours for the taking in history's line-up of the world's oddest jobs.
In this book, you'll encounter a colourful cast of characters who embraced the quirkiest of professions, including the legendary Harry Houdini who defied the laws of nature with his mind-bending magic tricks; Bessie Coleman, the first African-American stunt-pilot; Marie Tussaud who fled the French Revolution and came to London to create wax sculptures; Zazel, a Victorian daredevil who became the first human cannonball; and the amazing story of Samuel Sorensen Adams, inventor of many of the most famous joke shop gags such as sneezing powder, the handshake buzzer and the stink bomb.
This treasure trove of history's most peculiar jobs will leave you laughing, gasping, and wondering what job you'd have chosen in days gone by - and what jobs you might encounter in the future...
Mike Barfield has been wild about the natural world from an early age. His love of nature took him to King’s College London where he gained a first class honours degree in botany and zoology. After a career in comedy writing for TV and radio, he turned to creating award-winning non-fiction for children built on his love of science and finding things out. He is the winner of the Blue Peter Children’s Book Award 2021 in the ‘Best Book with Facts’ category, and has also been shortlisted for the Royal Society Young People's Book Prize, the Association for Science Education Children’s Book Prize (twice) and the De Bary Award for Outstanding Children’s Science Books (twice). is an award-winning writer, cartoonist, poet and performer. Internationally popular, he writes and creates funny non-fiction and activity books for young people, published in over 30 different languages. His cartoon feature 'Apparently' has been running in the pages of Private Eye for many years, while his drawings have been displayed in the V&A Museum, London's Cartoon Museum, and Nigella Lawson's downstairs toilet.
When not busy writing and drawing, Mike performs family-friendly fun-filled shows at schools, libraries and festivals across the country. He has been wild about science and animals from an early age.
