In the brilliant penultimate chapter she meditates on an ancient compendium of jokes, the philogelos. Admittedly, i'm a cultural relativist, but still i think that some of the examples she cites are still funny--funnier than she thinks.

Mary beard's book shows that romans applied humor more broadly than greeks. The romans found many things that we find humorous today, humorous in the olden times. Beard is a well-regarded historian with a long beard.

This is a fun book which possesses interesting facts. I wish it had been thicker and included more of the same. The selling feature of this book is the awesome woodcuts.

This book has so little text to each plant that it’s perfect for someone that wants to casually glimpse into the genre. The writers often use vague words like “grass” or “fungi” to say a it has a specific meaning in certain cultures.