I'M NO EXPERT, BUT series

 The idea for this series arrived, as many ideas do, at an inconvenient moment. I was sitting in a Sunday school class listening to an expert talk about something I knew almost nothing about. The expert kept mentioning, almost in passing, that things were not what most people expected. That the reality of the subject was different from the assumption. That there was a gap between what people thought they knew and what was actually true.

That gap is where this series lives.

Each book in the I'm No Expert, But series begins with a single honest premise: I don't know much about this topic and went looking for what was most interesting, most surprising, and most useful to know. The reader is not being lectured to. The reader is being invited along.

I'm curious, often a little lost, and taking notes.

The books are short by design. Each one can be read in thirty to forty-five minutes. That is not because the topics are simple — none of them are. It is because the best thinking about any subject can usually be distilled into a handful of things that genuinely matter. The seven things in each book are not random facts. They are the things that most surprised me — or might be the most surprising to you — during my quest. The things that most commonly confuse outsiders. The things that, once known, might change how you or I see the subject.

The series now covers more than three dozen topics, organized loosely into categories: History & Conflict, Civics, Government & Society, Science, Nature & the Body, Craft, Practice & Everyday Life, Global Affairs & Geography, Faith & Belief, and Culture, Sport & Ideas. This book belongs to History & Conflict. Whether the subject is an ancient religious text or a wartime codebreaking operation or a hobby practiced by a small and eccentric community of people who keep bees in their backyards, the same person shows up on the page: curious, a little lost, maybe misinformed, willing to admit confusion, and gently amused by the gap between expert language and human reality.

The information in these books is accurate to our best determination. (If you find something that isn't, let us know.) The humor and accessibility are only possible because the facts underneath them are solid. Where experts disagree, we say so. Where the research is uncertain, we say that too. I am usually an outsider, rarely an authority — but the information presented meets the standard that an authority would recognize as true.

Each book should leave you thinking: I'm glad I know that now.

For the current full list of titles, visit the series page on Amazon or JPROF.com.