As I a teenager, I wasn’t too crazy about history, because I thought “history” meant copying down the dates my surly, alcoholic 8th grade teacher wrote on the blackboard, and then forgetting them at exam time. If only he had possessed the insight to engage our perverted, pubescent minds with the more intriguing, human aspects of history. Like, Napoleons’s penis, for instance. In the words of Tony Perrottet, author of Napoleon’s Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped (available in er, hardcover), “…the French government had been given the opportunity to buy what might have been the most famous sexual organ in European history…they didn’t touch the penis. They wouldn’t have anything to do with the penis.” Read or listen to the piece on NPR, or buy the book here.